On Wednesday, April 22, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will discuss a package of bills aimed at strengthening restrictions on China’s access to U.S. AI chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and broader AI technology. These bills constitute a small subset of the dozens of related measures that have been proposed—but not yet passed—by this Congress. The flurry of legislative activity comes at a time when the White House appears open to negotiating with China over access to advanced, U.S.-origin technologies; in December, the Trump administration opened a licensing pathway for the export of Nvidia’s H200 GPUs to China. Reports indicate that compute restrictions could be part of negotiations during next month’s summit in Beijing between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

Many important questions underlie these policy debates, including those concerning economic trade-offs, China’s technological indigenization efforts, and the broader U.S.-PRC bilateral relationship, among others. While these are important considerations, this article addresses another critical question: will allowing China to access advanced U.S. compute help the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) develop and deploy military AI systems?

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