Export Controls
Government restrictions on selling advanced technology abroad — in AI, mainly limits on shipping cutting-edge chips to rival nations.
Definition
Export controls are government rules that restrict which technologies can be sold or shipped to other countries, usually for national-security reasons. In AI, they refer mainly to United States limits on selling the most advanced chips — the GPUs used to train frontier models — to countries such as China, in order to slow rivals' progress. These controls have reshaped the industry: chipmakers design special lower-powered versions for restricted markets, buyers seek workarounds, and the rules themselves change frequently as governments adjust what counts as too powerful to export. They are a central lever in the geopolitics of AI.