Nvidia and other chipmakers are pressing Congress to strip from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) provisions that would restrict China’s access to their most advanced chips, as the debate over artificial intelligence (AI) safety reshapes the politics of the issue in Washington, according to POLITICO.

The Senate draft, which has not yet passed the chamber and is likely to go straight to negotiations with the House after the midterms, is expected to require tracking of exported chips, let Congress block exports of advanced AI chips to China and impose new controls on chipmaking equipment. “What Jensen argues is that the threat of China is greater if they have to develop their own chips, and that’s not a frivolous argument,” Senator Ted Cruz, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, told POLITICO. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is not sure he fully buys Huang’s argument that worldwide reliance on Nvidia chips is a good thing, and that the place where the company is gaining the most influence is the White House. A Senate Republican aide, granted anonymity to describe private conversations, said the administration’s slow pace on export controls is putting Republican senators under pressure to act and fill the vacuum in the defence package. Nvidia said in a recent earnings call that less than 1 percent of its data centre revenue came from certain high-end chips shipped to customers in China, a figure that has not reassured critics. Jensen Huang, the company’s chief executive, is expected to be a guest at the State Dinner in honour of Xi Jinping this week.