By Brendan Steinhauser
The intensifying U.S.-Israeli operation against the Iranian regime is spotlighting artificial intelligence’s capabilities — and serves as a dire warning as to why we must strengthen national security guardrails around the export of emerging technology.
According to U.S. Central Command, America’s military is using AI to support the initial screening of incoming intelligence data. Anthropic’s Claude has identified and prioritized key bombing targets in Iran, with AI-powered bombing now considered quicker than the “speed of thought” by some experts.
Through advanced AI, our military “shortens the kill chain” from target identification to legal approval to strike launch — meaning more bombs dropped in less time. This is the most significant AI war to date, and only the beginning of what is to come for 21st-century warfare.
There is plenty of good news for the U.S. military. In its early days, the Iran war was devastatingly effective for the Trump administration because of AI, despite ongoing feuds between the Pentagon, Anthropic and OpenAI. Precision airstrikes were better than ever before, hitting their targets while minimizing collateral damage.
The bad news? We may grant China access to the very same military edge that has reasserted American geopolitical dominance in recent weeks. America’s edge can only be maintained if the federal government denies our adversaries — chief among them the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — the capacity to turn our most powerful semiconductor chips into top-grade military weaponry. Undermining China should be common sense, but it is no guarantee. While NVIDIA has supposedly stopped the production of advanced H200 chips intended for the Chinese market, there are signs that Washington may ease restrictions on such sales.
Undermining China should be common sense, but it is no guarantee. While NVIDIA has supposedly stopped the production of advanced H200 chips intended for the Chinese market, there are signs that Washington may ease restrictions on such sales.
Then there are Advanced Micro Devices Inc.’s MI325 chips, which are explicitly meant for the Chinese market. AMD CEO Lisa Su is so intent on penetrating the CCP stronghold that the company is willing to pay steeper taxes in return.
This cannot stand. Under no circumstances should the White House or Congress allow the Chinese Communist Party, Russia or Iran to buy or steal our most prized technology, and then weaponize it against the American people.
In the Middle East, Iran has been all too willing to deploy AI against the U.S. and Israel. The same goes for Russia in the war with Ukraine or Chinese companies stealing from U.S. competitors. Anthropic recently accused China’s DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and MiniMax of using roughly 24,000 fraudulent accounts to siphon American technology. The goal was a coordinated “distillation” campaign intended to extract high-value model outputs for Chinese use — military or otherwise.
We know that the world is full of bad actors with ill intent. We know that the governments of China, Iran and Russia don’t have American interests at heart. And, with that knowledge, we should also know not to export advanced chips — the backbone of our most powerful AI models — to the very same enemies.
The United States’ national security, present and future, hangs in the balance. If the Trump administration and Congress truly intend to put America First, Washington must impose strict export controls with no wiggle room. According to the latest federal regulations, exporting advanced AI chips to China poses serious national security risks, and yet there is still a legal pathway to permit their sale. Today’s export controls are either too weak or easily ignored, hence why DeepSeek could illegally acquire NVIDIA’s best available chip in violation of the existing rules.
As concerned citizens, we deserve better. There is no justification for chip sales or theft to China, outside of corporate profits. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang may be focused on courting China, but his business interests should have no bearing on the federal government’s duty to protect its citizens. Our security and safety should trump NVIDIA’s bottom line.
The path ahead is straightforward: Impose export controls. Implement them faithfully. Keep America safe and secure.