SCALE Act

Key Points

• The bill requires the Commerce Department and intelligence officials to create and publicly release metrics that track how much AI chip capability countries like China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba have, updating them at least once a year.
• U.S. companies could only sell AI chips to adversary nations if the chips are no more than 10% better than what those countries can already mass-produce on their own at significant scale.
• If an adversary country cannot mass-produce its own advanced AI chips at a volume meeting at least 25% of its demand, the U.S. would deny all export licenses for advanced AI hardware to that country.
• Total AI hardware available to rival nations would be capped at 5% of what the U.S. has. Any export that would push adversary hardware above that threshold faces a presumption of denial.
• Companies seeking export licenses must certify that sales will not delay deliveries to U.S. customers and that the total processing power shipped to adversaries does not exceed 50% of what is shipped domestically.
• The bill also covers remote access to AI hardware through cloud services, requiring that providers prevent unauthorized access and block transfers of model weights to undisclosed end users.