In the final days of the Biden administration, agencies are working overtime to implement last minute regulations, and this week was book-ended with two rules that would weaken America energy and tech leadership.
On Monday, Biden moved to “ban new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline … consist[ing] of 625 million acres within the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Bering Sea.”
President Trump has said that he would reverse this ban as part of his administration’s goal to meet our country’s increasing energy demand — which is largely driven by our technological advancements.
Today, the Commerce department is expected to announce sweeping restrictions on American companies selling AI chips overseas. The Biden administration’s rush to impose these policies and regs on the incoming Trump administration not only runs counter to the message sent from the American people in November, but the haste in which they are doing so will prove counterproductive.
While the stated goal of preventing precious American technology from falling into the hands of our adversaries such as the Chinese Communist Party is right, this midnight rule would unintentionally bolster the very adversaries it seeks to restrain.
The AI chip market is among the most sought-after in the world — and fortunately, American companies are the ones setting the pace. Yet, by taking American products off the playing field, the U.S. risks ceding tech leadership to foreign competitors, especially those backed by the Chinese government. As the old saying goes, “when one door closes, another opens.
Reporting from the New York Times also suggests a secondary motive for this rule is to keep datacenter development here in the U.S. The Times reports, “U.S. officials say data centers are also important sources of new economic activity for American communities. They want to encourage companies to build as many data centers as possible in the United States rather than in regions like the Middle East, which is offering money to attract tech firms.”
This, too, is a worthy goal. But making it harder to produce American energy, as this week’s order and many other previous policies have done, will hold back datacenter development.
Taken together, these rules are the latest sampling of a disjointed policy approach for American technology dominance — something ALFA will be working to fix.
