Two US senators — Republican Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia — on 12 August introduced a bipartisan package of four bills targeting export-control gaps, China's artificial intelligence capabilities, and foreign espionage against American technology. The legislation is designed to close loopholes that foreign adversaries, particularly China, could exploit to acquire or replicate US innovations.

What the Four Bills Propose

The China AI Power Report Act would require the secretaries of commerce and state to submit an annual assessment of China's advanced AI capabilities, with the first report due within 180 days of enactment and annual reports mandated for three years. The assessment would cover China's AI chips, semiconductor factories, manufacturing equipment, data centres, computing capacity, AI models, research programmes, and humanoid robots — and would also track attempts to evade US export controls and illicitly acquire intellectual property. The report would be submitted in unclassified form but could include a classified annex.

A second bill would extend the statute of limitations under the Export Control Reform Act from five to ten years for civil or criminal cases. The lawmakers noted that Chinese technology-smuggling operations frequently take longer than five years to uncover and prosecute, making the current window insufficient for effective enforcement.

The ADVERSARIES Act would direct the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) to review, within 90 days of enactment, whether US-based affiliates of companies on the Entity List or Military End User List are obtaining controlled products that their foreign parent companies are barred from accessing. The review would also examine national security threats involving foreign-controlled information and communications technology services.

The BIS STRENGTH Act would grant BIS temporary authority to recruit up to 25 specialists from outside the civil service at any given time, with each appointment capped at five years. The hiring authority itself would expire after five years.

What the Senators Said

'America must continue to compete and win in the technology race, but we know that communist China's strategy has never been to compete, but to steal and exploit,' Sen. Husted said. He added that 'this bipartisan package would strengthen our understanding of China's action, improve enforcement and protect American companies, workers and innovations from Chinese espionage.'

Sen. Warner said, 'The US must continue to lead in the technologies that will define the future, and we cannot allow China or other foreign adversaries to exploit American innovation and turn our own technologies against us.' He described the bills as 'commonsense improvements that will strengthen America's national security, protect our technological edge, and bolster our global competitiveness.'

Legislative Status and Bipartisan Support

All four measures have bipartisan companion bills in the House of Representatives. Notably, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved its version of the China AI Power Report Act by a unanimous 47-0 vote on 21 January 2026, signalling broad cross-party support for tightening oversight of China's technological ambitions.

Why This Matters

The legislation comes amid sustained concern in Washington over China's ability to access advanced US technology through indirect channels — including subsidiaries, front companies, and allied third-party nations. Critics of existing export-control frameworks have long argued that enforcement capacity at BIS is understaffed relative to the scale of the threat, a gap the BIS STRENGTH Act directly addresses. This is among the most comprehensive legislative attempts to simultaneously close enforcement gaps, extend prosecutorial windows, and build an intelligence baseline on Chinese AI — all within a single package.

The bills now await Senate committee consideration; if enacted, their combined effect could significantly reshape how the US monitors and enforces technology transfer restrictions targeting China.