That is why I've been so involved in trying to move the needle on hardware-enforced mechanisms. First, to determine whether or not a chip has been smuggled. And secondly, if it is determined to have been smuggled, to make sure that there's some sort of licensing mechanism in place where the chip will cease operating.
Bill Foster
U.S. representative from Illinois; particle physicist
In a 2025 conference talk, Foster said he has worked to advance hardware-enforced mechanisms that would determine whether an AI chip has been smuggled and, if it has, make the chip cease operating through a licensing mechanism.
U.S. Representative for Illinois's 11th Congressional DistrictPublished June 1, 2025 · date of remarks not establishedTechnical Innovations for AI Policy conference
Context and checks
Surrounding words
All of these countries, the free democracies of the world, have a shared responsibility to make sure that this technology doesn't get into the wrong hands, by which I mean basically China, Russia, Iran. That is why I've been so involved in trying to move the needle on hardware-enforced mechanisms. First, to determine whether or not a chip has been smuggled. And secondly, if it is determined to have been smuggled, to make sure that there's some sort of licensing mechanism in place where the chip will cease operating. The political aspects of this: we have just introduced legislation in a bipartisan bicameral manner—meaning the House and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans have introduced an identical piece of legislation to mandate that high-end AI
What this quote does not say
- The selected mechanism is framed primarily as export-control enforcement against state adversaries, not as a general domestic AI shutdown mandate.
- The page's transcript does not state whether it was human-edited or machine-generated.
How this was checked
- Quote matched character-for-character against the captured page.
Reviewed by
an AI reviewer that read the whole source · an automatic character-by-character check