H.R. 6996: Full AI Stack Export Promotion Act

H.R. 6996 tells the Commerce Department to build a program for industry consortia to help export the "U.S. full AI stack" to allies and partners. The bill defines the "full AI stack" broadly as the compute and data infrastructure behind AI research and development, including high-performance computing resources, data centers, trained algorithms deployed on that infrastructure, cloud services and infrastructure, and the technical standards those pieces use. To qualify, a consortium must be established solely for participating in this program, and its proposal must satisfy "United States-approved security requirements and standards." Commerce then has to report back to Congress within 180 days after the program is established.

The bill also treats foreign trade barriers as a diplomatic problem, not just a business complaint. Section 5 makes the Secretary of State the lead, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, and requires regular industry listening sessions, a hotline for companies to report export barriers, and the use of diplomatic channels to push back. A diplomatic strategy must be completed not later than 180 days after enactment, and Commerce must submit that strategy plus an implementation update to the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee within 180 days after the strategy is completed.

Security is the other core pillar. Commerce, working with State, Defense, and Energy, must create security measures with foreign purchasers to prevent illicit or unauthorized access by foreign adversaries to the U.S. full AI stack, with a report due not later than 180 days after enactment. The term "foreign adversaries" is tied to the definition of "covered nation" in 10 U.S.C. 4872(f). The bill also requires an "AI Full Stack Confidence Initiative" within 180 days after enactment to develop practices, product offerings, or standards showing that the U.S. full AI stack is reliable on privacy, confidentiality, security, and effectiveness for major national purchasers.

The legislation is heavy on reporting and measurement. State must deliver a study on global AI deployment within 180 days after enactment in unclassified form, with the option for a classified annex. Commerce must also launch an AI Full Stack Export Success Tracker, with the first report due within 180 days after enactment and additional reports biannually thereafter for five years; those findings must go to Congress and be made available to the public. The bill's definitions show how expansive this effort is: "artificial intelligence integrated circuits" include any semiconductor device or integrated circuit architecture marketed for AI model training, inference, or acceleration, including graphics processing units, and "token" is defined as a basic unit of text, code, or other data used to measure model input or output.