U.S. lawmakers called for memory to be added to chip controls, days after a bill was passed to further limit Chinese access to U.S. technology. The request was made by a House of Representatives committee after memory shortages continue to pose a major bottleneck for AI development and utilization.

In a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the Select Committee on the CCP raised concerns on the global shortage of dynamic random access memory (DRAM), specifically high-bandwidth memory 3 extended (HBM3E) used in Nvidia’s Blackwell and H200 chips.

Committee Chairman John Moolenaar commended Lutnick on the inclusion of the America First certification requirement in this week’s revision to the license review policy for advanced computing commodities. The bipartisan bill strengthened the Export Control Reform Act, granting federal authorities the power to restrict remote access to advanced technologies such as AI chips, closing a loophole where Chinese firms were able to use sanctioned chips by purchasing or leasing them for operation within the United States.

But in his letter, Moolenaar, a co-sponsor of the legislation, argued it didn’t go far enough, warning that exports could divert memory resources away from American companies.

“There is an immediate challenge to this requirement. I am concerned that the global shortage of DRAM may prevent the requirement from being satisfied and therefore poses a risk to America’s AI leadership,” he wrote, citing concerns from memory leaders Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron on the ongoing memory crunch.

Moolenaar added: “Due to severe supply constraints, chips equipped with HMB3E bound for China represent an opportunity cost when it comes to HMB3E that could otherwise be utilized by American customers. Reports indicate that Chinese technology firms have placed orders for more than two million H200. This volume significantly exceeds reported estimates of Nvidia’s current available inventory of approximately 700,000.

“The result is that these chips will need to be fabricated utilizing the already scarce type of DRAM. So long as the global DRAM shortage persists, orders from China-based customers appear to require cannibalizing memory from an existing or potential order by an American customer.”

The House China committee called on the Secretary for a briefing by January 25 on the “domestic availability of HMB3E components, how that availability affects license approval, and the Department’s work to ensure American companies are always at the head of the line.”

Formally known as The United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, the China watchdog was formed in 2023 to build consensus on protecting American interests from what it describes as the threat posed by the CCP.

That supposed threat recently came a little too close to home for the Select Committee, with its emails hacked by actors behind the infamous Salt Typhoon exploit that blighted telecoms in 2024. Revealed in the first week of January, an exploit carried out in December targeted crucial arms of the U.S. government, including House intelligence, foreign affairs, and the armed services.

One of the Committee's most notable efforts to date was a Critical Minerals Policy Working Group, which examined China's control of rare earth materials. In October, Moolenaar spurred U.S. President Donald Trump to up his tariff war on China, pointing to China's own chip-based controls when it started restricting rare earth supplies to the U.S. and the European Union in response to Trump's tariffs on electric cars.

Memory of the Future

Chair Moolenaar's intervention marks the first major recognition from U.S. authorities around memory bottlenecks, a heated discussion in industry tech circles since late 2025.

The alarm was arguably rung when financial powerhouse Morgan Stanley cut ratings on the likes of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) due to margin pressures stemming from the memory crunch. That coincided with Samsung reportedly raising DRAM prices by 60%.

Samsung rival SK Hynix then forecasted memory supply chain issues would last until 2028, reportedly delaying production of its next-generation memory chips with a possible impact on Nvidia’s Rubin line. December also saw reports Nvidia was unbundling video RAM (VRAM) from its consumer and gaming GPUs, while sole U.S. memory heavyweight Micron exited the consumer market entirely.

In response to the memory scourge, Nvidia partner and AI storage leader Vast Data this week revealed a Flash Reclamation Program. As exclusively revealed by SDxCentral, the program aims to replace existing storage or database software with its own platform, with the promise of delivering two to three times the capacity customers had originally planned for.