This is just not how it works even if we really, really want it to work that way. US government can do it, and has done it before. At some point strong encryption was considered “munitions” and export controlled. If SSL can be “munition”, LLMs can be slapped on a label just like that. SSL/TLS stopped being qualified as such eventually so some sanity was restored. But as the legal and regulatory framework, it’s certainly there and has and is being used in that capacity.

This has a long history and the US government are not completely stupid. They understand that some cornerstone technologies are high leverage even if they are not per se directly militarily relevant.

Some classic examples of this, on which the US places severe export controls, was advanced materials science and inertial navigation technology. Neither of these are weapons but advanced technology in these domains greatly enables the development of advanced weapons. Any work in these areas is automatically subject to the full export control regime. In extreme cases they may be nationalized and classified.

AI tech is becoming just another tech domain subject to the same level of scrutiny. I’m not making a moral judgement. This was always going to be the reality and a lot of people could see it coming.

> This is not a security related policy, it’s about strategically controlled economic power.

It is both. The US and China are locked in an AI arms race with economics and security intertwined, given the perceived power of the trajectory of frontier AI models.