When the Chinese firm DeepSeek launched its latest AI model, shocking policymakers and bruising the stock market, it exposed a paradox: freely available software that parrots the Chinese Communist Party was made freely modifiable.

DeepSeek’s open-source models rival those from closed-source U.S. labs, and power a chatbot that is currently the most downloaded app globally. But they promote the One China policy, flatter Xi Jinping, and avoid talk of Uyghur genocide. The chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, arguing the new model is “controlled” by Beijing and “openly erases the [party's] history of atrocities,” called for stronger export controls.

His colleagues quickly obliged.

Within 48 hours, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) had introduced a bill to prohibit the import and export of any AI “technology” to or from China, with penalties of 20 years' imprisonment. The bill would ban research projects — activities “directed toward fuller scientific knowledge” — with Chinese colleges or universities. And the broad definition of AI technology would capture not just chips but also data, research, software and the distinctive settings or “parameters” that determine a model’s performance.

These proposals are the most aggressive AI reforms contemplated by any policymaker, of either party, anywhere in the U.S. President Trump has blasted the Biden administration for imposing “onerous and unnecessary........

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