Erich Grunewald

Projects

Research Direction: Impact & Effectiveness of US Export Controls

• Estimate the historical effectiveness of the AI chip controls quantitatively, e.g., by doing regression on compute-performance relationships to estimate how much sooner Chinese labs would have reached current AI model capability levels with unrestricted access to NVIDIA GPUs

• Do a case study of IC nonproliferation/anti-smuggling efforts -- what has the IC historically done on nonproliferation/smuggling? What concretely could the IC do now to help the BIS understand the scope of, and mitigate AI chip smuggling and other AI-related export violations?

• Study ways of enforcing export controls via the financial system -- how do smugglers interact with financial institutions (money laundering, setting up shell/front companies, etc.)? Are there ways the US can leverage those interactions to reduce smuggling?

• Analyze Huawei's AI chip roadmap, whether it is feasible and what the implications of it are in terms of overall future US and Chinese compute resources

• Examine the case for "export control maximalism", e.g., banning exports of everything that is produced on leading-edge nodes, including smartphone chips, to limit Chinese fabs' ability to fabricate AI chips domestically -- how much would this actually constrain China's domestic production of AI chips? how costly is this for US businesses?

What I'm looking for in a Mentee

It would be useful for you to have some familiarity with AI hardware, export controls, the Chinese semiconductor industry, or a related topic. More importantly, you should be excited to work on one of these topics, capable of managing your time effectively, and able to articulate your thoughts clearly in writing.

Bio

Erich is a Researcher in the compute policy team at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, where he has published work on AI chip smuggling and Chinese semiconductor indigenization. He previously worked as a software engineer and earned a BSc in computer engineering and an MSc in interaction design from Chalmers University of Technology.