The mechanism: BIS doesn't need new legislation to move billions in equipment orders — it just needs a rule. On January 15, 2026, Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security tightened the license-review posture on advanced computing exports to China, layering onto the standing fabrication-equipment controls that already presume denial for tools capable of producing logic at or below 16nm, DRAM at or below 18nm, and NAND above 128 layers. BIS also closed the "foreign-owned fab" loophole that let VEU-authorized players import equipment license-free into China-based lines. Every dollar of wafer-fab-equipment spending that can't land in a Chinese fab has to land somewhere else — and the "somewhere else" is where the money moves.