Executive Order 14105 (2023)

Executive Order 14105 (2023), "Addressing United States Investments in Certain National Security Technologies and Products in Countries of Concern," signed on 9 August 2023, is the United States authority establishing that country's first dedicated outbound investment screening regime: it directs the Treasury to prohibit or require notification of US persons' investments in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum information technologies, and artificial intelligence in countries of concern, centrally China. It is the legal foundation of the instrument treated at Outbound investment screening, routinely described as "reverse CFIUS".

Provisions

The order declares a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (1977) over the advancement of adversary military, intelligence, and surveillance capabilities through sensitive technologies, and identifies the exploitation of US investment, with its accompanying intangible benefits, as part of the threat. The implementing rule, issued by the Treasury Office of Investment Security as a final rule on 28 October 2024, published in the Federal Register in November 2024 and effective 2 January 2025, defines two tiers: prohibited transactions, covering investments in the most sensitive segments such as advanced-node semiconductors and AI systems designed for military or surveillance end uses, and notifiable transactions in a wider band of the covered sectors. Covered transaction classes include acquisitions, greenfield investments, venture and growth capital, joint ventures, and certain limited-partner fund commitments; China, including Hong Kong and Macau, is the designated country of concern.

Trigger and procedure

Obligations attach to the US person making the investment, not to the target: the investor must conduct due diligence on whether a transaction is covered, refrain from prohibited classes, and notify the Treasury of notifiable ones, with civil penalties and divestment orders for breach. There is no case-by-case licensing gate as in inbound review; the regime works by defined perimeter, a design choice reflecting the volume of private capital flows relative to reviewable acquisitions.

Employment history

The order completed a capital-control architecture assembled through the 2018-2025 period: FIRRMA (2018) hardened inbound review under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), Executive Order 13959 (2020) closed the portfolio-securities channel, and 14105 closed direct investment. The European Commission recommended coordinated member-state monitoring of outbound flows in the same technology set from 2025, and G7 partners have studied parallel regimes, making the US order the template for an emerging allied standard.

Effects

The regime's rationale and its critique both centre on intangibles. Proponents argue that venture investment carries mentoring, talent networks, market validation, and follow-on funding that no export control reaches, and that keeping allied expertise out of adversary frontier programmes is cheap insurance even if the capital is replaced. Critics answer that capital is the world's most substitutable input, that Gulf, Asian, and domestic Chinese funds fill any gap at zero capability cost, and that the perimeter will ratchet outward from a narrow frontier toward general financial decoupling; the scope-creep and reciprocity concerns are treated at Outbound investment screening. The early perimeter is deliberately narrow, and the instrument's trajectory, like most of the economic-security architecture built since 2018, has so far run only toward expansion.

See also

Outbound investment screening · Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) · FIRRMA (2018) · Executive Order 13959 (2020) · Treasury Office of Investment Security · Technology denial · Economic security as national security · Economic statecraft

Sources

• Executive Order 14105, accessed 30 July 2026.
• Treasury final rule, accessed 30 July 2026.
• Treasury outbound-investment programme, accessed 30 July 2026.
• 31 CFR part 850, accessed 30 July 2026.