Midnight regulations on chip access

Let us hope the Biden administration does not do too much damage on its way out the door (WSJ):

The U.S. is preparing rules that would restrict the sale of advanced artificial-intelligence chips in certain parts of the world in an attempt to limit China’s ability to access them, according to people familiar with the matter.

The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington.

…The purchasing caps primarily apply to regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the people said. The rules cover cutting-edge processors known as GPUs, or graphic processing units, which are used to train and run large-scale AI models.

Should we not want to bring the UAE more firmly into the American orbit?  Is there not a decent chance they will have the energy supply for AI that we are unwilling to build domestically?  Might not these regulations, over time, encourage foreign nations to become part of the Chinese AI network?  More generally, why should an outgoing administration be making what are potentially reversible foreign policy decisions for the next regime?