The U.S. Treasury Department proposed a rule Thursday to crack down on American high-tech investments such as supercomputing and artificial intelligence in China , Russia , North Korea and other “countries of concern.’'

The U.S. government has been working for years to deny China and other adversaries investments that could help them boost their military power.

That program began in 2023 when then-President Joe Biden signed an executive order putting restrictions on outbound U.S. investments in sectors such as semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence going into China.…