Nvidia, the leading chipmaker for artificial intelligence, has grown to a $4 trillion company. AI, love it or hate it, will be the mother technology of the future, driving other technologies—and a key element of the scientific and geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China.
In April, as part of his cold war with China, Trump blocked all sales of an AI chip that Nvidia had designed specifically for the China market. But on Monday, Trump reversed course and assured the company that licenses for the special chip and other chips directed at the China market would be approved.
This is a total reversal of U.S. policy. Since its inception, the Trump administration has been concerned that the Chinese military could use AI to develop weapons and to achieve global dominance of other technologies of the future. In January, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Congress during his nomination hearing that he thought Nvidia and other tech companies “need to stop helping” China and stop allowing it to use “our tools to compete with us.”
As recently as June, Lutnick told a House subcommittee, “They are trying to copy our technology and in the race for AI supremacy, they are behind us, but they are working with a central government out to get us.”
This past Tuesday, the Chinese government proved Lutnick’s (pre-reversal) point, when Beijing announced restrictions on export or transfer of eight key Chinese technologies used in manufacturing electric-vehicle batteries.
The policy reversal on AI chips came after Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, who has been lobbying for the policy change, got a Mar-a-Lago dinner and Oval Office meeting with Trump last week. The truly sinister part is who arranged the meetings and lobbied for the policy change inside the administration.
That would be David Sacks, Trump’s White House chief adviser on science and technology. Sacks’s portfolio also includes AI and crypto. |