Trump Just Handed China the Tools to Beat America in AI

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1. Writing at *The Free Press*, Distinguished Visiting Fellow [Matthew Pottinger](https://www.hoover.org/profiles/matt-pottinger) and coauthor Liza Tobin warn that President Trump’s decision to lift the ban on exporting Nvidia’s “powerful H20 chips” to China “may be remembered as the moment when America surrendered the technological advantage needed to bring manufacturing home and keep our nation secure.” Noting that Nvidia and fellow chipmaker AMD have entered into a revenue sharing agreement with the US government as a condition of this deal, Pottinger and Tobin argue that this “effectively monetizes what was supposed to be a national security restriction.” The authors push back against claims that the chips now permitted for export have little national security relevance by showing evidence that Chinese entities, including the People’s Liberation Army, plan to use the chips for “a range of weapons systems, including robotic dogs.” As the authors—both first-term Trump administration officials—conclude, “We shouldn’t hand our adversaries the tools to beat us.”

2. Remember, TACO. The restriction was never going to last under him in the first place.

3. Trump is the most pro-Beijing president since Nixon, and despite his tariff bluster this was true in his first term too

4. Seems like a bit of a sensationalist title. One look at Meta’s super intelligence team or the winning papers from the ACL/ICC and IEEE CEC shows that the AI war was won a long time ago.

   > China’s lack of unfettered access to U.S.-designed AI chips is America’s clearest advantage in the AI race.

   Kicking the can down the road, and frankly given the startling rate of top down centralized technological development coming out of the PRC, I’m not sure this article would even be relevant in 5 years.

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