Should Nvidia be allowed to sell its H200 “AI” chip to China? No.
But the administration has given permission for some of these chips to be exported to China.
This is not the way.
As far as economic competition with China is concerned, the best model to adopt is the one ascribed to Ray Kroc, the man who bought out the original McDonald brothers and transformed their burger joint into, well, something else:
“If my competitor were drowning, I’d put a hose in his mouth and turn on the water.”
This is the way.
So, why let the Chinese have a chip that might help speed up their development of AI?
Odd.
Ironically, Beijing appears to be blocking any such chips from being imported into China, in order to encourage local firms to develop their own skills in this area. That is also odd. Having a peek at what the Americans are up to would surely be helpful.
Maybe this has something to do with it.
Ian Williams in The Spectator:
Last month, the White House accused Beijing of “industrial-scale” theft of know-how from American AI labs. Meanwhile, US prosecutors claim to have busted an international smuggling ring that funneled advanced chips worth billions of dollars to China in defiance of sanctions.
Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Beijing wants to ensure that the flow of information goes in only one direction, as Mark Zuckerberg discovered last month.
China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said on Monday it has blocked Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, an agentic AI startup founded by Chinese engineers that relocated to Singapore before Mark Zuckerberg scooped it up late last year.
Williams:
The Meta boss thought his takeover of Manus was a done deal, and Manus employees had already moved into Meta’s Singapore office. . . . The Chinese authorities did not say which laws or regulations the deal violates, but it seems designed as a warning to upstart Chinese AI start-ups against taking their technology outside China. “Beijing effectively drew a bright red line that Chinese AI talent and technology are not for sale to American companies, full stop,” Han Shen Lin, Shanghai-based China country director at US consultancy firm the Asia Group, told Reuters.
Our pals the Chinese.
American companies should think very carefully before doing anything other than transaction-by-transaction business in China (business that requires no fixed assets there), and even then only after a lot of thought.