Trump wants China "addicted" to Nvidia chips. Beijing has other ideas.
My latest piece for the Financial Times
Shortly after US President Donald Trump changed his mind last month and decided that there was, in fact, no security risk in allowing Chinese customers to buy Nvidia’s advanced H20 artificial intelligence chips, Beijing appeared to hesitate. Trump’s reversal looked like a straightforward win for China. Yet Beijing ordered its regulators to investigate whether Nvidia’s chips have “loopholes and back doors”.
Now that Nvidia has agreed to pay 15 per cent of its Chinese H20 chip sale revenues to the US government, it can restart sales — but first it must convince Beijing that its chips do not pose a security risk…
Check out my latest piece for the Financial Times here.
From a simple perspective, it’s a strategic move, but we already showed our hand. There are reports that Huawei and other firms struggle to make their silicon work. The long US fear that China is so far ahead of chip-making, which I felt and heard in National Security circles, was maybe—or, it turns out, projection. Now they feel that heat, and they may solve problems and be more competitive in the medium-long term?