More Lawmakers Scrutinize Move to Allow H20 Chip Sales to China
Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., asked the Trump administration July 30 to provide more information about its decision to allow Nvidia to sell H20 AI chips to China, including what “guardrails” it has put in place to ensure that the exports don’t help modernize the Chinese military.
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In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Shaheen said she also wants to know what the administration sought and secured in return for its H20 decision, as well as its strategy to ensure that the U.S. stays ahead of China on AI. She requested a response by Aug. 15.
Shaheen joins a growing list of lawmakers who have weighed in on the issue. House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., asked the Commerce Department on July 18 how it plans to implement the H20 decision, including how it will prevent Chinese military-affiliated entities and other unauthorized end users from benefiting from the chips (see 2507180033).
Five Democratic senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Banking Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized the H20 decision in a July 28 letter to Lutnick, saying the chips will advance a key adversary’s AI capabilities and threaten U.S. national and economic security (see 2507280012). House Select Committee on China ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., and House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., sent Lutnick a similar letter July 27.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who introduced a bill in January to prohibit AI technology exports to China (see 2504140009), said July 29 that the H20 decision is “not my favorite thing. But if we're not going to have controls on chips, we're going to need to have controls on data centers that are there.”
Hawley said he's working on legislation to address the issue. “Somewhere in here, we've got to control the technology flow,” he told Export Compliance Daily. “I just don't believe that Beijing currently is capable of out-innovating us, but they're certainly capable of stealing our stuff, basically. So I'm really worried about the brain drain, so to speak. So if it's not going to be chip controls, we’ve got to have controls somewhere else on this line.”
Lutnick said July 23 that the U.S. offered to remove export controls on H20 in exchange for China loosening export restrictions on rare earth magnets (see 2507230022). While the administration had concerns early on about exporting the H20 to China, that's no longer the case, “given that the H20 has fallen to the fourth-best chip, and is comparable” to the best offered by China’s Huawei, he said.