Export Controls Have Helped Nvidia Stay Ahead of Chinese, Researcher Says
U.S. export controls have so far helped American chip companies maintain technological dominance over Chinese ones, a technology policy expert said this week, which suggests the Trump administration should rethink its decision to allow sales of H20 chips to China (see 2507150013).
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“If we are in a race, I think we have to ask ourselves, very carefully, under what circumstances do we want to allow [U.S. companies] to provide help [to China]?” said Gregory Allen, director of the Wadhwani AI Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And it is very, very crystal clear that all the best Chinese AI companies say: buying H20s would help.”
Allen, speaking last week on The AI Policy Podcast hosted by CSIS, argued that Chinese companies like Huawei would be a “much more significant threat to Nvidia” today if the U.S. had never placed Huawei on the Entity List and imposed other controls on China.
He noted that in 2020, before the U.S. had imposed restrictions on Nvidia chip exports, Beijing gave its industry three years to eliminate its use of all non-Chinese technology. But the U.S. then cut off sales of advanced semiconductor equipment to China and took other steps to limit Beijing’s access to advanced chips, which Allen said has so far kept China behind cutting-edge U.S. technology.
“In an alternative universe where we hadn't done that,” Allen said, “think about where Huawei would be today.”
Nvidia and other U.S. tech firms have lobbied against U.S. export control policies, saying cutting off sales to China and elsewhere will limit profits that they use for research and development. They also argue that controls could encourage other countries to design American technology out of their supply chains (see 2505020043). But Allen said he believes the controls have helped prop up Nvidia against foreign competitors and protected it from the Chinese government's plan to stop using American chips.
“Nvidia is saying, ‘oh my gosh, export controls are so bad for our business,’” he said. “Chinese policy is so bad for your business. Export controls are one of the absolute critical tools that we have to push back against Chinese policy.”
Allen noted that the White House’s AI Action plan compared the AI technology race to the space race with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the U.S. should consider similar restrictions (see 2507230028). “It was not legal to sell computers to the Soviet space program during the Cold War. It was not legal to help them with their rocket technology,” he said. “The AI companies are saying, ‘look, we need you to not allow American companies to help China race faster in the AI race.’”
Allen added that the Trump administration’s China export control policy so far hasn’t been completely clear. Although the administration ultimately decided to ease restrictions over exports of Nvidia’s H20 chips (see 2504160026 and 2507150013), the AI Action Plan includes “all this language about how they're going to be tougher on export controls,” Allen said, including through stronger enforcement and possibly new controls over subsystems of chip equipment (see 2507230028).
Allen also noted that more than 20 national security experts and former U.S. officials -- including multiple officials that served under Trump -- urged the White House to reverse its decision to ease export controls over H20 chips (see 2507280012).
“There's still this kind of -- I don't necessarily want to say mixed messages -- but it's not obvious to me that every single action of the Trump administration here is kind of rowing in the same direction,” Allen said.