Trump’s AI chip flip-FLOP | Vox

Whatever can be said about the second Trump administration, it always teaches me about parts of the constitution that I had forgotten.

A typical example: Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 indicates that “no tax or obligation is placed on items from a state”. This is known as an export clause that should not be confused with the import export clause (Article I, Section 10, Section 2). The Supreme Court US v. IBMThe fact that this clause prevents the congress and the states from raising taxes on goods that are exported by a state to another or from the United States.

I read myself US v. IBM after President Donald Trump announced an innovative new deal With chipmaker Nvidia and AMD. You can now export certain previously restricted chips to China, but the Federal Government must pay a tax of 15 percent through the proceeds. Now I'm not a lawyer, but several people who Are Lawyers like The former official of the National Security Council Peter Harrellimmediately interpreted this as a clearly unconstitutional export tax (and as illegal under the 2018 Export Control Reform Actto boot).

At this point it is something sad and impotent to complain that something that Trump does is illegal and unconstitutional. It feels like you are shouting the referees who The Harlem Globetroters don't play fair; Of course you are not, nobody cares about it. It is unlikely that the referees will enter here. The parties with the reputation of sue and block export taxes are Nvidia and AMD, and they have already agreed to go hand in hand.

Perhaps the best thing we can do is understand why this has happened and what it means for the future of AI.

A short history of the CHIP war 2025

While AMD is included in the deal, Nvidia's KI chips in question are produced for all practical purposes – and the most important thing is the H20.

Since I explained in the last monthThe H20 is completely that Product of US export controls Certainly to limit the export of excessive powerful chips to China. Nvidia took its flagship H100 chip, which was widespread for the AI training, and chose its processing performance (measured in floating points per second), so that the rules that have set up advanced chips that have set up the bids administration and maintained Trump.

At the same time, It has shown the memory bandwidth (Or the rate with which the data moves between the chip and the system memory.) Also the H100 levels. This makes the H20 better than the H100 when answering questions about AI models in action, even if it is worse to train these models.

Critics saw all of this as seen Try to obey the letter of export controls while they violate their spirit. It still meant that Nvidia exported very useful, powerful chips to Chinese AI companies that could use those to meet us or jump in front of us -exactly what the Biden management tried to prevent. In April the Trump government seemed to be agreed when to Nvidia sent a letter Find out that it would not receive export licenses for sending H20S to China.

Then, in July, according to a few negotiations with China Rare earth metals and a Personal Planty by Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Trump Flip-flopping; The chips could go to China. The only thing that is new this month is that he wants to get an impression of the proceeds.

Of course, this is an important new element, not least because it seems bad that the president claims the authority to unilaterally impose new taxes without congressing. (At least with tariffs, Trump has some laws that the congress has adopted. He can theoretically give the authority.) The big question about H20S remains: does this help Chinese companies like Deepseek, US company like Openaai? And how bad is it when it happens?

Talk about the advantages and disadvantages of H20S

The concerns here are such that it may be the best way to understand it, is to present a debate between a pro-export and an anti-export lawyer. I take a poetic license here, partly because the people in the industry are often averse to clearly say what they mean in the recording. But I think it's a fair reflection of the debate as I heard it.

Anti-export type: Trump says he wants the USA Have “global dominance” in the AIAnd here he is to only have China very powerful chips. The US margin obviously does that.

Pro export type: Do it? Again the H20 is powerful, but it is not a H100. In any case, Chinese companies can rent advanced AI chips on cloud servers based in the USA. Deepseek could be even Rent time on a H100 In this way. So why do we fry when exporting a weaker chip?

Anti-export: They behave as if the cloud option is a gap – it is a function! In this way they are dependent on US servers and companies. If Chinese AI companies ever start producing dangerous systems, the United States can switch off its access and they will no longer be lucky.

Pro export: Again, will You are not lucky? There is a third option according to Nvidia exports and US servers. Huawei is Make your own ai-optimized chips. Chinese companies don't want to rely on foreign servers forever, and if we refuse Nvidia chips, they run directly to Huawei chips.

Anti-export: To say that you don't need Nvidia chips if you have Huawei -chips is like you said to someone 20 years ago that he does not need an iPod because he does not need an iPod because You have a line. Yes, Huawei Chips existBut they are so much worse. They are Lower bandwidth than H20SHuawei Software libraries are full of mistakesAnd sometimes the chips dangerously overheated.

Pro export: Overdo it. After a few metrics, Huawei have the latest systems (not only the chips, but also the surrounding servers) Express the top-end model from Nvidia – Even if this model uses B200S that are faster than H100 and Lightyears faster than you can ever export to China. Yes, programmers have to learn Huawei's libraries and the transition from Nvidia will take time, but it is feasible. Google, Anthropic and Openai have everyone Recently moved away from Nvidia Chips Regarding things like Google's own TPUS or Amazon's Train. That took effort, but they did it.

Anti-export: Sure, but these companies also use Nvidia's. Openai wants 100,000 chips in a Norwegian facility alone. And while US companies may try the competition, still Chinese companies Prefer nvidia Huawei considerably before. Deepseek reports report had to delay his most recent model Because it tried to train it on Huawei chips, it couldn't. Even if Huawei Chips were popular, Huawei lacks the production capacity to satisfy the demand. It is based on smuggled components Make his top end chips and can make a maximum of 200,000 this year compared to the Around 10 million Nvidia chips sent annually. There is no replacement for Nvidias.

What we fight for

I assume we will see in the next few months and in the introduction of new chips from competitors such as Huawei who have made this argument better. China is supposedly Hold down companies from using Nvidia chips According to the export tax agreement, mainly to encourage them to use domestic chips such as Huawei, although they are clearly not Prohibition The companies use Nvidias if they prove to be necessary. It is too Investigation Whether the USA involves spyware.

The greater question that this debate is raising for me and one that I can not answer here in any case is: To what extent is “China” important to make the future of AI well?

The answer for most US political decision -makers and most people I know in the AI security world was “very”. The Financial Times reports that Consider some Trump officials to step down To allow H20 in protest against China. As a Leopold Cindereian, the AI analyst turned around HeckerfunkderSet it out bluntly in its influential essay 2024 “Situation awareness”: “Superintelligence will give the power, opposition, dissent and their large plan for humanity.” When China “wins”, the result of humanity is a permanent authoritarian repression.

The Beijing regime is undoubtedly brutal, and I have no believe that they will use AI carefully. I am very confident that you will do it to suppress the Chinese citizens. But it feels like “staying before China before China” to the Sinus -Qua -Non of US AI policy.

I am less worried that this focus on China is directly wrong and more that it is exaggerated. The greater danger is that no one Cannot control these systems instead of China, and that the focus on the USA will stay in front of China Provision of automated weapons systems This could be deeply destabilized and dangerous.

As with most aspects of AI, I have the feeling that there is a small island with things that we are all sure and a huge ocean of strangers. I think the offering of China H20S probably hurt the security of AI a little. I think.