President Trump’s administration has just authorized Nvidia to sell its second most advanced chips to China, the H200’s. It’s obvious that the Chinese will use the chips to advance their work on Artificial Intelligence, which has equally obvious military and strategic uses–it’s widely assumed that in any armed conflict, AI systems will be able to keep track of, and respond to, fleets of armed drones and other highly dispersed weapon systems.
The reasons for the authorization appear to be transaction-oriented. Trump’s highly conflicted AI and crypto czar, David Sacks, was involved in pushing for the go-ahead. He has maintained a private portfolio of investments. Who knows what Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, did for him? And Trump wants 25 percent of the value of the chips to go to the U.S. government, even though there is no legal basis for charging a company for export licenses.
Taken in combination with Trump’s other actions, this move seems to guarantee that there will be no coherent strategy toward China as long as he’s in office. We will look back at this period with deep regret. We didn’t step up and respond to China’s global technological and manufacturing ambitions. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/business/trump-nvidia-chips-china.html?searchResultPosition=1
