Search: #TechColdWar

The fallout from the espionage scandal surrounding Jensen Huang and the total compromise of Nvidia’s core IP has abruptly accelerated the US-China conflict timeline. In an AI Cold War where compute architecture and advanced silicon represent the enriched uranium of the 21st century, any illicit leap toward hardware parity shreds Washington’s containment strategy…. shifting the confrontation from managed export controls to an existential, zero-sum clash far ahead of schedule. Previously, I just could not see a conflict within 20+ years between the two. Today, I am not longer so sure.

The US have won the competition with the Soviet Union during the Third Industrial Revolution and this was decisive for the end of the Cold War. Amid 4IR, AI and other technologies will enable the winner to „take all” and emerge victorious from the new Cold War. Jensen is wrong.

The story keeps getting crazier. To recap everything that has been reported so far: - The US intelligence community discovered that Jensen Huang, the CEO of the largest company in the world, was sleeping with Alice Huang, a Chinese spy and an executive at Megaspeed. (FT) - Multiple independent investigations have concluded that Megaspeed is likely a Chinese cutout, which helps Chinese companies access AI chips or circumvent export controls. (NYT and Bloomberg) - The US intelligence community also concluded that Alice Huang’s goal was to convince Jensen to lobby the U.S. government to loosen export controls on advanced AI chips. (NYT) - The intelligence community relayed this information to “a small group of top US government officials” earlier this year. (FT) - Over the last year, Jensen Huang has repeatedly lobbied the U.S. government to loosen export controls on advanced chips. @BISgov has done so, not only by permitting the export of H200 chips to China, but also not enforcing export controls that would have required a license for exports of the most advanced Blackwell chips to Megaspeed and Southeast Asia. - Although @CommerceGov leadership was presumably briefed on this information by the U.S. intelligence community, @BISgov has taken no actions to tighten controls on Megaspeed or Southeast Asia. - Megaspeed remains a preferred cloud partner of Nvidia, and continues to receive Nvidia Blackwell chips despite employing a Chinese spy who reportedly is romantically engaged with the CEO of Nvidia. - Tens of billions of dollars worth of AI chips have been exported to Southeast Asia this year alone, and Malaysia and Singapore are now two of the four largest importers of AI chips in the world. What is going on here??? We need answers. The question of who gets the most advanced AI chips in the world is literally the defining strategic question of our time. And not only does it seem like the MSS may be directly influencing the debate on export controls in the United States, but also @CommerceGov is refusing to listen to the warnings of the IC on this issue. What is a POSSIBLE good explanation for why Megaspeed is still receiving chips? Why is there not a license requirement for AI chip shipments to all of Southeast Asia? This is beyond strange at this point. The fallout from this story will be massive. Obviously, the motivations underpinning Nvidia’s policy views opposing export controls must now all be questioned. But also, how did @BISgov sit on this information and has still taken no actions? We need answers.

Data centers are now the biggest source of new blue-collar jobs. Critics call it “crowding out” other construction. I call it the reindustrialization of America!

READ this. This is highly revealing. If we allow Dems to strangle American AI—and hand global AI leadership to China—it would be utterly catastrophic.

AI doomers believe they can spawn a mechanism to slow down AI. This would ofc involve reaching an agreement with China, which doesn't have neurotic doomers running their AI labs. So Beijing would just lie and checkmate us. There is no stopping AI progress. The whole "pace the frontier" thing is akin to trying to stop the wind from blowing. May as well start learning to use these tools and consider the possibility that they will do lots more good than bad in this world.

excellent WashPo reporting here from @joshrogin & Kendrick Frankel on current state of play with Beltway AI policy negotiations. “We’re now in the worst of all worlds,” I told them. 👉 "Very arbitrary ad hoc governance of artificial intelligence; complete congressional dysfunctionalism leading to absolutely no statutory guidance; 1,800 state bills, many of which implicate frontier model regulation; and, meanwhile, we’ve got an open source threat from China."

It's not "China is catching up, so we should just give up and sell them whatever." It's, "China is catching up, so we should pull out all the stops to delay the inevitable—and sprint to market before their exports come online." This is the contest of the century.

China is sprinting to chip independence. In a new report for @AEI, @Satvik_Pen and I estimate Huawei could meet half of China’s compute demand as soon as 2028—permanently transforming the global race to deploy AI. The time to prepare is now. 🧵 1/16 aei.org/research-products/wo…

“We’re talking about whether it is the United States or China that provides the digital lifeblood of the global economy,” said Ryan Fedasiuk, a fellow at @AEI. While Chinese AI systems themselves are catching up, the U.S. appears to still have a decisive advantage when it comes to accessing the powerful computer chips and data centers needed to run the technology. Fedasiuk said if the trend of Chinese models improving continues, it would point to a shift in the nature of the competition between the two countries: “The race will really be about deploying frontier capability, not just building it.” Thanks @iduncan for the chance to comment for @washingtonpost: washingtonpost.com/technolog…

CIA Director John Ratcliffe: The Chinese steal the technology, they replicate it, the state subsidizes it, and that's their model of success. They are very good at it.

Xi's speech on AI strategy makes it clear that it's all about diffusion first / fastest for China. Open sourcing is crucial component of that strategy. Xi knows that means dominance for Chinese AI stack globally over U.S. if they can get the world hooked on their stack first vs America's. Meanwhile, America imposes arbitrary model bans at federal level (and flirts with open source restrictions) while state governments pursue data center bans and 1,800+ other AI laws. 😒

Last week, @Reuters reported that DeepSeek is designing its own AI chip in a bid to reduce its dependence on both Nvidia and Huawei. @RyanFedasiuk warned last year that the US could not keep China dependent on American chips. China’s push for chip self-sufficiency predates the export controls, he argued, and selling China the chips it needs only relieves the pressure it should be under. Read his argument here: aei.org/foreign-and-defense-…

New York to impose the country’s first statewide moratorium on data centers. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new…

China has been stealing US tech for decades. We are finally taking action. The National Science Foundation is essentially going to ban collaboration with institutions in China. These institutions are required to assist in espionage and are simply to risky to work with. 🔗

China is now using AI to assist with its foreign interference operations A social media campaign against US technology infrastructure was actually developed by a Chinese tech company using American AI. The CCP has always been active on social media, AI just make it easier 🔗

Great to join @CNBCi’s Squawk Box Asia to talk about the U.S.-China AI race. China will remain compute-constrained for at least the next 2 years—there’s no way around this. But labs like Z.ai are chasing closely. It’s a mistake to close off the 🇺🇸 frontier.

while US lawmakers push data center bans & a patchwork of 1,800+ AI laws, "China is launching a full-scale push to roll out artificial intelligence across its economy and make this sector the foundation of its economic strategy," notes @wrmead in today's @WSJ.