By Karen Freifeld
(Reuters) -If the Trump administration allows Nvidia to sell a version of its best AI chip to China, as the President opened the door to on Wednesday, experts say it would severely decrease the American advantage in artificial intelligence.
It could also effectively spell the end of U.S. chip export restrictions, which were put in place in 2022 to make sure Beijing’s military would not benefit from American technology, and to slow the development of China’s AI efforts.
“If we decide to export B30As, it would dramatically shrink the U.S.’s main advantage it currently has over China in AI,” said Tim Fist, co-author of a just-completed analysis of the impact of allowing China the B30A chip, a downgraded version of Nvidia’s state-of-the-art Blackwell chip.
TRUMP MAY DISCUSS ‘SUPER-DUPER’ CHIP
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he may speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping about Nvidia’s “super-duper” Blackwell chip at their Thursday meeting. The comments echoed those he made in August suggesting he might allow a 30 or 50 percent scaled-down version of Nvidia’s top chip to China.
But, Fist said, the B30A is a version of the best Nvidia chip in different packaging: China could buy twice as many and get the same result, likely at the same price.
A spokesperson for Nvidia declined comment.
In the paper, published on Saturday, Fist and his co-authors analyzed nine scenarios covering a range of export strategies the administration might take for a downgraded Blackwell chip.
BEST- AND WORST-CASE SCENARIOS
In the best scenario, where no powerful chips are exported to China next year, the U.S. would have 30 times the AI computing power than China.
In the worst, where the U.S. allows the export of the B30A and comparable chips from other U.S. companies, China could surpass the U.S. in terms of how much AI computing power they gain in 2026.
Even in a median scenario, where a small amount of the chips is exported, the U.S. advantage shrinks to four times China’s computing power, the analysis found.
“If any meaningful quantities are allowed, it’s a huge change,” said Fist, director of emerging technology policy at the Institute for Progress, a Washington-based think tank. “It’s functionally ending the export control regime that we have today.”
Chris McGuire, a national security and technology expert who served in the U.S. State Department until last summer, agreed.
“If this chip is allowed to go, there are effectively no AI chip export controls anymore,” McGuire said. “The reason we have a big advantage on AI is because we have big advantages in computing power and in chips. If we give that away, best case is, it’s like a tie. Worst case, we fall behind.”
“We would be trading China our most advanced technology for soybean purchases,” McGuire said.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; Editing by Chris Sanders and David Holmes)
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