TECH NVIDIA TIME : MASTER GLOBAL ESSAY

 

' FINDING THE CHOKEPOINT ' : Chip experts estimate that only a small portion of the hundreds of thousands of advanced A.I. chips Nvidia sold to China before the ban went to help its military.

Most were used to power social media platforms, video games graphics and weather forecasts.

But Nvidia, now one one of the world's most valuable companies, attracted White House attention because it dominated the market. 

Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, and his deputies saw advanced chips as the most viable chokepoint to control A.I. , since they were made by just a handful of businesses.

U.S. officials met with Nvidia executives in 2021 and 2022 to discuss how their chips were used in China. In August 2022, the government ordered the company to stop shipping China the A100, its most advanced chip at the time.

Nvidia adapted quickly. It zapped the A100 with electricity to disable some connections, creating a slightly downgraded chip it called the A800. By November last year, Nvidia was selling the chips in China, and Chinese companies hurried to stockpile them.

US officials believed the A800s would allow China to achieve practically the same results and were irritated, several officials recalled, speaking on conditions of  anonymity.

Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, said in an interview last year that the downgraded chip was within the government's parameters. If the speed limit is 65 miles per hour and I'm driving at 63, he asked, '' am I violating the spirit of the rule? Of course not.''

Tech companies stepped up their lobbying. In July 2023, Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, visited the White House along with leaders of Intel and Qualcomm. They argued that excessive export controls would hurt American companies.

U.S. officials proceeded anyway, forbidding the sale of A800s to China last October.

Like A.M.D. and Intel, Nvidia continues to sell legally less powerful chips to Chinese firms, some with military links.

Of the 136 Chinese companies Nvidia listed as partners on its website in July, at least 24 have had procurement contracts with the Chinese military or are partly owned by the defense contractors or organizations on the entity list, according to records from Wirescreen and Dategna, a Chinese intelligence platform.

Nvidia's chips are in such demand that it quickly made up lost sales elsewhere. But American companies are concerned that the rules have created a vacuum for Chinese businesses like Huawei, which has been rolling out more powerful A.I. chips.

This Master Essay Publishing continues. The  World Students Society thanks Ana Swanson, Claire Fu, Keith Bradsher and Kitty Bennett.