The U.S. Commerce Secretary believes that "tougher" enforcement measures are needed to block China's artificial intelligence chip sales and semiconductor development. The U.S. government will do its best to restrict the entry of cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips and technology into China.
At the Reagan Defense Forum, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo claimed that her department needed more financial resources to limit China's "rapidly growing" semiconductor market, vowing to deny the hostile country access to "cutting-edge" technology. The official believed her department was constrained by a lack of funding from Congress as the reason they didn't see a harsher hit on the Chinese market.
We can't let China get these chips, period. We will refuse to provide them with our most cutting-edge technology. I only have a budget of $200 million, which is equivalent to the cost of a few fighter jets. If we are serious, then provide the necessary funding for this operation.
-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo
In addition to government funding, Raimondo also questioned the practice of U.S. companies prioritizing U.S. national security over corporate business. She said that while companies like Nvidia and Intel may see revenue declines, they should choose a side. The official's statement means that the U.S. government has put everything behind it and is now doing its best to limit the development of the Chinese market and resist China's growing influence.
I know there are some chip CEOs here who are a little bit unhappy with me when I do this because your revenue is decreasing. this is life. Protecting our national security is more important than short-term revenue.
-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo
Another interesting statement from Raimondo was about how Nvidia is looking at offering China a cutback solution as a workaround to U.S. sanctions. Raimondo said her department will reduce Nvidia's impact on the Chinese market by further imposing restrictions that would completely limit China's use of cutting-edge equipment. This may mean that the upcoming GeForce RTX 4090D gaming GPU and new cut-down AI chips will also be subject to new restrictions, ultimately preventing their supply.
If you redesign chips around a specific baseline so that they can do AI calculations, the next day I will control it.
-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo
These AIGPUs and chips are designed in accordance with U.S. law and are expected to be within the limit of 4800TPP (total processing performance), so the Secretary of Commerce’s remarks mean that even the specifications and systems proposed by the United States themselves are meaningless, and the U.S. authorities will continue to change or modify these rules and regulations to restrict China’s access to any chips that can be used for AI purposes.
These remarks by U.S. officials mean that the business scope of dominant technology companies in China, such as NVIDIA and AMD, may be greatly restricted, ultimately forcing them to choose sides.