Nvidia’s chief executive said that curbs placed on the company’s export of advanced AI chips, made using US technology, had put the company at a ‘distinct disadvantage’ and warned that if China is unable to buy technology from the US, it’ll simply end up building the technology itself.
According to Huang, “The US has to be careful. China is a very important market for the technology industry.”
Nvidia’s technology is essential in the development of advanced AI chips including large language models, and in August last year the US blocked the sale of these chips to China.
The US administration has now gone further and blocked the sale of semiconductor chips made using US tools and both Japan and the Netherlands have fallen into line, restricting the sale of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
Huang said that the US needed to be ‘thoughtful’ before imposing further restrictions because it could ultimately hurt the US tech industry, and he made the point that, “that there is only one China, there is no other,” and that US companies could be seriously impacted if they could not trade with it.
While the interview was conducted before China’s own imposition of trade restrictions on the US company, Micron, his warning is timely.
In a previous blog I mentioned that the West is said to want to de-risk from China rather than decouple, diversifying its supply chains and not cutting ties completely and that President Biden had called for an ‘open hotline’ between Washington and Beijing.
No question that is a sensible and intelligent approach, having witnessed the impact on the global economy from the supply chain challenges of the past few years.
But as Huang warns, further escalation in this tech trade war between these two giants and tit-for-tat trade restrictions will benefit no one in the long run.
