U.S. chipmaker Nvidia and others in the industry have strongly condemned potential new restrictions on exports of hardware and software used in artificial intelligence. The move is seen as a last-minute push by the outgoing Biden administration to limit advanced tech from going to adversaries like Russia and China. For more on this, TaiwanPlus spoke with Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Barath Harithas in Washington, D.C.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00There's been reports of new U.S. export controls on AI hardware and software that would apply
00:06not only to China, as it often has in the past, but to much of the world. Now, the rules haven't
00:11been officially released yet, but what's your understanding of what they might look like?
00:16Of course, at this stage, it's entirely speculative, but this might be the most
00:19far-reaching round of export controls yet. So effectively, to break it down,
00:23it's going to be three tiers. So on one end, there's going to be a group of countries,
00:26China included, as well as I understand about a dozen or two dozen arms embargoed countries.
00:32You will not be allowed to sell GPUs to them at all, advanced GPUs. And then there's going to be
00:36a tier one of countries. These are close U.S. allies. I believe there are roughly 20 countries.
00:41So for these countries, there will be no restrictions applied. And then there's going
00:45to be a band of countries in the middle, effectively the rest of the world, where
00:49there's going to be a cap on the number of GPUs that can be sold to those respective countries.
00:53I understand the figure currently is roughly 50,000, and these numbers will be from 2025 to
01:002027. But there's also a little clause where if you're a U.S. hyperscaler and you are able to
01:08apply for a validated end-user license, you'll be able to get more GPUs above the 50,000.
01:14Some of the big chip companies like NVIDIA have already come out with some pretty strongly worded
01:19statements opposing these reported new controls. What kind of impact could these controls have on
01:25chip makers like NVIDIA? I think just the sheer compliance sort of scaling that will be required.
01:30I mean, countries are already struggling just with export controls targeted narrowly at just China.
01:35And now we're looking at a sort of a global expansion of this problem. I mean,
01:39countries are already dealing with illicit diversion, transshipment, smuggling issues,
01:44shell companies. And now you're basically saying, well, let's multiply this by 150 times.
01:50And so this is going to be very difficult and challenging on companies, I think.
01:53For China, for example, NVIDIA was projected to sell up to a million or two million GPUs to just
01:59China. And now you think about the rest of these countries, 50,000 is a relatively small number.
02:04The largest clusters, single-cluster GPU clusters in the U.S. are currently 100,000. So I think it's
02:09hard to believe that it will not affect the bottom line. These new rules would be coming
02:13out in what are really the final days of the Biden administration. What's your view on how
02:18the incoming Trump administration might handle this? Will they keep these rules in place? Will
02:23they make them even more severe? Any predictions? Now, the Trump question is interesting because
02:29many of these export controls actions were initially taken under the Trump administration.
02:33I think for China, the real 9-11 moment happened in 2019. Huawei and ZTE had sanctions placed on
02:39them. I believe Huawei was forced to get off the Android market as well. So I think it's likely
02:45the export controls will continue in some fashion. But for the more expensive ones, the ones that are
02:52less business-friendly, arguably the upcoming one, it is quite possible that Trump might decide that
02:58this is not in the best interest of the business community or doesn't help the competitiveness of
03:02companies like NVIDIA.