Chris Miller

Thank you for having me.

If you start by looking at the goal that the U.S.

government has been trying to accomplish since it began imposing controls on AI chips in 2022, the theory was that if you want to build big AI systems, you need lots and lots of high-end chips.

And almost all of these chips are manufactured at TSMC in Taiwan and largely designed by U.S.

companies, including Intel.

NVIDIA.

So the US and Taiwan have this unique choke point over AI processors.

And the US wanted to give US firms and firms from allied countries a leg up in the AI race by giving them privileged access to AI computational capabilities.

And that was the origin of this control regime.

And Trump has now decided for the first time since the controls were put in place to actually reduce some of the controls and allow more chips at the high end of the spectrum to flow to China.

You know, I think you're right.

This is a big reversal, of course, relative to the policy of the first Trump administration, which was very tight on technology control.

I think there are two rationales that you hear from the administration on why this changed now.

The first is financial in focus.

NVIDIA, obviously a critically important company for the U.S., a driver of the stock market.

And so there's a

straightforward rationale to let NVIDIA sell more chips to China.

So that's part one.

There's a second argument that suggests if you sell chips to China, China won't want to build out its own AI chip ecosystem.

And we've seen Chinese firms like Huawei, most importantly, become important designers and manufacturers of AI chips.