Mike Shepard

You don't burden your citizens by the cost of electricity by making sure that you're not just sitting around letting the market drive things.

You need to make sure that you're always ahead of the game.

Unfortunately, governments aren't as informed as they should be.

So that's a major task for us when we advise governments.

Well, this is a small but critical bureaucratic step that paves the way for NVIDIA and AMD to be able to sell H200 and comparable AI chips to China.

What it does is it now says that the U.S.

government will review requests for export licenses on a case-by-case basis and move away from the past policy of a presumption of denial of any such request.

And that had in the past been really an effective export ban.

Now, these companies can't be there expecting a rubber stamp for their requests.

The U.S.

government is laying out some pretty specific requirements.

One, that the companies must show that the exports to China will not create a supply shortage here.

This is addressing, in a way, some of the concerns that lawmakers here in Washington have been raising with attempts to pass their own version of export controls.

Two, they must show that any manufacturing done for China must not displace any production capacity intended for U.S.

customers here.

And three, the companies must implement strict know-your-customer procedures to ensure that these chips and the related technology don't get out to unauthorized users.

Well, it is the question of the moment surrounding this rule, just how this cap that it lays out would function.

The rule says that the exports to China can go no more than 50% of total product here in the U.S.

But does that mean H-200s produced from this day going forward?

If that's the case, it would not be a very big set and it would mean a far smaller number of exports to China.