Nicholas Burns

This is going to be a consequential decision for the Trump administration.

U.S.

policy for several years now, for three years, has been to deny to China those dual-use exports like advanced chips for AI purposes.

That might then help the People's Liberation Army to out-compete the United States military in this ferocious competition for military technology power that's

underway, and that will in many ways define the relationship.

And you saw when President Trump permitted the sale of the NVIDIA H20 chip, the Chinese government turned around and said that they had problems.

They might not give authority to Chinese companies to purchase the chips because they suspected these chips could be problematic for them.

And so now you have a second decision coming up by the Trump administration.

I certainly hope

that the Trump administration will be as tough-minded as President Biden was.

Deny this technology to China, because it's far more important that the United States weaken the People's Liberation Army and not strengthen it by allowing the sale of an advanced chip.

Oh, I believe that there would be a great injury to our national security if we sold this technology.

We certainly realize that in 2022, when the Biden administration put in place these stringent export controls, we understood this would be problematic for those American chip producers exporting to China.

But there's something more important at stake here, the national security of the United States, the balance of military power between China and the United States.

And while certainly the Chinese have gone a long way towards innovating now around these export controls, we were never under any illusion they would stop progress, technological progress in China, but we would delay progress.

And that has happened.

So I think President Biden's initial decision nearly three years ago now was correct.

And it's very important the Trump administration hold the line.

I think you'll hear that from many members of Congress in both political parties, by the way.

I think it's unfortunate.