US gov fires a warning shot at Nvidia: 'We cannot let China get these chips... If you redesign a chip that enables them to do AI, I'm going to control it the very next day'

Nvidia's penchant for redesigning its GPUs to get around US export restrictions has seemingly been directly called out by the US Commerce Secretary, with a warning that when such redesigns are created "I'm going to control it the very next day." Since 2022, US chip sanctions have continued to make life somewhat difficult for manufacturers looking to export their products to certain countries, chief among them on the list being China. "We cannot let China get these chips, period" she said. Then more pointedly: "If you redesign a chip around a particular cut line that enables them to do AI, I'm going to control it the very next day". Nvidia in particular has been quick to redesign its products to beat the sanctions, including what appears to be a hamstrung RTX 4090 designed to get past the restriction on total processing performance and performance density, the two metrics currently used to judge whether a consumer GPU can be exported to restricted markets. Of course, it's not just China that chipmakers are currently restricted from exporting to, but it appears clear from these comments that stopping the supply here is the focus for the US Department of Commerce. It wasn't long ago that it was reported that Chinese companies are buying up US chipmaking equipment to make advanced semiconductors of their own, so it seems that one way or the other China will eventually be able to supply itself with powerful hardware capable of handling heavy AI workloads regardless.