Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says 'we don't have to worry' about the Chinese military using US chips to improve their capabilities because 'they simply can't rely on it'
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sat down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday to discuss a variety of issues, including the ongoing AI race between the US and China. Zakaria asked Huang about the previous bipartisan consensus regarding the restriction of high-end AI hardware to China, and to speak towards his previous comments that the sanctions had backfired against American companies.
"Depriving someone of technology is not a goal, it's a tactic. And that tactic was not in service of the goal", said Huang (via Bloomberg). "We would like the United States to be the world leader [in AI], there is nothing wrong with that aspiration, and we should definitely try to achieve that, and strive for that."
"Our mission, properly expressed... in order for America to have AI leadership", Huang continued, "is to make sure the American tech stack is available to markets all over the world, so that amazing developers, including the ones in China, are able to build on [the] American tech stack."
When asked by Zakaria whether this could potentially provide the Chinese military and intelligence services with "the capacity to supercharge their weapons with the very best American chips", Huang responded:
"We don't have to worry about that, because the Chinese military, no different [to] the American military, will not seek each other's technology out to be built on top of it. They simply can't rely on it. It could, of course, be limited at any time"
"Not to mention, there's plenty of computing capacity in China already. If you just think about the number of supercomputers in China, built by amazing Chinese engineers, that are already in operation."
"They don't need Nvidia's chips, certainly, or American tech stacks, in order to build their military."
Huang is scheduled to hold a media briefing in Beijing on July 16, his second visit this year after an earlier trip in April where he said he hoped to "continue to cooperate with China."
However, US republican senator Jim Banks and democratic senator Elizabeth Warren have sent a letter to Huang ahead of his trip, asking him to abstain from meeting with representatives of companies that are working with the People's Republic of China's military and intelligence bodies.
"We are worried that your trip to the PRC could legitimize companies that cooperate closely with the Chinese military or involve discussing exploitable gaps in US export controls", the letter warns.
The visit also comes in the wake of reports that China is currently constructing massive data centres to house over 115,000 Nvidia AI GPUs. This would appear be in direct contradiction of current US/China chip export restrictions surrounding high-end AI hardware, although it's unclear how the GPUs in question would be acquired.
The Trump administration's AI czar, David Stacks, has previously called for a relaxing of Biden-era regulations surrounding American-made AI chips, while an executive order regulating the developments of AI tools, software, and models was nixed early into Trump's current tenure.
Certainly, the Trump administration appears to look more favourably upon AI and AI hardware than the previous US government, so perhaps it's not unthinkable that the two countries could share AI developments (and chips) to their mutual benefit in years to come.
That being said, the US hit China with some of the largest trade tariffs of the lot at the start of the year, with little sign of let-up in recent months. So, whether Jensen's calming words might help lead to better technological relations between the two, or perhaps even a retraction of existing chip sanctions in the near future, is anyone's guess for now.