Boosting Nvidia’s Bottom Line Won’t Make Americans Safer

In deciding where to draw the line on sales of advanced semiconductors to China, the White House should prioritize the security of all Americans over the interests of individual companies. Its latest moves risk getting that balance wrong.

Earlier this month, the president granted Nvidia Corp. permission to ship its H200 artificial intelligence chips to China, while loosening restrictions on rivals Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. as well. Although not Nvidia’s most cutting-edge offering, the H200 is at least a generation ahead of Chinese-made alternatives. According to the Institute for Progress, it provides 32% more processing power (useful for training AI models) and 50% more memory bandwidth (which helps those models run) than the Ascend 910C, the best chip from Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.; it’s also cheaper to use and more reliable. Moreover, the Commerce Department has estimated that Huawei will only produce 200,000 Ascend chips this year, compared to the 14 million AI chips deployed by US companies.