The Biden administration this week introduced new export restrictions aimed at controlling the progress of AI worldwide and ultimately preventing the most advanced AI from falling into Chinese hands. The rule is just the latest in a series of measures that Donald Trump and Joe Biden have taken to keep Chinese AI in check.
With prominent AI figures, including Sam Altman of OpenAI and Dario Amodei of Anthropic, warning of the need to “beat China” in AI, the Trump administration may well escalate things further.
Paul Triolo is a partner at DGA Group, a global consulting firm, a member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and a senior advisor to the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations. Alvin Graylin is an entrepreneur who previously led the China operations for Taiwanese electronics company HPC. Together they have been monitoring China's AI industry and the impact of US sanctions. In an email exchange, Triolo and Graylin discussed the latest sanctions, Silicon Valley rhetoric, and the dangers of seeing global AI as a zero-sum game.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
This week, what do you think of the US government's new AI proliferation rule, which aims to curb Chinese access to AI?
Paul Triolo: Generally it focuses on clusters of high-performance computing. The rule also places controls on native model weights for the most advanced 'frontier' models, but it is unclear how performance levels will be determined. [freely shared] AI models are tuned and improved by users, including major AI companies in China.
The complex rule and unclear compliance conditions create significant uncertainty in the long-term plans of both medium and large US and Western hyperscalers.
For hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, AWS and Oracle, the rule introduces critical issues, including delayed or more complex international expansion, new compliance and legal costs, impact on global R&D and uncertain enforcement requirements.
How have previous measures, including sanctions introduced by the first Trump administration, affected the AI industry there?
Paul Triolo: US export controls have curbed China, but at a high level the sanctions have marshaled the Chinese government's will and efforts to become more self-reliant. It has poured tens of billions into helping local players catch up technologically or scale up their capabilities in core areas, resulting in significant changes within the semiconductor industry and its ability to support the advanced hardware to develop groundbreaking AI models.
Chinese AI developers have become very good at leveraging older AI hardware from Western companies and gradually integrating domestic alternatives into their development process. Chinese companies will continue to innovate in AI hardware and software, although not at the pace of their Western counterparts.
Why do you think so many in Silicon Valley are now talking about the need to “beat China” in AI?
Paul Triolo: There is a growing connection between conservative venture capitalists, mostly based in Silicon Valley, and tech companies whose business models depend on hyping the Chinese threat. This is a disturbing combination that brings together the Chinese threat, personal gain, and resistance to the regulation of advanced AI. Also, the US-China competition in AI is portrayed as zero-sum, which is particularly dangerous.
