At the center of the conflict is AI chip exports. Last month, Trump finally allowed Nvidia to sell its H200 chips to China. The chips are less advanced than Nvidia’s latest US offerings, but they are still advanced enough to be used in US industry and certainly more advanced than the previously approved China-specific H20 chips, which Beijing was not happy with.
Some people considered this move a profitable deal. The US government will take 25% of Nvidia’s China sales, Chinese AI companies will get access to even better chips than before, and Nvidia could finally start to see sales growth in one of its biggest markets.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spent much of his time publicly over the past few months trying to convince government officials to go ahead with the deal. While some in DC were worried that sending Nvidia chips to power Chinese AI innovations would not only cause the US to lose the AI race but also jeopardize national security, Huang argued the opposite. He claimed that as long as the Chinese AI industry remains dependent on Nvidia’s infrastructure, the US will remain dominant.
While they may have convinced some, like Trump and his AI czar David Sachs, it seems Congress isn’t entirely convinced. And they are demanding to be heard.
“Should Congress have oversight when selling missiles to other countries? Yes, the same should be said for chips,” Republican Florida Representative Brian Mast said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week.
Mast, who also chairs the committee, said, “Nvidia has made such good chips that if they were sold freely to CCP, CCP would be ahead of us in the AI arms race.” “These chips, they’re not just kids playing video games on Xbox, playing war games. They affect real wars, real weapons, real combat power, and they will be part of bringing about real casualties.”
Last month, following Trump’s H200 announcement, Mast introduced the AI Overwatch Act, a bill that would give both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking Committee the power to block export licenses for AI chips to China and other countries deemed adversaries.
On Wednesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to advance the bill, and it will now face a vote in the full House. Although the bill received overwhelming support in committee, it is unclear whether it will pass Congress. Similar bills trying to restrict chip exports have failed, such as the GAIN AI Act, which also angered Nvidia.
The bill is proving to be polarizing not only in Washington politics but also within MAGA. Despite Mast also being strongly associated with Trump, the bill has received considerable support from other prominent MAGA figures, chief among them Trump’s AI czar, David Sachs.
Last week, Sachs confirmed a post on The post also claimed that the bill was secretly drafted by “Never Trumpers and former Obama/Biden staffers” and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer also took to X to express anger against the bill, calling it “pro-China sabotage disguised as surveillance.” Mast, in turn, accused Loomer of repeating “NVIDIA’s lobbying talk about selling chips to China.”
Anthropic CEO Amodei, for his part, openly disagrees with his company’s strategic partner Nvidia, and thinks allowing Nvidia chips to enter China is “madness” and “a mistake.”
“It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea [bragging that] Boeing made the casings, Amodei told the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, according to TechCrunch.
Amodei’s words may not have angered Huang that much, because he took the stage in Davos on Wednesday and praised Anthropic’s AI assistant Cloud.
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