THE DIPLOMAT

APLN member Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan argues that it is unlikely the US will slow down or relax on these export control curbs, as long as the great power competition persists and China continues to utilize these advanced technologies to advance the PLA’s combat power.

While the U.S. government has been successful so far in getting its companies as well as allied partners to comply with tighter regulations, Western companies are not particularly happy at the prospect of losing China’s business. Nvidia, for instance, used to have a 90 percent share of China’s AI chip market and the company head, Jensen Huang reportedly had said in June last year that continuing U.S. export control regulations “will lead to permanent loss of opportunities for the US industry.” ASML, another critical player in the chip and semiconductor industry also raised some concerns. ASML CEO Peter Wennink is reported to have said that cutting off China will essentially drive innovation in China, meaning that China can become quite competitive at the cost of others. Speaking to media, he said, “There are 1.4 billion Chinese, many of them smart. They come up with solutions that we have not yet thought of. You force them to become very innovative.”

But the October 17, 2023, revised rules are clear about U.S. concerns over how China plans to use advanced AI capabilities. The revised rules of October 2023 said “advanced AI capabilities—facilitated by supercomputing, built on advanced semiconductors— present US national security concerns because they can be used to improve the speed and accuracy of military decision making, planning, and logistics. They can also be used for cognitive electronic warfare, radar, signals intelligence, and jamming.”

As long as the great power rivalry between the U.S. and China persists and China continues to utilize these advanced technologies for sharpening the PLA’s combat power, it is unlikely that the U.S. will slow down or relax on these export control curbs. Business, trade and technology interests may complain, and they may have a point about the economic illogic of these growing restrictions, but political interests will ultimately trump such concerns.

The full article can be accessed on the Diplomat website here.

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