America, a country built on the principle of free markets, has decided to shut off around 120 countries from accessing the most valuable element that is powering the free market at present. But the United States has a global dominance in the fast-moving world of AI to defend—and that apparently means some core principles of the country can be compromised.
That’s the only way to react to the news that the U.S. government is proposing further constraints on the export of AI chips. Previously, such export bans have targeted China, which sits second in most global rankings of AI supremacy, behind the U.S.
Banning a rival like China from accessing American-made-or-supported AI chips makes sense, given how integral AI will be to shaping our future. (Indeed, China’s attempts to evade preexisting sanctions suggest President Xi Jinping will stop at nothing to acquire our best tech—so it’s only natural to put blocks and bars in place to make it more difficult.
The hurdles being placed on the 120 other countries by outgoing President Joe Biden are more difficult to explain. Putting blocks on Russia, Iran, and North Korea: sure. But making Israel, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia jump through hoops in order to access AI chips seems less like protecting the future of the country, and more like an overtly protectionist trade policy. Those countries will have to be granted the ability to purchase a capped number of chips from companies, which will be predicated on them proving to the U.S. that they meet security requirements. (Eighteen of the U.S.’s top allies won’t face such restrictions and will have carte blanche to buy as many high-tech GPUs—the computer chips that are powering the AI revolution—as they wish.)
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo isn’t exactly hiding the government’s intentions. “The U.S. leads AI now—both AI development and AI chip design—and it’s critical that we keep it that way,” she said in a statement. But what exactly are midsized countries going to do to threaten U.S. supremacy in this space anyway?
Putting complicated requirements in place that those world leaders will have to adhere to to access our chips is likely to have the opposite effect the government claims to have intended. The White House has said that it’s necessary to regulate chip exports as you would arms exports because of the risk that a rival like China might rise up and supplant the U.S. as the top tech power. But rest assured, when confronted with a convoluted check-box exercise chock-full of acronyms (countries have to obtain National Verified End User status) and a multiple-tier system, it’s more likely countries will look towards China for cheaper, look-alike chips to power their AI models.
We shouldn’t be surprised by this decision. Despite Biden’s more muscular approach to tech regulation than his Republican predecessor (and successor), the reality is that the U.S. has been served pretty well over the past 20 years by companies headquartered in its country. It’s arguably why the Biden administration has continued its war on TikTok, a rare success story that didn’t emanate from Silicon Valley.
But while some world leaders may say that a ban against TikTok doesn’t matter to them, limiting access to the fuel of future economies does. Rather than trying to prevent China from competing on even footing, it’s preventing everyone else from doing so.
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