BEIJING – More controls on technology exports to China will come as needed, despite business concerns, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in an exclusive interview.
“We have to change all the time,” Raimondo told Morgan Brennan on the sidelines of the Reagan National Defense Forum over the weekend.
“I know that’s hard for industry. They want a clear line in the sand,” the Commerce Secretary said. “But the truth is, technology is changing, China is changing, and we have to keep up.”
In October 2022, the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced sweeping export restrictions that will limit the ability of companies to sell certain advanced computing semiconductors or related manufacturing equipment to China.
“It was a bold move, but we felt it was necessary because these semiconductors are incredibly powerful and we can’t afford to have them fall into the wrong hands,” Raimondo said, acknowledging that “the threat from China is great and growing”.
The US has said it’s focused on curbing China’s military, but the controls also come as both countries seek to develop their artificial intelligence capabilities in the wake of OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT.
During a Defence Forum panel moderated by Brennan on Saturday, Raimondo also said she was working on a new way to limit China’s access to certain technologies by establishing an “ongoing dialogue” between business and government engineers.
“If you redesign a chip around a certain cut line that allows [China] to do AI, I’m going to be inspecting it the very next day,” Raimondo said.
US chip giant Nvidia last month reportedly delayed the launch of a new AI chip for China that had been designed to technically comply with US export controls.
“We are in contact with Nvidia,” Raimondo said in the interview. “They are crystal clear. They don’t want to violate our export controls. And, you know, we want them to sell chips to China. That’s fine. They just can’t sell the most sophisticated AI chips to China.”
Asked about Raimondo’s comments on blocking certain chip sales to China, Nvidia said in a statement: “We are working with the US government and following the government’s clear guidance to provide compliant data centre solutions to customers around the world.”
Nvidia is one of the most high-profile companies to be affected by US export controls, as its advanced semiconductors are widely used to train artificial intelligence models. The company warned in August last year that it could lose $400 million in potential sales in China due to the US restrictions.
Raimondo said she was considering similar controls on “the most sophisticated AI and all the products that flow from it”, as well as biotechnology and quantum computing.
“What I cannot allow industry to do is to violate in any way the intent of our export controls,” she said. “They have to follow the letter and the spirit of the law. And as long as they do that, or any company does that, that’s fine.”
‘Always be ahead’
US President Joe Biden, who is up for re-election next year, signed a bill last year that aims to support US semiconductor development with tens of billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government has redoubled its efforts to build its own semiconductor and technology industry.
Raimondo said it was “not realistic” to think the US could stop China’s technological development, but rather that the goal was to “slow them down”.
“We’re still selling billions of dollars a year in semiconductors to China,” she said. “We just can’t let them have access to the most sophisticated, cutting-edge artificial intelligence chips.”
“Ultimately, we just have to run faster. Do more, run faster, so we can always be ahead.”
