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https://www.techdirt.com/2025/08/14/nvidia-amd-pay-a-15-bribe-to-the-us-treasury-to-keep-selling-chips-to-china/>
"If you actually pay attention you might notice the right wing’s
pearl-clutching over China is neither effective nor consistent.
The GOP, for years, made a giant stink about China’s Huawei network gear being
a massive national security threat, and pushed through legislation to tear the
inexpensive gear out of U.S. networks. Then just… forgot to fund the efforts,
resulting in telecoms on the hook for billions in additional costs. Nobody
really seems interested in following up on how that project is even going.
Or you’ll surely recall the great TikTok hyperventilation of 2021-2024, in
which the GOP insisted that Chinese-owned TikTok was the greatest propaganda
and privacy menace to grace U.S. shores in a generation, resulting in a ban
that never happened. In a country where Congress is too corrupt to pass a real
privacy law that would apply to all companies, including dodgy data brokers who
sell your every daily fart to all manner of equally dodgy folks… including
(gasp) global intelligence agencies.
The Trump saber rattling over China is usually driven by a weird combination of
xenophobia and greed that usually has nothing to do with national security or
the public interest. Initiatives are incoherently proposed and retracted
without reason or any logic, repeatedly. None of it is effective or well
intentioned in any way, but you’d often be hard pressed to know this reading
U.S. press coverage of it.
The latest case in point: after years of hyperventilating about the dangers of
doing business with China and crowing about the protection of U.S. AI
supremacy, the Trump administration has “allowed” Nvidia and AMD to sell their
high-end chipsets to China, if the US government gets a fifteen percent cut of
the proceeds:
“The Trump administration halted the sale of advanced computer chips to
China in April over national security concerns, but Nvidia and AMD revealed
in July that Washington would allow them to resume sales of the H20 and
MI308 chips, which are used in artificial intelligence development.”
Transferring our top end chipsets and AI advantage to China is the worst thing
in the world! Unless we get a cut. Then it’s magically all fine! A handful of
Democrats, like Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, were quick to highlight how this
makes no coherent sense:
“The administration cannot simultaneously treat semiconductor exports as
both a national security threat and a revenue opportunity. By putting a
price on our security concerns, we signal to China and our allies that
American national security principles are negotiable for the right fee.”
But it makes perfect sense if you remember that authoritarian zealots don’t
actually believe in much of anything beyond their own wealth and power. Trump
despised TikTok until he realized he could get it to buckle to his whims
(either by selling to one of his billionaire allies or imposing algorithms more
aligned with right wing ideology). All of the national security stuff is
theater. None of it is good faith."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
