The US wants to stop Chinese AI chips sold abroad. And China knows how to defend itself.

The Commerce Department has taken a step forward in its offensive against Chinese AI hardware abroad.

The Xi Jinping administration has responded to the US with less restraint than in the past.

The American company led by Jensen Huang can no longer supply its H20 GPU to its Chinese customers, and Huawei is specifically aiming to capture that market share with its new Ascend 920 chip. The other GPU, the Ascend 910D chip, presumably delivers performance comparable to NVIDIA’s H100 GPU, so it aims to establish itself as a solid alternative to the latter. The US cannot control Huawei’s presence in China, but it has taken a very important step forward in curtailing its presence outside its home country.

The US is determined to prevent the sale of Chinese AI chips outside of China
Some readers frequently ask us why the US has the power to prevent ASML, a Dutch company, from selling its most advanced lithography equipment to its Chinese customers. This right rests on a fundamental principle: the most advanced machines produced by ASML, such as its extreme ultraviolet (EUV) and deep ultraviolet (DUV) photolithography equipment, use American technologies. One of the most important is the innovation that allows these machines to generate ultraviolet radiation with the appropriate wavelength.