It does not make sense. We repeatedly claim that America must beat China in the AI race, yet we are selling our key advantage, NVIDIA chips, to the Chinese Communist Party, the rival we must defeat. We constantly hear the “beat China” argument used to fast-track new AI data centers. Even conservative talk show hosts echo the “beat China” mantra as a valid reason to build even more of them. We do not need more data centers to win this race, but we do need to keep our key advantage, the chips that make superior AI possible, away from the enemy.
Technocrats Push Data Centers and Chip Sales for Their Own Gain
Powerful technocrats and corporate advisors are urging the president that America must rapidly build more AI data centers to beat China. Yet these same insiders stand to reap enormous profits from the construction, energy deals, and expanded infrastructure, while ordinary Americans bear the costs of higher energy prices, strained grids, disrupted communities, and environmental impacts with little broad national gain. At the same time, these very same technocrats counsel selling advanced NVIDIA chips to China, ensuring massive revenues flow to a handful of companies and to Beijing itself, once again enriching special interests and our strategic adversary while weakening America’s long-term security and technological edge. This pattern reveals a troubling alignment of advice that prioritizes private gain over the public good and true national strength.
The President’s Own Words and Emergency Declarations Per Technocrat Counsel
As the leader of the free world, President Trump truly wants the US to win the AI race. That goal is understandable and prudent. We don’t want our enemy to have the military advantage. In an interview on July 2 with CNBC President Trump warned, “We have to be at the top. Otherwise, China is going to take it over.” [1]
Taking advice from his technocrat advisors, President Trump said “We need to double the energy we currently have in the United States … for AI to really be as big as we want to have it” to compete with China and other countries. [2]
President Trump has repeatedly called for the rapid permitting of data centers and broad deregulation as essential to maintaining U.S. leadership over China. For example, in remarks on AI infrastructure: “China is a competitor… We want it to be in this country… I’m going to help a lot through emergency declarations, because we have an emergency. We have to get this stuff built.” [3]
Stop Arming the Enemy: End NVIDIA Chip Sales to China Now
If we truly do not want China to surpass us in artificial intelligence, we must stop selling them NVIDIA chips. These powerful processors are the engines that power advanced AI systems, giving whoever controls them a huge edge in technology, military strength, and economic power. By allowing sales, even with some limits, we are handing China the very tools they need to train smarter systems and close the gap on us. China already pours massive resources into AI and has shown it will use any advantage against American interests. Keeping our chips at home protects jobs, national security, and our lead in the future, instead of helping our biggest rival build up at our expense. Common sense says do not arm the competition if you want to win the race.
The Dutch Clap Skate Lesson: Never Give Your Rival the Winning Edge
I will give a real-world example from the world of competitive speed skating that I grew up in. Back in the mid-1990s, the Dutch developed the clap skate (or “klapschaats”), a hinged-blade design that gave their skaters a clear seconds-long competitive edge by allowing longer, more powerful strokes on the ice. When the technology proved revolutionary, Dutch manufacturer Viking refused to sell the skates to Americans in order to preserve that advantage for their own athletes. By late 1996 the Dutch had already begun fully training and competing on the new skates, giving them roughly 18 months of experience and mastery by the time of the 1998 Nagano Olympics. American skaters and officials lodged complaints with the International Skating Union, highlighting the unfair restriction of critical technology and the Dutch were forced to sell the skates to the Americans. American skaters received inferior versions and far fewer pairs right before the games. It was nowhere near enough time. American skaters had trained their entire lives on traditional fixed-blade skates, and the clap skate required an entirely new skating style, technique, and muscle memory.
The results were decisive:
• Netherlands: 5 gold, 4 silver, 2 bronze (11 total medals) — they dominated the competition.
• United States: 0 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze (2 total medals).
Just as the Dutch withheld this performance-enhancing equipment from their American rivals to protect their lead, the United States must not sell advanced NVIDIA chips to China. Handing our primary strategic competitor the very tools needed to close the AI gap is not smart competition. It is self-sabotage. National security and technological superiority demand that we keep our decisive advantages at home.
Congress Failed America: The Killed GAIN AI Act
In a powerful Hudson Institute article titled “China’s Military Machine Shouldn’t Run on American Chips,” the authors highlight a critical missed opportunity. The proposed GAIN AI Act would have given American buyers priority access to advanced chips, ensuring U.S. companies stay ahead in the global AI race. As the piece rightly states: “There is nothing more America First than prioritizing U.S. companies over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Some corporations, however, are putting Beijing’s interests first.” [4]
Congress had a chance to protect America in the high-stakes AI race with the GAIN AI Act. This legislation would have treated advanced AI chips like sensitive military equipment: it would have given Congress 30 days to review big sales to China and required the government to make sure exports did not hurt American companies or our national security by short-changing U.S. buyers when supplies are tight. Unfortunately, the bill was killed before it could pass. NVIDIA and other business interests lobbied hard against it, and some advisors in the administration reportedly pushed back too, putting corporate profits and short-term sales ahead of long-term American security. As a result, we are left without strong guardrails while China gains access to the powerful chips that fuel AI and modern warfare.
While the GAIN AI Act would have offered some meaningful protection, we must go further and impose an outright ban on the sale of these advanced chips to China.
Exporting H200 Chips Undermines Our Own AI Leadership
According to an Atlantic Council article titled “Why Exporting Advanced Chips to China Endangers U.S. AI Leadership,” “Allowing Nvidia to sell H200 series chips to Chinese customers “appears” to be a compromise move to help Nvidia’s global market share without giving China access to cutting-edge Blackwell chips. But the move will allow China to eat into the US advantage in global computing, undermining the administration’s own goals of maintaining US global leadership in AI.” [5]
President Trump shook up the global tech race in a Truth Social post when he announced his approval for Nvidia to sell its H200 (“Hopper”) series chips to “approved customers” in China, with the United States receiving a 25 percent cut of the revenues. President Trump said that Chinese President Xi Jinping “responded positively” to the decision.
Advanced H200 Chips Are Being Shipped to China Right Now
The United States is indeed selling NVIDIA chips to China right now. In July 2026 a top Commerce Department official told Congress that shipments of the powerful H200 artificial intelligence chips had begun reaching customers in China after the administration approved licenses for about 10 Chinese companies. These H200 chips rank among Nvidia’s most advanced for training and running AI models. Reports indicate approvals cover major firms including units tied to ZTE, Alibaba, ByteDance, and Tencent, with potential for hundreds of thousands of chips overall. [6]
Some advisors and technocrats have supported the move as part of broader negotiations, sometimes linking it to revenue sharing for the U.S. government. Critics from both parties and major think tanks warn that this approach erodes America’s critical AI lead. China could use these advanced chips to power military AI systems, even more mass surveillance, and the training of cutting-edge models. By weakening safeguards and turning export controls into a bargaining chip, China can amass enormous total computing power and close the gap with the United States.
The Revenue Excuse Crumbles Under Scrutiny
Proponents claim that allowing limited sales of certain NVIDIA chips actually benefits America more than an outright ban would. They argue that a total export cutoff would cripple U.S. companies like NVIDIA, destroying American jobs and eliminating billions in revenue that could otherwise fund further innovation here at home.
Really? Is this truly about protecting U.S. innovation, or is it mainly about NVIDIA raking in massive profits by selling advanced technology to the enemy? And are policymakers genuinely worried about losing jobs in the U.S. when the same AI systems, powered by these chips, are aggressively deployed to replace American workers across industries?
More Data Centers Are Not the Solution in the AI Race for Superiority
Recent developments underscore the urgency of protecting America’s lead in the AI race. China’s Moonshot AI just released the Kimi K3 model, which some analysts claim challenges top U.S. frontier systems like GPT-4o, Claude 3.5/Opus, Gemini 1.5, Grok-3, Llama 4, and others.
NVIDIA chips are the powerful engines that make advanced AI like Kimi-K3 possible. They are super-fast math processors specially designed to handle the enormous calculations needed to train and run AI models. The best NVIDIA chips give a huge advantage because they can do this work much faster than anything else currently available. The more powerful NVIDIA chips a country or company controls, the faster and smarter their AI becomes.
China badly needs these top chips to keep improving its AI systems. For example, the NVIDIA chips we are currently selling them (such as the H200 series) are significantly more advanced and efficient than China’s own domestic AI chips. This allows China to develop and train stronger models like the Kimi K3 faster than they could using only their homegrown technology.
The CCP Uses Kimi K3 and Similar AI to Spy on America and Spread Propaganda
While China releases models like Kimi K3 and makes them seem open and generous by sharing the technology, every conversation users have with the model feeds valuable data back to Chinese companies and ultimately the Communist Party. At the same time, the model is carefully censored to present only the information and viewpoints Beijing approves. This is not neutral technology. It is a strategic tool for gathering global intelligence while shaping narratives to favor the CCP. Chinese AI models must follow strict government censorship guidelines. They are trained to avoid sensitive political topics such as Tiananmen Square, criticism of Xi Jinping, and Taiwan independence. That is why the continued export of advanced NVIDIA chips to China is so dangerous.
The AI race is about who develops the most powerful artificial intelligence first.
The winner gains enormous advantages in the economy, medicine, scientific discovery, and national defense. Superintelligence represents the next level beyond current systems: AI that is far faster and more capable than the best human experts at processing and combining vast amounts of information to solve complex problems. These systems can only be as good as the data they are trained on, but when given high-quality information they can tackle incredibly difficult challenges almost overnight, such as curing diseases, optimizing energy systems, and advancing technology. However, they also carry grave risks if developed carelessly or controlled by adversaries like the Chinese Communist Party.
We do not need to flood the country with more data centers to win this race. Victory depends on securing and prioritizing advanced chips for American use than on simply building additional facilities. While the United States maintains a commanding lead in physical data center infrastructure and total computing power, China is advancing rapidly in AI model development, the software brains of the technology. This reality makes the continued export of advanced NVIDIA chips to China even more shortsighted and dangerous. We cannot claim to be in an existential race for AI supremacy while simultaneously handing our primary strategic competitor the very tools they need to close or erase the gap.
In Conclusion
Protecting our chip advantage and maintaining disciplined control over exports is the real key to victory, not unchecked data center sprawl that burdens American communities with higher energy costs and other impacts while enriching our strategic rival.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/cnbc-transcript-president-donald-trump-speaks-with-cnbcs-joe-kernen-today-.html
[2] https://www.stardem.com/news/data_centers/trump-ai-is-bigger-than-the-internet-u-s-needs-to-double-power-for-data/article_925d63ca-57b1-477e-b2de-a9b24f119b55.html
[3] https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06072026/trump-wants-to-fast-track-ai/
[4] https://www.hudson.org/foreign-policy/chinas-military-machine-shouldnt-run-american-chips-michael-sobolik
[5] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/why-exporting-advanced-chips-to-china-endangers-us-ai-leadership/
[6] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/why-exporting-advanced-chips-to-china-endangers-us-ai-leadership/