The U.S. Introduces New Chip Export Controls, Facing Huge Challenges in the AI Field

The U.S. Department of Commerce has officially announced new chip export control regulations, further tightening restrictions on chip exports to China. The new regulations primarily use computing power as the main assessment criterion, covering almost all high-performance chips, including NVIDIA's consumer-grade gaming graphics card RTX 4090. Even chips with performance slightly below the control standards must notify the government before export. This means that all high-performance chips are restricted, including AI chips that were previously developed specifically for the Chinese market.

The new regulations take a dual approach, aiming to both fully prevent China from obtaining chips from third countries and to stop China from acquiring the capability to manufacture advanced chips. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Commerce will also restrict China's access to cloud computing resources. This policy reflects the extreme shift in the United States' attitude towards China.

In this regard, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which represents 99% of American chip companies, stated that overly broad unilateral controls could harm the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem. However, some congressional members believe that the policy measures are still insufficient.

Chip companies are in a disadvantaged position in the formulation of this policy and have failed to effectively influence the decision-making. The business deployments of companies such as Intel and NVIDIA may be severely impacted. NVIDIA's stock price once plummeted by 8%, reflecting the market's pessimistic expectations.

This policy, under the guise of national security, is essentially a "weaponized dependency." The United States is abusing its dominant position at key nodes in the global supply chain, attempting to maintain hegemony by controlling critical technologies such as chips.

For China, enhancing the capability of domestic chips has become an essential task. Currently, domestic replacement chips such as Huawei's Ascend ecosystem have a certain level of strength, but overall, they still struggle to meet the immense market demand for computing power. Nevertheless, China has already demonstrated strong capabilities in the field of large models, and this momentum will not stop due to chip restrictions. In the long run, external pressures may instead drive greater breakthroughs in Chinese chip technology.