Lawmakers are urging President Donald Trump to consider imposing new restrictions on the export of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China’s DeepSeek.
Representatives John Moolenaar and Raja Krishnamoorthi have expressed concerns that DeepSeek’s advancements, achieved using Nvidia’s H20 chip, could pose national security risks.
They recommend that the administration tighten export controls to prevent China from further enhancing its AI capabilities.
However, Nvidia has stated that it products comply with all government requirements and is open to collaborating with the administration on this issue as it pursues its own approach to AI.
DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that develops open-source large language models. The company has already launched up to three AI models including VL, V2, Coder, V3, R1 and Janus-Pro-7B.
However, what the U.S’s lawmakers are saying is that the “sophisticated” AI models— R1 and Janus-Pro-7B—that was recently released by DeepSeek made "extensive use" of Nvidia’s H20 chip, which is currently outside the scope of U.S. export controls.
Hence, the lawmakers, through a letter, want Trump administration to restrict the export of the chip to the Chinese AI firm. The claim it’s a pose a threat to national security.
According to Reuters, they request for the chip sales restriction as part of a Commerce and State Department-led review ordered by Trump to scrutinize the U.S. export control system in light of "developments involving strategic adversaries."
The request letter was dated and addressed to National Security Advisor Michael Waltz on Wednesday, 29th of January 2025 and released on Thursday, 30th of January 2025.
The AI Saga
What keeps me wondering is that since the regime of former president Joe Biden, series of measures have been implemented to crack down on China's access to AI chips and the tools that make them. The question here is that: can’t China make these AI chips?
Well, I don’t think that seems to be the case. Because, Alibaba released its most advance AI model Qwen 2.5 on the first day of Chinese’s Lunar New Year when everyone will be at home celebrating the festival.
However, the company said on a WeChat post that its new model “outperforms almost across the board” top rivals like DeepSeek, GPT-4o and Meta’s Llama-3.1-405B.
So, can we say Qwen 2.5 is using the most advance AI chip and what will U.S.’s lawmakers have to say this time about the Alibaba’s most advance AI model? Let’s know your opinion in the comments section.
