As the United States appears to be moving to allow exports of high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned, "Sending these chips to China is a grave mistake," adding, "It is similar to selling nuclear weapons to North Korea."
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Amodei sharply criticized in an interview with Bloomberg that "exporting AI chips to China is insane." His comments came as the Trump administration coordinates policy to partly ease semiconductor export controls on China.
The Trump administration approved exports to China of Nvidia's H200 AI chips through strict case-by-case reviews. Released about two years ago, the H200 is the most powerful AI chip that can be legally exported to China. Although it is less capable than the state-of-the-art Blackwell model, it is up to 6 to 13 times more powerful than the existing China-bound product, "H20." For the H20, the U.S. government takes 15% of the sales proceeds. Nvidia is selling Blackwell chips in the United States and preparing the next-generation "Vera Rubin" chip.
Amodei noted, "The United States is years ahead of China in AI Semiconductor technology, but if advanced chips are handed over to China, that gap will narrow quickly." He warned that allowing exports would give a boost to a fast-chasing China.
Bloomberg assessed that the export-allowance move is seen as a major victory for Nvidia. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that if the export ban remains, China will eventually develop its own substitutes. AMD, a competitor to Nvidia, is also working to obtain export approval for its "MI325X" chip.
Amodei has previously urged that controls on AI chip exports to China be maintained. At last year's Davos forum, he cited George Orwell's totalitarian dystopian novel "1984," saying he was concerned about "a scenario like '1984,' or something even worse."