Former NSC official Chris McGuire on the US-China tech freeze, chip export controls, and the humanoid robot national security gap

you're just not focusing on sleep like so you're like waking up in the middle of the night and stuff. It's not good. Um should we bring in our next guest? Let's do it. I'm excited to talk to Chris. Let's do it. Uh I'm going to let [music] you take the intro. Chris, welcome to the show. You too.

Hey guys, thanks for having me. It's great to have you. Uh I will give some quick background. Chris, you uh were the senior adviser to the US Department of State, Office of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology from 2023 to 2025.

You were a foreign affairs officer for the US Department of State, the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance from 2015 to 2023. Uh, and in 2024, you were the deputy senior director for technology and national security on the National Security Council at the White House.

Uh, and there's a bunch of other stuff that seems equally, uh, significant and important. Uh, but, uh, I, uh, we can get into it. Uh, it's great great to have you on the show.

I'm sure it's been a busy uh a busy busy year for you, but why don't why don't you give a quick introduction on on your background and anything I may have missed. Thanks a lot, guys, and really appreciate you having me. Uh yeah, so I as a longtime civil servant uh in the government in the State Department.

I was detailed the Biden White House from 2021 to 24. uh from 22 to 24.

I was I was on the National Security Council and I broadly had the China technology portfolio um the the whole time uh and oversaw at the end kind of all of our the B administration's critical and emerging technology related work from the White House um that I went back served in the Trump administration um for a good chunk of time this year and and recently left government.

So um really appreciate you guys having me especially on today where obviously we had a big uh a bunch of big developments kind of overnight uh with the the president meeting with shei and and um the the kind of trade deal of which technology is obviously a very major portion. Okay.

So before we get into what's happened in the last 24 hours, in the last week, like can you give kind of your view on this year and how a lot of these different um uh you know how the trade war has been kind of evolving uh in your view? Yeah, absolutely.

So I mean I think the the the administration has very much kind of gone back and forth on on on where they are in China policy. I think that you obviously have had enormous um you know threats of of tariffs and and moves to to kind of really kind of separate the US and Chinese economies on pretty fundamental levels.

On the other hand, uh I think you you haven't actually seen a lot of implementation there. There's a continued desire to talk with the Chinese and when it comes to some of the the the technology protection measures where I think the the Biden administration was more focused.

Um it's been a there's it's been a little bit more stop and go.

I I think that you know generally since the first Trump administration there has been a big pivot in Washington uh to move towards a away from the the the policies of China of let's like deepen integration in order to to kind of get them to change uh and towards a more competitive stance.

I think Trump first Trump administration really kind of initiated that. It was very much built on by the Biden administration particularly in the semiconductors and AI spaces. Uh where I think there was a pretty very conscious decision.

I know there's a very conscious decision to um really separate those those supply chains and saying in those areas we have to we have to maintain as large of a lead as possible. It doesn't mean in every single one but in the the especially critical ones like advanced chips and AI.

Um and then the Trump administration then I think took this and and initially escalated with enormous tariff threats on China across the entire economy.

Uh the Chinese I think have have very much taken to heart their the lessons from the first Trump administration that what you have to do is punch back and punch back hard.

Um, and that has resulted, I think, in in a little bit more of a dant actually, than we've seen over the previous few years where I think the United States has been able to kind of slowly ratchet things up. The Trump administration has ratcheted things up a lot.

So did the Chinese and I think both sides have now kind of pulled it down a little bit. It does feel like the the renegotiation of USChina relationship starts in 2016 with the new Trump administration. 100red-year marathon by Michael Pillsbury is an important point.

Um that book it seemed like it sort of went viral on Capitol Hill. Um there's also the rejection of American tech companies. But what what else do you think uh kind of led us? What was like the inciting in event if there was one in uh this beginning to discuss a renegotiation in USChina policy?

Is it Cinping becoming effectively a dictator for life that kind of changing the perception of like okay well they're not even going they're not even trying to go for democracy. What what other kind of like moments in history do you uh think of as the defining moments in the renegotiation of USChina relations?

Yeah, I I think that's right. I I think that China has has kind of fund either well China has fundamentally changed under shei. I think there's some some realization here that that some of the promises uh of of China political change in China and and market-based change are not going to happen.

There have been very much market based changes in some senses, right?

they actually are are much more deeply integrated into the into the economy but it hasn't changed the fundamental you know integration with the Chinese state and their companies and then from that flows kind of national security considerations and I think you know she has obviously taken this in a in a in a much more authoritarian direction uh and one can argue whether or not that was there all all along and actually you know maybe maybe it was something that people missed in the 2000s but but I think very much in in the mid 2015 15s like you said around 20 2015 2016 um people were starting to realize that we have to we have to change course and particularly I think in 2017 2018 and look the the the initial Trump um campaign I think really did change the narrative on China uh I I think that's that's you know pretty indisputable on certain things I think they were we were starting to see a little bit of a changing narrative towards the end of the Obama administration like the last week of the Obama administration they put out a big report the president's council on on a PCAST president council on on science technology uh put out a big report on the importance of maintaining a domestic semiconductor industry which was the first time they'd really talked about that and then obviously you know with the chips act in the coming years that became you know the major focus but um I I I I I think you have to give the Trump the first Trump administration credit for for really changing the policy and and the the Biden administration very much continued that.

I think the approach was, you know, maybe not to have a a massive confrontational policy across the economy, but to say in the areas that we care the most about, we are going to take pretty, you know, actions that, you know, four six years ago would have been unprecedented to um separate ourselves.

And uh that's that was that's we are in a very different place because of that. Uh I think we'll see kind of where we go going forward. It's it's a little bit of a um the the last last like couple weeks have introduced some some more complicating dynamics I think. Yeah.

One of those was uh the rare earth elements debate. Uh have has America been blindsided by the importance there. Were we miscalibrated on exactly how much leverage they had like how much that poker chip is worth on the poker table of this trade deal? Yeah.

cuz there was a point where people are like, "Wow, they're already using that that that play, right? " Yeah. Taking away the passports of the researchers and then also just banning exports really crippling our ability to build with uh those rare earth elements.

Um but is that something that we've known about for the last 10 years or or has this been a surprise or is this like or or or is that just like one of the many chips that we expected to be played the whole time? Yeah, I mean people in Washington clearly knew that the Chinese had dominance of Veraris.

You'd have to kind of be under a rock to not know it. But I think you're totally right that that no one really did anything about it. Um and and part of that is that look, it's hard it's so hard to get things done in Washington. Yeah, that's about right.

Uh it's it's it's hard to get things done and it's hard to get things done that are like you know you need a lot of investment and a lot of coordination and like you know massive resourcing and coordination is exactly the thing that's that's really difficult to get things done in Washington spec to really make a move right materials.

Oh he did. Yeah he did do that spec. That's crazy. Yeah. I mean that's like that I think that's the biggest biggest success out of out of out of all them. Totally. Yeah. Well, and I think look, Washington is actually can be good at responding very quickly in a crisis, right?

Like Operation Warp Speed was very effective, for instance, but obviously it took until there was a pandemic for for us to do something like that. Um, so I I'm hopeful that now people will take this very seriously.

I I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see legislation on Capitol Hill to actually resource this because even though the administration I think the administration is focused on it now and and takes it very seriously there also you know we really need to get money right and exactly how where that you know how that money manifests whether it's you know equity investments or loans or some kind of you know other uh you know defense production act authorities or or or something else like there's there's going to have to be some government dollars here which certainly can be stretched a long Okay.

Uh but we're but we're going to have to do that. I think just to your original question though, the thing that's surprising I think people were very surprised that they played this card as expansively as they played it right now. Yeah. Right. And go ahead. Yeah. No, continue.

And then and then I want to get into kind of the last 24 hours. Yeah. The surprise on the playing the card early. Yeah. I look the fact is this move was way disproportionate to anything that we had done.

uh effectively it was saying you know the there was this affiliates rule that the United States put in place which basically fixes a big loophole in export controls like the way that the way that export controls work is every single company has to actually be listed on the control list to be to be controlled and if the subsidiary isn't listed then you can export to them.

That's not the way that sanctions work. The way the sanctions work is if the company is listed then every company they own is sanctioned and you better not work with sanctioned companies because otherwise you're violating sanctions uh for various arcane you know [snorts] reasons that have to do with nothing.

Simple own goal there. Exactly. Exactly. So we basically put in place a there was a regulation that said, "Hey, we're going to fix this really obvious loophole that is being blatantly exploited uh that also is just very logical.

" And the Chinese response to that was to go way over the top and say we're gonna cut you off from all the rare earths and you know threaten your entire economy. Um they didn't think that was proportionate.

I think what they were trying to do was send a signal that we won't tolerate any additional export controls on you know any entities in China and we want any any you know additional restrictions on our access to technology. We're going to go over the top.

It was really risky for the Chinese because the US does have big leverage over the Chinese too, right? There's two things that they're extremely dependent on us for on for us that you know we could cut them off from. The first is the US dollar, right?

Their financial, you know, system is is still very reliant on the dollar. Obviously, they're trying to extricate that that would have enormous implications, but they're reliant. What would the second What would that look like? Sanctions on on banks or something like that.

Like I think it's something the Chinese fear quite a bit. Now to be clear, I'm not advocating for that and that would be a really significant move, but just it's something that that would be a it's a lever that we have. The second is semiconductors, right?

Uh they they're not good at, you know, they have limited 7 nmter, can't do anything beyond that, and they're they're very all their whole industry is very relying on on chips made with US tooling and so on. Okay.

So, I want to get way way way more into chips, but to kind of ground the next part of the conversation, like catch us up to speed on the on what what you kind of what your takeaways were and what we know out of the meeting in South Korea. Yeah. So, I think basically the the deal was sort of a freeze for freeze.

Uh they agreed to freeze implementation of their massive escalation rule. We agreed to freeze escala. We agreed to freeze our um affiliates rule. Uh so I think you think of it as largely it locks in the status quo um for the duration of the deal.

There was various other things that it resolves that are recently created issues. The Chinese agreed to buy soybeans. We reser resolve rare earth access etc. It did it did not you know we avoided some of the worst case outcomes. Uh there was no agreement to send you know our votes advanced chips to China.

Uh there was no we didn't accept like a Trojan horse package to like hey we're going to build a bunch of you know Kal and BYD factories in the United States which would have been very bad for US battery and and um you know auto industry in the longer term.

Uh but I think China really does feel emboldened right now because they kind of punched us in the face with the rare earth rule and our our you know what happened was we both deescalated a little bit. Uh we'll see what happens going forward but um the status quo to a degree benefits China. They're trying to buy time.

They're trying to circumvent our controls. And if we're not willing to kind of continue to um engage in this in this kind of technology protection effort, then every day the Chinese get a little better at working around our controls.

So, what what can you say about uh or or what do you what's your read on the actual dynamic between Xi and Trump? Like I feel like these two guys have been in the game for a long time.

I have to imagine my my part of me wants to believe that they enjoy the this like you know deadly dance that they play with each other but [laughter] maybe that maybe they're just like deeply like Putin and Xinping uh kind of being like yeah we might live forever. Yeah. You think you're going to make it to 160 bro?

It's like he's like yeah totally I got some scientists that are cooking up crazy stuff. I love that this is like hot mic. Who knows if it's real might be a scop but I like to imagine that they're just you know broing down. Who knows? But what yeah what do you think?

I will say uh it that was not the first time I've heard what I've heard you know leaders of countries speak to the desire to live to 150. Uh you hear some interesting things you work at the White House that I have [laughter] heard that before. Not from them but yeah I'm picking up what you're putting down. That's great.

Yeah. But um no I mean look I think that that ch Trump's obviously coming at this from from you know this deal making perspective. That's not surprising. Um, and obviously there's, you know, political dynamics here on top.

You both because I think there's threats to, you know, the Chinese the Chinese kind of both pose threats to hollowing out industry, but also are are kind of doing acute things to cause pain to some of Trump's political base. Like I think that the soybean purchases and things like that are doing that. Yeah, exactly.

Um uh on the other side uh I think that you know she is very much seeing himself as managing the the relationship for the long term. Um I mean what hovers obviously over over all of this is is Taiwan as well.

Uh and the desire to kind of slowly move the United States away from Taiwan um which is ultimately his like long-term historical perspective and goal. So I in some ways they're coming at this from a little bit opposite. you know, I think she is from the much much longer term angle and Trump from a a shorter term angle.

Um, but I don't think they necessarily have hugely different perceptions of the, you know, broader dynamics at play here. Okay. So, on the on the chip front, we would uh Okay. Yes. So, so we got the roll back. Yeah. Let's move on to chip. Sorry.

So I I don't even know maybe it was 2 3 4 weeks ago at this point but somewhere in the last like month or so they were basically like we don't want any of your chips at all and and I didn't really know how much to read into that at the time people it seemed like team wants Nvidia chips but the CCP said so if you're an AI you got to justify why you'd want Nvidia chips over Huawei chips we're working hard let's support let's wants to build up you know real national champions that can get to the cutting edge uh or leading edge.

Uh and at the same time, the AI industry wants to be able to make as much progress as they possibly can. And you know, what was your read when that news broke? And then uh how much do you think they're still kind of gunning for Blackwell grade chips?

Yeah, so number one, I think they are, you know, the Chinese will take all of the US chips that they can get. you in a in a vacuum. Um, like I I I I think that there's some negotiating ps here.

Uh, and I think I think they were holding the H20s kind of hostage because they wanted to to turn the tables on us and get us to give them blackwells, which which obviously didn't happen. There is a possibility that there's uh the information filtering up to she is saying actually we can do this ourselves.

you shouldn't take these. And that would be like Huawei being like, "No, give us just just keep the money, you know, coming back to us so that, you know, we're close and we'll be a lot closer in a few years if we can, you know, take those dollars, reinvest them, etc. " That's right.

But the problem is like there's just no way that China can meet their domestic demand with Chinese chips alone.

I mean if we can have all sorts of debates about Chinese production numbers and I'm happy to engage in those but fundamentally the United States cannot meet demand for our own AI ecosystem with with you know all the the semiconductor production in the world and all the best companies.

So it's obviously impossible that China who has a much more nent ecosystem is heavily restricted on tooling and I think all the estimates of their 7 nanometer production capacity not to mention obviously they don't have any 5 4 32 production capacity uh is is you know somewhere in the realm of 125th to 1/100th of the United States like there's just no way that they can fill their domestic demand with Chinese chips.

So any effort to say we're going to not take any US chips is going to inherently hobble their AI industry. I mean I guess at some point if you're very close the marginal value of that would be such that you're willing to take it. But I I I think you know just given the dynamics we're broadly seeing with US AI companies.

I'd be very surprised if they were they were actually when the cards were down were going to reject Nvidia chips. Uh, is Jensen being in South Korea at the same time just a coincidence or did he do you think he'd you know he he sort of planned around that? Do you think anything with Jensen's a coincidence these days?

[laughter] No, I don't think so. Yeah. Look, he's the CEO of the biggest company in the world. Like he should be there regardless. Yeah. Yeah. He's running a he's basically Nvidia is basically a country.

I mean their their market cap is like you know bigger than uh their market cap is equivalent to twice Canada's GDP something like that. It's it's greater than Germany's GDP. Remarkable. Not that you can really compare those. It's kind of Apple store.

Um you wrote a piece uh that you published last night around why Chinese car investments are a national security risk. Would love for you to kind of like give us a preview on that front.

Yeah, I mean the point we were making there was a lot of rumors in advance of the summit that another thing that the Chinese were dangling which did not come to fruition was saying hey you appealing to the dealmaker person uh element of Trump and saying hey we'll give you a bunch of investment in the US uh in exchange for you know whatever I mean as part of the deal but the that kind of very obviously is is a Trojan horse uh we you know there's we we very much restrict Chinese investment in critical industries in the US uh via the CPHAS process right now and u obviously particularly given the rare earth controls you would think that that would I think it has shown that we really can't be dependent on China for critical supply chain so if we were to have you know BYD factories like I was saying before like BYD factories or kadal factories in the US um that's not that's that's just as bad as relying on on Chinese graphite for batteries right when you say Chinese investment in the US you mean them setting up local factories ries which is different from making equity.

Yeah. Yeah. Because China wants us to make as many equity investments in their companies as possible because that gives I mean think about uh DJI is a good example. There was American venture capitalists that were in DJI. They have huge returns just like sitting there.

They now have an incentive to say hey we shouldn't we shouldn't ban DJI. like it's not a problem that China can fly, you know, millions of drones over over all of our cities. Uh just just worry about something else. We saw this with I mean we saw this with bite we saw this with bite dance too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, that's right. And there's a whole separate conversation on kind of outbound investment and what we should think about with with US investors investing in China.

And then with inbound investment, the question is what are the risks that that Chinese and not passive investment that's very different but but active investments and particularly setting up you know large facilities in key supply chains. Um what are the risks here?

And the trend we've seen over the course of multiple administrations has been to um take those threats much more seriously. Um so it's it's you know I think that's the positive thing.

I think that the other thing the administration is going to have to really think about is uh you know first of all what are the investments we need to make in those supply chains if we're not going to accept that and we're want to diversify not just from like Chinese batteries but also like all the way down the Chinese battery supply chain um what does that mean but also we have to think about kind of what are the sectors where and this is where we got to the car uh this is what happened with cars and we talked about in the piece what are the sectors where just having largecale deployment of kind of connected Chinese products in in that area poses a risk.

And I think there was a recognition in the Biden administration that actually, you know, electric vehicles in general having, you know, if 20% 30% of the cars on the road were were Chinese and could theoretically be like, you know, switched off by Beijing. Yeah.

I mean, that they could [ __ ] our transportation infrastructure overnight, right? That that that is something that wasn't a that was unacceptable. So, we've effectively banned Chinese cars, uh, but did it before there was big market penetration.

So, I think we have to kind of think about what are the other like I think there needs to be some pretty hard conversations on robotics, right? Yeah. So, what do you think about uh Uni Tree just selling humanoids on Walmart. com?

We were thinking about buying one here because because I' I I I I've been uh very vocal over the last year, as long as we've been doing the show, that, you know, I think it's super disappointing that we let you know, like GoPro should have been the dominant American drone company.

And there's a longer list of companies that could have made great products in that space. Maybe people would have to pay slightly more. Uh but we just let DJI flood. And from from what we know, DJI was just willing to lose money for a very very very very long period of of time in order to just take market share.

And so when I think about humanoids and uh you know, I don't I I'm not going to put a a Uni Tree robot in my home.

Uh but if they're the cheapest and you know if they're at kind of the leading edge right now, there's a scenario where we just let them flood the United States with humanoid robots and maybe they're adding value at home or in factories and different settings, but then just obviously like you just watch any sci-fi movie and you can understand like the potential like national security risk of allowing robots that can be teleoperated to, you know, just proliferate all over the country.

And so it just feels like hopefully that comes up at some point in some of these discussions of just hey maybe we make the call to not allow this to happen like it did with drones. Yeah. I I think we we just have to have kind of class-based regulations on these things that says anything that fits these parameters.

You know a robot in your home that's capable that has equipment and and audio Yeah. and can like has mapping technology and maybe has Yeah. has some kind of appendage. I don't know.

You could you could figure out a way to do it like just just cannot be sold in the United States if it invol if it's from a Chinese company or Chinese, Russian, North Korean, right? Like you know broader set of actors. Um the the only category of of um items that we've done that for as a class is vehicles.

Uh, but I think that needs to be, you know, we need to think about, we have the tools to do it and we need to think about what are the areas where that pose kind of similar risks. And you're worried that we'll wait until there's a robot uprising to to do to do something [laughter] like this.

I mean, you said earlier like the US is really good at reacting in a in a crisis. And I just hope like at some point like if I'm China and you're letting me sell humanoid robots into your country at scale and you're a political adversary, like I'm laughing I'm I'm laughing at you.

Like [laughter] it just seems like totally unserious. Yeah. I I think it is easier to do these types of things before there are huge market impacts. So part of the reason that the cars move was doable was because first of all like industry was very supportive, right?

We had Detroit banging down the door being like this is we're going to get killed by the Chinese. Uh but sec in the same way they are with tariffs. But but but second of all the the market penetration of of all the Chinese car companies was very close to zero still partly because we had such significant tariffs.

Um although those were going to become muted in effect. Uh, so if you have an area where it's still pretty nent, it's doable. And think about humanoids are perfect. Like the second once you have a million Americans that have spent 20 grand on a humanoid and they're like, I'm not like I want to buy the next version.

I like this one. You know, it's not like we've now seen the Chinese can build hit consumer products. There was a long time where people didn't believe that was true, but clearly with Tik Tok and DJI, like it's no longer a debate.

And DJI is a great example because you know DJI it's a much more complicated to do this for UAVs right now because DJI is everywhere. Also all sorts of like state and local and municipal governments even the federal government still uses DJI drones.

They're just they have such dominance that like even if we did do it we would have to do some kind of mitigation steps even to implement it if we did it today which maybe we should but it just it's massively complicated. Whereas if you do it nently it's just you could just kind of cut off the appendage. Yeah.

I love I I I I anybody that that uh disagrees about the national security risk here and the potential downsides like you can't believe that like if you believe that Israel was able to run like a decade long operation to get pagers like sold into the right group of people that they could then carry out this you know uh coordinated action and then you think it's safe to just let robots from an adversarial nation flood our country like I don't know what to Do I think you're just um uh blissfully and they they won't let us develop the domestic robot industry unless we do something like that too, right?

Like they will consistently undercut us and we'll never our companies will never get mature enough where they'll be able to benefit from the economies of scale where they can even remotely compete with the Chinese. Instead, they're going to be 100% off.

We were having this debate before you, not debate really, but before you got on.

It's like I believe that China can simultaneously buy as many leading edge chips, black wells, whatever, whatever we'll give them, and simultaneously provide the the long-term capital to allow their own industry to catch up on whatever time scale it needs to catch up on like what is the tolerance level for is there basically is is it possible for us to run the Chinese playbook against them?

We subsidize black wells, flood their markets with black wells, and then they can't go down the learning curve with Smick and SME and Huawei, and then at the last second when they're super dependent, we pull it back when we need to, right before I guess ASI hits or something like that. That's the basic thesis debate.

I mean, I think two things with that. One is that history would show that's never something that the Chinese are going to accept, right? They they they've never been okay being reliant on any western technology of any significance.

Uh they also we you know we we've been very clear about our intention to keep this dominant now. I think you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube like they're going to go we we saw they were going all out in indigenization at you know back in 2020. It's even more the case now.

Their constraints are not desire or cash. Uh they they are actual access to equipment and tools.

And we're lucky that the the the theme and you know not just lithography machines but also edging deposition machines like anything all all the kind of really advanced equipment is is among the most uh complicated technology in the world.

But we can assume that they're actively that they have you know thousands or tens of thousands of people that are tasked globally with just collecting as much information as they possibly can to reproduce it locally. Yeah.

The only reason this works with chips is because this is the most complicated equipment with the most complicated supply chains on Earth, right? Like an EUV lithography machine is literally the most complicated machine ever made by man.

So therefore, it's possible the Chinese can actually indigenize every single thing on Earth except this. Like that is a logically consistent outcome.

The other thing I would just say with respect to your your your thesis is uh if that was the play, the more effective way to do that would be to cut them off from everything completely, but then tell them you can have it via US cloud because then you can cut it off at any moment's notice.

You could debate if that's a good idea or not, but like chips are going to be a lagging effect, right? It's going to be two to three years until all the GPUs kind of go bust or get depreciated. Exactly. architecture. It's interesting.

What what uh what is the most current debate on the ground in Washington around like Blackwells specifically? So there is the question of whether or not we should ship them.

But actually the more pertinent question is is there's a piece of legislation called the gain AI act that's moving on the hill that actually the Senate passed as part of the NDAA uh the mustpass annual defense bill and uh is being debated with the House right now.

And it's sponsored by Senator Banks and basically it says uh who's a Republican from from Indiana and basically it says look we're not going to weigh in on the question of whether or not we should ship chips to China.

That's a separate question, but regardless of where you are on that, American companies should get priority access before Chinese companies. Uh, and it basically requires uh before shipping any chips to China that are controlled and authorized, it requires American buyers to get right of first refusal.

Uh, which I think is a from my perspective is a pretty logical approach whether or not you support or oppose AI chip exports to China. uh you know saying that America should should have them first is is is logical.

The it also does one other thing the most recent text which um exempts trusted US exports to trust from to trusted US persons to anywhere other than China from license requirements.

The reason this is important is actually there's a lot of pending deals in the Middle East right now from US data centers that are trying to make billions of dollars of deals in the Middle East. Those are subject to license requirements.

Um there's a lot of negotiations on on whether or not those can go and they've been held up for a long time but this would say as long as the government tr certifies them as a trusted US person and they're subject to a couple you know standard restrictions like you know they keep 50% of their computing power in the US uh then they can go without US government approval.

So really basically trying to prioritize US customers in any decisions visav Chinese companies and also US companies visav any decisions on the international AI buildout. Do you think uh Jensen will be happy with that? I think Nvidia has been pretty public uh of their their opposition to the bill.

Um, but look, my response to is that is that just they want they don't they just want the flexibility to do deals effectively like cuz cuz it's it's not exactly a secret that Nvidia like they have a Shanghai office and R&D center like they're trying to uh I I've joked that Jensen is you know the juggler just sort of like juggling a bunch of different you know uh national interests always um And I guess that's his duty to uh to the to the shareholders.

But uh what is their specific do do you know what their specific opposition is?

I I think I mean any regulation is is generally opposed and I think there's they're they're concerned it would kind of hamstring their their operations or result in kind of bureaucratic complexities that actually would prohibit them from selling anything to China even if it kind of was prohibited.

I I I guess I I think that there is this is a good faith effort to to work to develop a system that would that would allow that if that's the administration's policy position to do so.

Um I think my response generally be like if the the question is really is there a supply shortage of GPUs or not right cuz if there is and I I I think it's pretty clear with Blackwell that there's more demand than there is supply then I I think that US companies probably it it's not surprising to say that the US for the US government to say that US companies should get priority over these over foreign companies for these chips.

Uh if there's not, then the bill in theory would have no impact on their on their ability to sell them to others.

Um now certainly I think there's there's tweaks to the language and things that people would be, you know, I know that Senator Banks and his staff are are, you know, happy to work with industry on, but that's the intent here. I'd hope that we could come to a resolution there. Makes sense.

Really enjoyed this conversation. Uh come on again soon. I'm we'll uh we'll reach out. But I'm sure there'll be much more to talk about in the near future. This is fantastic. Thank you so much, Chris. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you having me. Look forward to talking more in the future. Cheers. See you later. Bye.

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