It will be interesting to watch the CCP's next move.
American chipmaker Nvidia announced in a Wednesday quarterly report that the U.S. government informed them of a new license requirement that would prohibit the sale of two advanced chips to China and Russia.
The U.S. government was concerned that the chips, which have applications in artificial intelligence work, might be co-opted by the Chinese or Russian militaries, according to Nvidia’s quarter two report. The chips were expected to generate $400 million in quarterly sales, revenue which is now in jeopardy from the new restriction, according to Reuters.
Part of this could be an attempt at a wedge between Russia and China. Nvidia was more direct in regards to sales to Russia:
“The [United States government] indicated that the new license requirement will address the risk that the covered products may be used in, or diverted to, a ‘military end use’ or ‘military end user’ in China and Russia,” Nvidia’s report stated. “We do not sell products to customers in Russia.”
Reuters:
Without American chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD, Chinese organizations will be unable to cost-effectively carry out the kind of advanced computing used for image and speech recognition, among many other tasks.
Image recognition and natural language processing are common in consumer applications like smartphones that can answer queries and tag photos. They also have military uses such as scouring satellite imagery for weapons or bases and filtering digital communications for intelligence-gathering purposes.
