US expert warns: Nvidia H20 chip is “the gasoline fueling China’s AI engine.”
“The H20 is the gasoline fueling China’s AI engine,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser to RAND for technology analysis, in an interview with the Financial Times. Goodrich explained that the H20, a chip developed by Nvidia specifically for the Chinese market, “excels at memory bandwidth beyond any current domestic Chinese chip” – a critical factor for the large-scale development of AI.
In an open letter to the US Department of Commerce, twenty former national security officials and experts called the H20 “a potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip.” They warned that the chip outperformed even Nvidia’s H100 in AI inference tasks and would “enable autonomous weapons systems, intelligence surveillance platforms, and rapid advances in battlefield decision-making.” The group argues: “By supplying China with these chips, we are fueling the very infrastructure that will be used to modernize and expand the Chinese military.” They called the Trump administration’s recent pause on export controls “a strategic misstep that endangers the United States’ economic and military edge in artificial intelligence.”
Nvidia rejected the criticism, calling it “misguided” and “inconsistent” with the AI action plan recently unveiled by Trump, which puts a focus on US exports of AI technology. The company said the H20 would “not enhance anyone’s military capabilities, but will help America win the support of developers worldwide.”
H20 chips become bargaining chips
The shift in US policy followed months of lobbying from Nvidia and points to growing economic priorities. After the H20 was blocked last spring, Nvidia reported billions in losses from unsold inventory. CEO Jensen Huang publicly called the export ban a “failure,” arguing it only strengthened Chinese competitors like Huawei. Before the reversal, Huang met directly with President Trump, then traveled to Beijing for a supply chain conference.
US officials say the relaxation of export controls is aimed at reviving stalled negotiations with China. People familiar with the matter told the Financial Times that the Commerce Department was instructed to “avoid tough moves on China” ahead of a planned meeting between Trump and Xi Jinping. Still, national security experts warn the geopolitical cost could be significant: the H20 is seen as “a potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities” that could help China circumvent existing export bans through technical workarounds.
