From Sen. Tim Kaine’s office:
“Today, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) hearing, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) raised serious concerns about the Trump Administration’s announcement yesterday that it will allow Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China. Kaine also expressed his support for bipartisan legislation led by Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Chris Coons (D-DE) to limit the sale of certain advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China and other foreign adversaries.
“When we talk about arms control, we typically think of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, things like that,” said Kaine. “But today, threats can come from a lot of places.”
“Yesterday, the President made an announcement that surprised a number of us about the transfer of Nvidia H200 chips to China,” Kaine continued. “These chips have a significant national security implication.”
Kaine then asked the witnesses whether the State Department, Department of Defense, and other national security agencies should have more of a role to play in decisions about the transfer of high-tech chips, specifically those that would reduce the United States’ edge over China or other adversaries.
Ms. Rose Gottemoeller, a fellow at Stanford University and former Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, responded, “I can see a rationale for the State Department as well as the Defense Department being involved in such decision-making when we are concerned about such chips affording a country like China a military edge.”
“If you believe that a particular technology has direct military applications of significance, then probably in the Department of State – in my view – would need to be involved in that process, as well as the Department of Defense,” said Mr. Marshall Billingslea, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and former Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control at the State Department.
Kaine continued, “AI capacity ties in with nuclear command and control, so it’s directly connected to important military technology and U.S. military advantage.”
“One of the things about the report of the transfer of these Nvidia chips that’s complicated is the U.S. has now taken an ownership interest in Nvidia,” said Kaine. “We have a revenue upside to transfer a technology to China – the transfer of which would likely degrade our national security edge over China.”
“There’s also been reporting that the CEO of Nvidia made a large contribution to the construction of the ballroom that’s currently being built on the White House. Is this transfer being done out of a financial interest to undercut America’s national security posture?” concluded Kaine. “I think this is something that we really have to analyze.”
Full video of the exchange is available here.
