AI Chips and Geopolitical Dynamics

We’re sharing an episode from ChinaTalk that dives into one of the biggest recent reversals in U.S. tech policy.

The U.S. banned Nvidia’s H20 AI chips to China in April. Now, just months later, they’re being sold—with a 15% export fee. What happened? Why the reversal? And what does it mean for the future of AI competition between the U.S. and China?

Chris Miller—author of Chip War—and Lennart Heim from RAND join ChinaTalk host Jordan Schneider to unpack the policy flip-flop, why China is publicly downplaying interest in the H20, and why high-bandwidth memory and semiconductor manufacturing tools may be even more important than the Nvidia chips themselves.

Resources:

Listen to more from ChinaTalk: https://link.chtbl.com/chinatalk

Check out the Horizon Fellowship to work in DC on emerging tech policy issues like AI chip export controls: https://horizonpublicservice.org/applications-open-for-2026-horizon-fellowship-cohort/

Outro Music: It's a Shame, The Spinners, 1970