“Selling H200s to China Is Unwise and Unpopular” by Zvi

AI is the most important thing about the future. It is vital to national security. It will be central to economic, military and strategic supremacy.

This is true regardless of what other dangers and opportunities AI might present.

The good news is that America has many key advantages in AI.

America's greatest advantage in AI is our vastly superior access to compute.

We are in danger of selling a large portion of that advantage for 30 pieces of silver.

This is on track to be done against the wishes of Congress as well as most of those in the executive branch.

Who does it benefit? It benefits China. It might not even benefit Nvidia.

Doing so would be both highly unwise and highly unpopular.

We should not sell highly capable Nvidia H200 chips to China.

If it is too late to not sell H200s, we must limit quantities, and ensure it stops there. We absolutely cannot be giving away other future chips on a similar delay.

The good news is that the stock market reaction implies this might not scale.

Bayeslord: I don’t know anyone who thinks this [...]

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Outline:

(01:36) The Announcement

(04:38) How Bad Would This Be?

(11:42) Is There A Steelman Case For This Other Than 'Trade Always Good'?

(16:21) Compute Is A Key Limiting Factor For China and Chinese Labs

(17:53) What About That All Important 'Tech Stack'?

(20:37) Selling H200s Hurts America In The AI Race

(22:14) Nvidia Number Did Not Go Up That Much

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First published:
December 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kmEpWTjWeFyqv4tb5/selling-h200s-to-china-is-unwise-and-unpopular

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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