Hajra Naz
Not everyone is pleased with the Trump administration’s decision to let Nvidia resume selling its H20 advanced AI chips in China.
On Monday, a group of 20 national security experts and former U.S. officials sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. In it, they urged the administration to reverse the move, calling it a “strategic misstep” that could weaken America’s edge in artificial intelligence for both military and civilian use.
The letter zeroed in on the H20’s strength in AI inference—the process of applying trained models to new data to make decisions.
The letter stated.
“The H20 is a potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip.” Designed specifically to skirt export control thresholds, the H20 is optimized for inference, the process behind the dramatic gains of today’s frontier AI reasoning models. For inference tasks, the H20 even outperforms the H100, an AI chip this administration has restricted due to its advanced capabilities.”
Read More: Nvidia Faces Billions in Losses Over New H20 Chip Licensing Rules
The experts warned that allowing these sales would worsen the U.S. chip shortage, strengthen China’s military applications, and weaken the overall export control regime.
“The earlier decision to ban H20 exports was the right one,” the letter continued. “We ask you to hold that line and keep blocking the sale of advanced AI chips to China. This is not about trade—it is about national security.”
The signatories include Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser under Trump; Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; and David Feith, a former National Security Council member, among others.
The letter follows the Department of Commerce’s decision two weeks ago to let Nvidia resume AI chip sales to China, a move tied to ongoing trade negotiations over rare earth elements. At the time, Secretary Lutnick downplayed the approval, describing the H20 as only Nvidia’s “fourth best” AI chip.
Meanwhile, just last week, the Trump administration rolled out its AI Action Plan. The document stressed the importance of AI chip export controls but provided few specifics on how those restrictions would be enforced going forward.
