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Hindustan Times
11 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
China's Z.ai and America's Self-Defeating AI Strategy
China's DeepSeek shocked the global AI community in January by building a frontier model at a fraction of Western costs. Now it has been outdone by a Chinese company subject to U.S. sanctions. It has become painfully obvious that Washington's strategy of restricting chip exports isn't working. formerly Zhipu AI, last week launched GLM-4.5, a production-level open-source model priced at 13% of DeepSeek's cost. It matches or exceeds Western standards in coding, reasoning and tool use. runs on only eight Nvidia H20 chips, which Nvidia recently gained reapproval to sell in China. That's better performance than DeepSeek with about half the hardware. did it despite being under Washington's most restrictive GPU sanctions. The Commerce Department placed Zhipu and its subsidiaries on the U.S. Entity List in January for allegedly aiding China's military modernization. (Zhipu disputed the factual basis of Washington's decision.) About six months later—backed by $1.5 billion from Alibaba, Tencent and Chinese state funds— delivered one of the world's most competitive models. The company projects it will have millions of downloads and millions of dollars of revenue in 2025. The company isn't an outlier. It's a signal of how well China's AI strategy is working and how poorly America's attempts to halt Beijing have fared. Washington's tack so far has been to try to limit Chinese entities' access to advanced hardware. Critics warned that export controls wouldn't stop China from innovating and would instead push Chinese companies to develop their own chips, with which they could then fill the supply void left by the overly strict U.S. export rules. Far from controlling global chip demand, America was surrendering control to Beijing. That's exactly what seems to have happened. At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai last month, Premier Li Qiang, the second most powerful official in China, revealed a comprehensive AI plan. The country is taking a top-down approach that combines—on an international scale—GPU infrastructure diplomacy, open-source development and low-cost offerings on everything AI, from models and hardware to engineers. The new 'AI Plus' initiative aims to integrate Chinese models into key industries and export Chinese AI and hardware to the Global South—no export license, no questions asked. The results are already clear. China has racked up more than 1,500 models, many of which are open-source. Many outperform or match the math and coding benchmarks of Western models. Huawei's GPUs are quickly filling the gap left by the Biden administration's adoption of stricter export controls. The research firm Bernstein projects that Nvidia's global AI market share will drop a whopping 12% this year alone, if restrictions largely remain in place. China's foundry capacity has vastly surpassed Washington's expectation, and China is shipping chips abroad several years ahead of schedule. While U.S. politicians compete to see who can be more hawkish on China, Beijing is increasing international dependency on its models and hardware. What's the American response to a clearly failing strategy? In many parts of Washington, it's still restrictions. But happily that isn't true in the White House. The Trump administration's recently announced AI Action Plan emphasizes that U.S. strength lies in scaling supply and adoption abroad, not retreating. The president proposes exporting American AI and hardware while cutting regulations that slow production at home. Our data centers now consume more power than small cities. While China expands its energy production through whatever source is expedient, we face permitting delays and political scaremongering. America needs to streamline approvals, speed up reindustrialization, and rebuild large-scale computing capabilities. The U.S. should also make a priority of developing a Western AI supply chain with Latin America to counter China's AI Belt and Road Initiative. This would turn the strategic manufacturing diplomacy Beijing favors against China. Beijing is right to see exporting AI hardware and models as leverage. Each Nvidia chip sent abroad is a new point on the board for American software and values. Every U.S.-branded LLM shapes AI norms globally. Success comes from ubiquity of platforms, not exclusion or restrictions. Hesitation isn't the same as safety. America needs to start shipping AI to the world before it's too late, including to China. success proves that sanctions won't stop Beijing. The next great Chinese AI model will be faster, cheaper and maybe fully self-sufficient. For America to lead, it must boost exports, infrastructure and global influence. The AI future goes to the innovators who can establish a global platform, not to the most cautious regulators. Mr. Ginn is CEO and a co-founder of Hydra Host, a venture-backed AI data-center services and management company.
The Hindu
16 hours ago
- The Hindu
U.S. agency approves OpenAI, Google, Anthropic for federal AI vendor list
OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude have been added to a list of approved AI vendors, the U.S. government's central purchasing arm said on Tuesday, as the Trump administration aims to boost AI's use by federal agencies. Tuesday's approvals by the General Services Administration (GSA) are part of a new AI blueprint released on July 23 that aims to loosen environmental rules and vastly expand AI exports to allies, in a bid to maintain the U.S. edge over China in the technology. The GSA's step means the approved AI tools will be available for government agencies to use on a platform with contract terms in place. Federal agencies will explore 'a wide range of AI solutions, from simple research assistants powered by large language models to highly tailored, mission-specific applications,' the GSA said. The GSA added it is focused on AI models 'that prioritize truthfulness, accuracy, transparency, and freedom from ideological bias.' U.S. President Donald Trump has called the AI race the fight that will define the 21st century. His administration's AI plan, which includes some 90 recommendations, also calls for the export of U.S. AI software and hardware, and a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let AI flourish. It is a marked departure from former President Joe Biden's 'high fence' approach that limited global access to coveted AI chips. The Biden administration last year required federal agencies using AI to adopt 'concrete safeguards' on its use and to monitor, assess and test AI's impacts on the public. Biden also signed an executive order aimed at promoting competition, protecting consumers and ensuring AI was not used for misinformation, a measure that was rescinded by Trump.
Hindustan Times
a day ago
- Hindustan Times
U.S. Sells $1 Billion in Arms to Europe for Ukraine, Sealing Shift in Approach
In one of the clearest demonstrations to date of how the West's approach to arming Ukraine against Russia is shifting under President Trump, four European countries are buying U.S. military equipment valued at roughly $1 billion for delivery to Kyiv's forces. The purchases, in two separate transactions coordinated by NATO, are expected to be the first of many funded by European governments and Canada following an agreement in principle earlier this summer. Trump has balked at providing U.S. weapons directly to Ukraine, as the Biden administration did, but he has signaled openness to selling the embattled country American arms. Trump and his senior officials have also said that Europe should shoulder more of the burden of supporting Ukraine because it is closer to them, and the U.S. is focused on China and the Pacific. The Netherlands on Monday agreed to the first $500 million purchase, and a consortium of Denmark, Sweden and Norway on Tuesday agreed to a similar purchase. The deals were coordinated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization following an agreement at the White House on July 14 between Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and earlier discussions among leaders at NATO's annual summit in June. President Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, where Trump announces a deal to send U.S. weapons to Ukraine through NATO, in Washington in July. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/File Photo 'This is about getting Ukraine the equipment it urgently needs now to defend itself against Russian aggression,' said Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister. NATO and Ukraine have established a shopping list of Kyiv's requirements for lethal and nonlethal equipment, dubbed the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List. NATO, Ukraine and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, will ensure the packages meet Kyiv's needs. NATO is dividing the list into packages valued at roughly $500 million apiece Governments are making financial commitments toward the packages and NATO, which has pledged 'rapid delivery from U.S. stockpiles' will coordinate delivery of the arms to Ukraine. Rutte said he had 'written to all NATO Allies, urging them to contribute toward this burden sharing initiative, and I expect further significant announcements from other Allies soon.' Deliveries of American weapons to Kyiv that were authorized by the Biden administration are still flowing across the border from Poland. Some of those weapons—primarily munitions like Patriot air-defense interceptors—were paused in June as part of a Pentagon review of U.S. munitions stockpiles. But those deliveries have since resumed, officials said. As part of the effort to arm Ukraine, the U.S. struck an agreement with Berlin under which Germany would send additional Patriot air-defense systems to Kyiv. Ukraine is set to receive the first two of these systems in the coming days, the German government announced Friday. In exchange, Germany will be the first nation to receive the newest Patriot systems off the U.S. production line at 'an accelerated pace,' according to a release from the German government. To facilitate this agreement, the Pentagon moved Germany ahead of Switzerland in the queue for the next Patriots, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. The U.S. plans to reshuffle future Patriot deliveries as additional countries sign on to send the systems from their arsenals to Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said. Write to Daniel Michaels at and Lara Seligman at
