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Mint
43 minutes ago
- Mint
America is easing chip-export controls at exactly the wrong time
In the six months since China stunned the world with DeepSeek, its progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has continued to impress. In July alone three labs unveiled top-flight ai models, matching and in some cases even beating America's best. The bosses of America's leading modelmakers say that advanced ai, able to outperform the average human at all cognitive tasks, could be just a few years away. The race is not just commercial, but geopolitical: the country that gets to superintelligence first would enjoy mighty military advantages, too. This is the backdrop against which the Trump administration has abruptly changed its mind on the export of America's world-beating ai chips to China. In April it blocked the sales of Nvidia's h20 chips to the People's Republic. On July 14th the firm said it had been given permission to resume them. The U-turn came shortly after a meeting at the White House between President Donald Trump and the boss of Nvidia, Jensen Huang. Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, and its fortunes move markets. To a president who views the S&P 500 as a personal approval tracker, that may give it sway that other firms lack. But even without the grubby optics, the decision is a grave mistake at the worst possible time. That is because as impressive as Chinese models have been, America's chip controls were clearly working. When Nvidia devised the h20 to comply with an earlier set of rules, it inadvertently created a chip that was hobbled for training new AI models, but perfect for running them—a process called inference. Since exports of the H20 were banned in April, even the Chinese labs that had overcome the shortage of training chips to produce world-class AI models have been unable to access enough computing capacity to offer those models to paying customers. They have had to resort to relying on outsourced hosting, and making the most of the limited quantity of AI chips produced by Huawei and other Chinese hardware firms. But the trend seems clear: without H20s, Chinese companies cannot keep up with demand. And as AI adoption increases, having enough capacity for inference will become ever more important, making export controls even more potent. America's ban on the export of H20s, in short, has impeded China's progress in AI. It seems perverse for America, engaged in an arms race with China, to give up this advantage. Moreover, rapid progress in AI argues for restricting chip sales now, even if that ends up boosting China's hardware industry in the longer term. There is no question that blocking Chinese firms' access to foreign inputs has stimulated demand for Chinese alternatives. It has turbo-charged innovation and the development of an alternative ecosystem in a way that even President Xi Jinping and his deep pockets could not manage. China's domestic chipmakers remain years behind the industry's cutting edge, but export controls have strengthened their commercial incentive to catch up. America thus faces a trade-off: it can limit China's AI software industry today at the expense of emboldening its AI hardware industry in the longer term, or vice versa. Mr Trump's ai adviser, David Sacks, says allowing chip exports will make China dependent on America's technology ecosystem, and discourage it from developing its own. The more Chinese firms use Nvidia's chips, goes the argument, the harder it will be for Huawei and other local firms to develop a commercially viable alternative. America's commerce secretary says he wants China to be 'addicted" to American chips. Yet given the stakes of the AI race, the risk that China's hardware supply chain will be strengthened in the long run is worth taking. The fiendish complexity of chipmaking means catching up will take many years. And if there is even a small chance that the time-frame for AI development suggested by America's AI leaders is correct, the race for superintelligence may have been won by 2030. Accordingly, America should do everything it can to win that race in the short term, even if that means it fails to hamper the development of China's hardware industry in the longer term. Nvidia's comparison When it comes to many of the ingredients of artificial intelligence, China measures up well against America. It has deep reservoirs of talent, data and capital, and plenty of power-generating capacity. Chips, however, are its Achilles heel. As artificial-intelligence models wow the world, and even bigger advances loom on the horizon, it is foolish for America to give its main geopolitical rival any assistance.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
'Was fighting lunatics like you': Donald Trump fires back at reporter over tariff question
US President Donald Trump lashed out at a reporter during a press conference at the White House on Thursday, calling him a "lunatic" after being pressed on why he had waited until his second term to invoke a decades-old law to impose sweeping tariffs. The tense exchange began when the reporter referenced a federal appellate court hearing arguments on Trump's authority to unilaterally levy tariffs under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). "As you know, a federal appellate court today heard oral arguments about whether or not you had the authority to unilaterally impose those tariffs," the reporter said. "I'm not going to get you to weigh in on the legal arguments, but you're weighing your decision to do that, your authority to do that, based on a 1977 law," the reporter cotinued. "Why didn't you invoke this law," the reporter continued before Trump tried to interject. "Well, we've been winning all along," the US President began, but the reporter pushed back, pressing Trump further. "I just want to ask you — why didn't you invoke this law in your first term?" he asked. "You could've collected billions upon billions of dollars back then, but instead, you waited until your second term," he added. Trump, visibly annoyed, fired back, saying, "In my first term, I was busy fighting lunatics like you who were trying to do things incorrectly and inappropriately to a duly elected president." He insisted that tariffs had, in fact, been imposed during his first term, particularly on China. " We took in hundreds of billions from China," Trump said. "We took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs," he continued. Before moving on, he added, 'You people didn't cover it very well.' During his first term, Trump implemented tariffs on Chinese goods starting in 2018, initially targeting $50 billion worth of products over concerns about intellectual property theft. Those tariffs were expanded in 2019. Trump has now invoked the IEEPA, a law traditionally used to impose sanctions or freeze assets, to justify new tariffs in his second term, marking the first time a US president has used the statute this way. Earlier on Thursday, Trump signed an executive order imposing new tariffs, including a 50% duty on Brazilian imports, citing Brazil's policies and the prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro as creating an 'economic emergency' under a 1977 law. The order, part of Trump's aggressive trade push ahead of the August 1 deadline for new trade deals, targets dozens of US trading partners. Tariffs are set to take effect on August 7 and will impact 68 countries as well as the 27-member European Union. Countries not specifically listed in the order will face a baseline 10% tariff. A senior official said the rates were determined based on trade imbalances and regional economic dynamics. The move has heightened global tensions as negotiations with the US continue. 'I was fighting lunatics like you': Trump SLAMS reporter on tariff question
Hindustan Times
2 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
US Space Command is preparing for satellite-on-satellite combat
TOWARDS THE end of last year a pair of military satellites, one American and the other French, prepared for a delicate orbital minuet. They were about to conduct a so-called rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO)—in which one or more satellites approach another to inspect or manipulate it—near an enemy satellite. They have not said which, but it is not hard to guess. 'The French have talked about Russian manoeuvres [near French satellites] over the years,' says General Stephen Whiting, speaking at the headquarters of US Space Command in Colorado Springs. 'And so…we demonstrated that we could both manoeuvre satellites near each other and near other countries' satellites in a way that signalled our ability to operate well together.' The exercise was so successful, he says, that there are plans to repeat it later this year. It is a milestone: the first time that America has conducted an RPO like this with a country outside the Five Eyes, a spy pact whose members co-operate closely in space, and the first time it was done as a 'purpose-built' operation, rather than in response to events. It also embodies America's new, more muscular approach to space. Space Command was re-established in 2019 during Donald Trump's first term. In recent years it has focused on building its headquarters and developing staff. Now it is ready. 'We now have a combatant command focused on war fighting' in space, says General Whiting. The impetus for that is two things. The first is that the American armed forces' reliance on satellites has 'compounded exponentially', says an official, pointing obliquely to America's strike on Iran in June. 'The majority of that operation is space enabled.' The other is what the government sees as a change in the threat. Since 2015 there has been an eight-fold increase in Chinese satellite-launch activity, says the official. The People's Liberation Army has become much better at operating in space, including conducting electronic warfare in orbit, he says, with China eclipsing Russia. China, Russia and India have tested destructive anti-satellite weapons in 2007, 2021 and 2022 respectively. America also accuses Russia of developing an orbital nuclear weapon that could destroy thousands of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) at once. A few years ago Space Command was wary of talking about its own offensive capabilities. Now it embraces the idea. 'It's time that we can clearly say that we need space fires, and we need weapon systems. We need orbital interceptors,' said General Whiting in April. 'And what do we call these? We call these weapons.' He points to Mr Trump's Golden Dome plan for a missile-defence shield, which includes space-based interceptors to destroy enemy missiles. In theory the same weapons could also target enemy satellites. 'Space to space, space to ground, ground to space' would all play a role in achieving the 'lethality that is necessary to achieve…deterrence,' says an official. America's allies are also becoming more open about this. In a defence review published this year, Britain said for the first time that it would develop anti-satellite weapons deployed on Earth and in orbit. America leads a small but tight-knit club of spacefaring allies. In Operation Olympic Defender, Space Command works with six countries—Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and New Zealand—to 'deter hostile acts in space'. In April the initiative reached 'initial operational capability', with all seven countries signing a joint campaign plan whose details will be finalised this summer. Space Command is also thinking about the tactical demands of war. While 'everything in space is moving', says General Whiting, America has thought of its satellites as 'individual forts' that sit in one place. That is because moving a satellite takes fuel, which can shorten its lifespan. There are three solutions to that, he says. One is for satellites to carry more fuel. Another is to refuel in orbit—something that China demonstrated in June. 'That could give them a military advantage,' he says, 'so we need that capability.' The third approach is to operate so many satellites that each one can be treated as expendable. American officials have been talking about such 'proliferated' constellations in LEO for years—think of SpaceX's Starlink. Now they are being built. America's National Reconnaissance Office, which runs classified spy satellites, has launched more than 200 since 2023, with a dozen launches scheduled for this year alone. SpaceX is also rumoured to be the front-runner to build a 450-strong constellation that will eventually relay missile-tracking and other data from sensors to interceptors and weapons. A fourth method might be added to that list: making the satellites more intelligent. General Whiting says he would love to have AI on board satellites that would allow them to detect 'nefarious' objects nearby and to move out of the way without human intervention. In time, suggests Christopher Huynh, a major in the US Space Force, AI-enabled satellites could fly in close formation, meaning they could act as 'defender satellites to protect high-value assets in orbit'. For now, the AI is mostly on the ground. In the past few months, General Whiting says, his staff has built a large language model that has been trained on all of the command's threat and planning data. Officers can quiz 'SpaceBot' on gaps in their knowledge or on how to respond to a fictional or real-world attack in space. 'What would once have taken ten people five hours of work', he suggests, 'can be done at machine speed—a space-age achievement.' Stay on top of our defence and international security coverage with The War Room, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
