The United States has introduced new chip export control policies, which will have a profound impact on China's AI development.

The U.S. government recently announced new chip export control policies, further tightening restrictions on chip exports to China. The new regulations primarily use computing power as the main criterion, covering almost all high-performance chips currently available, including NVIDIA's consumer-grade gaming graphics card RTX4090.

The severity of the new policy exceeds market expectations. In addition to using computing power as a measure, more obstacles have been set in areas such as the list of restricted export countries and export licenses for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Commerce also plans to restrict China's access to cloud computing power.

This policy reflects a change in the United States' attitude towards China. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo stated that the regulatory provisions will be updated at least annually, indicating that the U.S. intends to implement this policy in the long term.

In this regard, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), which represents the majority of chip companies in the United States, expressed concerns, believing that overly broad unilateral control could harm the U.S. semiconductor ecosystem. However, some members of Congress argue that the policy measures are not strong enough.

This policy also highlights the limited influence of chip companies in the policy-making process. Business plans of companies such as Intel and NVIDIA may be severely impacted. NVIDIA acknowledged in regulatory filings that it cannot guarantee that customer export license applications will be approved or processed in a timely manner.

The introduction of the new policy is seen as a typical case of the United States' "weaponized dependence." By controlling key nodes in the global supply chain, the U.S. attempts to maintain its strategic advantage. This approach has been compared by some scholars to the "circular prison effect," which means monitoring and influencing global economic activities by controlling key resources.

The policy has posed severe challenges for China's AI industry. According to reports, major domestic AI and large model companies have ordered over $5 billion worth of related chips, and the delivery of these orders faces uncertainty.

In the face of this situation, accelerating the enhancement of domestic chip capabilities has become an inevitable choice for China. Currently, domestic alternative chips such as Huawei's Ascend have demonstrated their strength in certain fields, but overall they still cannot fully meet the market's demand for high-performance AI chips.

Despite facing challenges, China has demonstrated strong capabilities in the field of large models. Chip restrictions may slow down the pace of development, but they will not completely hinder the progress of China's AI technology. This predicament may stimulate China to accelerate independent innovation, ultimately promoting the development of the domestic chip industry.