US Concern Over China's Rapid Catch-Up in AI

China is narrowing the AI lead of the United States at an impressive pace, forcing the United States to reconsider its export restrictions on microchips. This statement was made by David Sacks, the White House's AI and cryptocurrency official, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Despite existing export regulations and China's limited production capacity regarding chips, Sacks estimates that these barriers could soon be overcome. A turning point in the assessment of Chinese AI models was this January. Before the introduction of DeepSeek, many assumed that China's AI technology lagged behind by years. However, after the launch of DeepSeek, it became clear that this gap could instead be only a few months. Sacks believes that China is still about one and a half to two years behind the U.S. in chip design, but companies like Huawei are catching up quickly. Sacks warns that the U.S. could risk losing its technological edge if American export restrictions favor the global spread of Chinese technology, particularly in the form of Huawei chips. Similar concerns were expressed by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the Computex Taipei conference in May, criticizing that export restrictions were even spurring China's technological advancements. Analysts at Bernstein believe that the absence of Nvidia chips will not sustainably impair China's progress in AI. Instead, Chinese companies are increasingly relying on domestic alternatives like Huawei. In the long term, Huawei could further reduce the performance gap, while Chinese AI models could compensate for their computing capacities through innovations akin to DeepSeek.