Witnesses warned lawmakers today during a House Committee on Foreign Affairs hearing that allowing China to purchase advanced U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chips would pose serious national security risks.
The hearing followed recent remarks by President Trump saying he would allow NVIDIA to export its H200 chips to “approved customers” in China and other countries, provided the United States receives 25% of the profits. Trump said the sales would occur “under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security” and said Chinese President Xi Jinping responded positively.
Former Deputy U.S. National Security Adviser Matt Pottinger told lawmakers the decision should not be treated as a routine commercial matter.
“Imagine if the question before you [were] whether to sell China the propulsion systems that make our nuclear submarines stealthy,” Pottinger said. “We don’t laugh at the premise that there’s nothing to debate.”
He warned that selling NVIDIA advanced chips would “supercharge Beijing’s military modernization,” enhancing capabilities ranging from nuclear weapons and cyber warfare to autonomous drones, biological warfare, and intelligence operations.
“America still holds the high ground,” Pottinger said, arguing that U.S. companies dominate advanced chip design and global cloud infrastructure.
He urged Congress to reverse the decision to sell advanced AI chips to China, add guardrails to prevent similar actions in the future, and pressure allies such as the Netherlands and Japan to fully match U.S. export controls.
Former Principal Deputy U.S. National Security Adviser Jon Finer said China began a concerted push more than a decade ago to dominate emerging technologies and their supply chains.
He credited both the first Trump administration and Biden administration with making strategic competition with China a central focus of U.S. policy, particularly in military and critical technology areas.
Finer said China’s biggest weakness in the AI race remains computing power.
“Right now, China can only make about 1% to 3% of the computing power that the Western, democratic ecosystem can produce,” he said. He added, “I can’t think of any good reason why we should allow them to fill that gap,” given AI’s role in military systems, intelligence, biotechnology, and cyber operations.
Oren Cass, founder and chief economist of American Compass, a conservative think tank, further noted that computational power is rapidly becoming synonymous with national capability.
“The total amount of computational power available in a country is quickly becoming its technological capabilities for both economic and military purposes,” he said.
Cass added that export controls imposed during the first Trump administration and extended under President Biden helped the United States build a “high-margin advantage in total computational capacity.”
He warned that diverting scarce chip supply to China would weaken the United States at a moment of surging AI investment.
“Thanks to short-sighted action by policymakers and corporations, the United States has already given away leadership in key technologies and supply chains to China,” Cass said.