WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Chris Coons (D-DE), Ranking Member on the Senate Appropriations Committee; Jack Reed (D-RI), Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee; Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee; Brian Schatz (D-HI), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS); Andy Kim (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance; Michael Bennet (D-CO), member of the Senate Intelligence Committee; and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), member of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, issued the following statement in response to the Trump administration’s decision to allow NVIDIA to sell its H200 AI chips to China:
“The Trump administration’s announcement that it will allow the export of advanced H200 AI chips to China is a colossal economic and national security failure. The H200s are vastly more capable than anything China can make and gifting them to Beijing would squander America’s primary advantage in the AI race.
“Access to these chips would give China’s military transformational technology to make its weapons more lethal, carry out more effective cyberattacks against American businesses and critical infrastructure, and strengthen their economic and manufacturing sector. Chinese AI giant DeepSeek said as recently as last week that the lack of access to advanced American-designed AI chips is the single biggest impediment to its ability to compete with U.S. AI companies. With this decision, President Trump is poised to remove that barrier.
“Senate Democrats and Republicans both know that the 21st century will be defined by whether the leading AI systems are built on values of free societies and free markets or the repressive, authoritarian values of the Chinese Communist Party. The Trump administration clearly doesn’t grasp the urgency of this contest. President Trump must reverse course and recommit to preserving American dominance in AI.”
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