I can still remember, as a young Air Force officer, sitting in the cockpit of my B-1 bomber knowing that we could deliver nuclear weapons virtually anywhere in the world.
I also remember watching President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986 to negotiate nuclear arms reductions. The whole world was watching. The nuclear arms race was a global threat, and the worlds two most powerful nations had a responsibility to confront it.
Now imagine that, as Reagan sat across the table from Gorbachev, American companies were selling Moscow the technology it needed to make its nuclear arsenal even more powerful.
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The idea would have been absurd.
Yet today, as the United States enters another potentially historic technological arms race, we are entertaining a remarkably similar proposition: selling China the advanced computer chips it needs to build the worlds most powerful artificial intelligence.
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Advanced AI chips are not nuclear weapons. But in the emerging competition over artificial intelligence, they may be the closest equivalent we have to the strategic materials that powered the last great arms race. In short, they are the fuel.
Without enormous quantities of advanced chips and computing power, cannot train frontier AI systems at the same scale or speed as the United States. That is precisely why Beijing wants them, and precisely why Washington should think very carefully before selling them.
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But Trump should make one principle clear: America will not help China build the technology that could erase one of our greatest strategic advantages.
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The United States currently possesses enormous leverage. America remains at the center of the worlds most advanced AI ecosystem, and China still depends heavily on access to American-designed chips and the broader technological infrastructure surrounding them. We should not give that leverage away.
Earlier this year, the United States began allowing some advanced AI chips, including Nvidias H200, to be sold to China on a case-by-case basis. Those sales come with restrictions and security requirements. But the strategic question is more fundamental: Why should we accelerate Chinas ability to compete with us in the first place?
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Supporters of chip sales argue that keeping China dependent on American technology preserves our influence and supports American companies. They also argue it disincentivizes China from developing its own capabilities. But there is great evidence that it has exactly the opposite effect. China is using our chips to accelerate their own capabilities. And <a href="https://
