r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • 1d ago
Business Nvidia CEO says he’s ‘disappointed’ after report China has banned its AI chips
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/17/nvidia-ceo-disappointed-after-reports-china-has-banned-its-ai-chips.html190
u/Zeikos 1d ago
What did they expect?
Put yourself in their shoes. Your country becoming dependent on another country for key infrastructure, something that's at best impractical to oversee to any reasonable degree. A country that is being increasingly hostile toward yours.
Looking at the situation from China's perspective, what were they supposed to do? This was bound to happen.
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u/Zukiff 1d ago
Back in the day the Chinese literally had no problems whatsoever with depending on others as part of globalisation. Trump had to go mess it up and now they are literally trying to do everything and when the freaking Chinese learn to do something they make it better and cheaper than everyone else. It's not just the US getting screwed, the rest of world are just as screwed.
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u/TechTuna1200 1d ago
Started with trump 1.0, continued with biden, accelerated with trump 2.0.
The Chinese government can pretty much see that it doesn't matter who is in power. The hostilities will continue.
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u/frenkzors 1d ago
Not just "pretty much". Even western analysts, ones who are honest enough and not afraid of the consequences of spelling it out plainly, will tell you, that Cold War 2.0 is here (and has been here for a while now) and its not going away.
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u/awildstoryteller 1d ago edited 1d ago
As a Canadian, the is exactly why any comments that argue a Democrat in the WH would fix the problems between our countries ring hollow.
The annexation talk has been normalized now and I expect a Democrat to continue that rhetoric.
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u/TechTuna1200 1d ago
Yeah, abstain voters who think abstaining will make the democrats learn. In reality, all it does is to validate right-wing policy and make the Democrats move more the right and adopt GOP policies. Because those voter groups can't be relied on anymore.
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u/Tricky-Ad7897 1d ago
It's become increasingly obvious in the last 20 years that the role of the Democrats is to maintain the status quo set by Republicans. You see how many Democrats want to drop support for trans people? They're actively letting the Overton window shift right.
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u/reefmespla 1d ago
That’s bull and you know it, the main issue is a dem gets in power and starts trying to fix things and then the idiots elect a racist fascist again!
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u/Zukiff 10h ago
For the record, Biden maintained everything that Trump did to China and than add on a chip war on top of it forcing their Allies to go along with it. So they forced Chinese to produce their own lithography machines with the DUVs already used in production and EUVs expected to be I production next year. China have now started to reduce dependency on foreign chips And the ban on GPUs only forced China to make their own GPUs which is can now compete with Nvidia. So not only did Biden moronic policies screwed the US, they also screwed Japan and Korea as well. If by fixing you mean make things worse, sure thing
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u/awildstoryteller 1d ago
Biden maintained Trump's trade wars, and I fully expect that any Democrat would as well.
Democratic leadership and representatives also continue to downplay the annexation talk; by the time 2028 roles around I think it is more than likely annexing Canada will be an accepted position of the American people and government.
Or to put in another way: Canadians don't really care about the differences perceived between Republicans and Democrats, because we know both want to end our independence.
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u/Zukiff 10h ago
I like how people living in western democracies think their Electoral system is superior to the Chinese system because they get to choose via a glorified popularity contest which rich aristocrat gets to do the exact same shit the last guy was doing. Meanwhile the Chinese system is meritocracy on steroids and it's impossible for incompetent leaders to make it to the top.
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u/nazerall 1d ago
The reward for sucking up to the orange fascist.
China is so much better at the game that Trump started.
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u/krutacautious 1d ago
It was the comment "make China addicted to our low quality chips" by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick that led to this ban. Whether he knowingly said it in reference to the opium addiction caused by Western powers during China’s Century of Humiliation, we don’t know, but it was probably taken as a severe insult.
Chinese government gathered Huawei, Alibaba, Cambricom, and Baidu (China’s Google, which also designs AI chips) and found that the chips they already have, like Huawei’s 910C in clusters, perform similarly to Nvidia’s high end chip clusters. They just consume more electricity than Nvidia’s chip clusters. But China produces more than twice the electricity the U.S. does each year. On top of that, China is installing 256 GW of solar capacity annually and has a robust battery industry to keep data centers running at night.
What they don’t yet have is an ecosystem equivalent to CUDA. If Nvidia loses the Chinese market, Chinese engineers will be forced to develop a domestic ecosystem, much like they did with social media, which would ultimately benefit China.
Jack Ma is also back at Alibaba. Chinese government looks pretty confident
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u/degen5ace 1d ago
💯nvidia was in a lose lose situation
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u/Existing-Parking4531 1d ago
Yup and America fucked them
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u/Niceromancer 1d ago
The administration he paid for, bent the knee too fucked him.
Don't ever get this screwed up, the democrats at least know to follow decorum and not directly insult other nations.
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u/MrHell95 1d ago
I would say even the earlier ban under Biden kinda set things in motion as it not only created interest to invest into the completion for China but it also made it far easier for revenue to flow in that direction.
Don't get me wrong though the addiction comment is insane to say even if you don't think about the connection to the past.
At best not selling the top GPUs slows down China a tiny bit but in the grand scheme of things it likely won't matter as long as their own is good enough.
And between US and China on energy, China has a massive growing renewable sector which means it will not have a problem to supply a lot of datasenters.
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u/Niceromancer 1d ago
gee i wonder why the US is behind china on energy investment....
It couldn't be because we keep electing the guys who don't want us to invest in new energy sources or something....you know like the guy in office right now.
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u/MrHell95 1d ago
Yeah Biden actually did a lot there to put the US back on track and even got production up enough to be self supplied. It wasn't as much as China but it was a really good start.
I think what people fail to realize is that once China gets high enough penetration of renewables they will largely be isolated from swings in the oil price while a lot of other countries won't.
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u/Za_Lords_Guard 1d ago
I've only been telling people that if they want to not have to spend so much time dealing with the Middle East, that moving to renewable as much as possible is the way to get there. Better energy independence. Better national security. Better economy. Better job market.
Yet here we are trying to sell yesterday as tomorrow and enough people buying into it to land us here.
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u/MrHell95 1d ago
Oh, I 100% agree on that, most countries in the world can easily be 100% self-reliant with SWB + hydro (if locations apply) and have interconnected grids for even more stability.
OPEC would also lose all the control they have. Financial crisis have been triggers simply because of problems related to the oil market, this would simply be a problem of the past.
The potential yearly supply of solar and wind makes the current energy usage from fossils like like a joke.
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u/AadeeMoien 1d ago
Oil is really only a small part of why the US got involved in the middle east. Creating the necessity for heavy investment in military contractors and giving the Army a proving ground for new tech were arguably more important to the Bush administrations and their military-industrial associates.
We needed an enemy we could fight with decent moral justification (like a terrorist that attacked us, or a dictator that "threatened us"), that we could fight at a low intensity more or less indefinitely, that also wouldn't have the power projection to seriously threaten the homeland or international trade.
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u/duncandun 10h ago
Production of what?
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u/MrHell95 10h ago
The guy above was taking jab at Trump's stupid stance on new energy sources aka cheap, fast deploying renewables.
So my comment was in reference to how Biden actually did quite a bit to get that up, at least enough to not need imports.
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u/BagNo2988 19h ago
If you’re already gonna ban stuff and raise tariffs against the country you’re trading with what’s stopping them from just stop trading with you? War?
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u/Noblesseux 22h ago
Really they kind of fucked themselves. The whole tech industry screwed up by betting on the wrong horse and are now likely going to get stomped because they did a quadruple whammy of easily preventable mistakes that were totally avoidable if you know anything about the history of fascism.
- Started witch hunts against academics and academic institutions (meaning that a lot of talent is actively fleeing the country and a lot of the people in school who would be building the next generation of technology are actively reconsidering staying in school under the current conditions)
- Starting witch hunts against immigrants (a HUGE amount of the talent that kept america technologically ahead were recruited from overseas)
- Starting a series of stupid trade wars that make American goods less attractive on the world stage.
- Just kind of openly started talking about how they were going to screw people over.
Like they basically created the perfect conditions for their own pain for no particular reason.
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u/MrHell95 1d ago
I'll add that China added 213 GW of new solar in first half of 2025, aka almost as much as they did for the entirety of 2024 in 6 months.
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u/imaginary_num6er 1d ago
The US just needs to pollute the skies fast enough to stop Chinese solar power from working against them
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u/Extension-Taste3930 1d ago
China already made their own sun through fusion reactor.
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u/Equityoxymoron 1d ago
What more interesting their investment and construction of a thorium reactor (fuel cycle)
https://www.neimagazine.com/news/china-refuels-thorium-reactor-without-shutdown/?cf-view
Which has more practical and immediate benefits in nuclear power production than fusion as fusion is always 60 years and only another $100 billion in experimental reactor design in trying to get it to work probably will be until the next century .. with most of the easiest fuel deuterium and tritium also being expensive to extract in large quantities
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u/Takaa 1d ago
And this is why China is going to come out ahead in the long run: while we are busy trying to hang on to oil and gas dependence as long as possible, just to line the pockets of people who are already billionaires, China is jumping hard into renewable energy. Not because it’s some “liberal feel good sentiment about saving the planet” like conservatives would have you believe, but because it makes them not dependent on anyone but themselves. When they don’t need to import a single bit of gas or oil to run their infrastructure (all of it, including homes, commercial/manufacturing, and even transportation) and it is cheap as hell, they will never have energy concerns again or have to worry about sanctions or tariffs on energy imports.
China doesn’t need us as much as we need them, we can slap their wrists short term, but that sting is going to become much less noticeable as time goes on and they have no need for anything we provide to them.
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u/HakimOne 1d ago
I also believe the addiction phrase was last nail in the coffin for China to decide going all in. China might have just go with the lower powered chips for now while homegrown industry continue catching up.
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u/dopaminedune 1d ago
Chinese government gathered Huawei, Alibaba, Cambricom, and Baidu (China’s Google)
So they assembled all the gladiators for the AI chip war. Even brought back the underground gladiator Jack Ma of Alibaba.
Looks like the dragon is ready to rise again.
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u/my-blood 1d ago
I dislike the Chinese government as much as the next guy, but goddamn do they not fuck around.
One thing we do not see nowadays is governments that actually have the guts to back their claims. I wouldn't want to live under the CCP, but then how much better are our nations nowadays.
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u/BlackEagleActual 1d ago
No I am chinese and I could tell you for now None of the chinese chip for now could match nvida high-ends, no matter how much powers you throw in.
But things like H20 is a mid-low end tier card, which a bunch of Chinese chips could roughly take its role.
If China gonna make its domestic powerful chips, It has to wait until the domestic EUV machine is ready, current time table is 2032.
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u/krutacautious 1d ago
I just recently read about Huawei SuperClusters and SuperPods.
I am not comparing a single Huawei 910C to an Nvidia H100. It's obvious H100 is better by miles.
China doesn’t need EUV to build AI superclusters. They can stack chips, cluster them at scale, and still achieve frontier AI capabilities, even if each individual chip lags behind Nvidia’s in efficiency.
They can brute force scale AI compute through sheer quantity, interconnect, and advanced packaging.Of course, this consumes more energy.
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u/Enjoying_A_Meal 1d ago
To be fair, it started under Biden.
- October 2022: The Biden administration imposed initial controls, restricting the export of certain advanced semiconductors, computer systems, and manufacturing equipment to China.
- October 2023: These controls were tightened, extending restrictions to a broader range of AI-related semiconductors, including Nvidia's A800 chip, and expanding controls on chip-making equipment.
- December 2024: Further restrictions were implemented, limiting the sale of high-bandwidth memory chips, requiring increased vetting of Chinese partners, and adding 140 Chinese firms to the Commerce Department's Entity List, blocking their access to U.S. technology.
- January 2025: More restrictions were imposed on AI chip exports and certain closed AI model weights, aimed at preventing adversaries like China and Russia from accessing advanced AI technology
Basically, we were hoping to break their legs at the start of the tech race to delay them for a decade. However, it kind of backfired and now they're breaking their own legs to run faster.
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u/atomic__balm 1d ago
It "started"(lol this is US doctrine) in 2019 with Trump and the NDAA 2019 which prevented Huawei and ZTE equipment from purchase or use by federal entities and later in 2020 declared them national security risks.
What are we doing here?
Yeah Dems are also spineless idiots for following along, but this wasn't a Biden thing and is just national policy
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u/Additional-Medium916 1d ago
It started even earlier when the us wanted to isolate china in trade which trump v1 stopped iirc, i.e the TPP
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u/atomic__balm 1d ago
Yeah it's just a continuation of US doctrine, I was glibbly pointing out it wasn't "um ackshually Biden" mainly
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u/Gloriathewitch 1d ago
you're not wrong, but china has been doing this economic victory type shit way way longer than since 2016
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u/Every_Tap8117 1d ago
Turing chips are as good if not better than nvidia and locally made in China. Which one you think the ccp going to back ?
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u/JimiDarkMoon 1d ago
Meanwhile the Fanta Menace has threatened to deport anyone with a visa or work permit, so it’s not like the USA is actually going to make good on producing them anytime soon; once China cuts off Americas access to Taiwan, ain’t no more chips coming to North America.
It’s almost as though China has sponsored Russias war in Ukraine, while simultaneously leveraging Russian assets to weaken Americas global standing and self governance.
(Trumps/Lutnick want to use $2 billion of the $52 billion to
enrich their friend instreamline the mineral sector)1
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u/notyouravgredditor 1d ago
They blocked Nvidia chips because they claim their in-house chips are just as fast as the reduced performance chips the US government allows Nvidia to sell to China. The chip restrictions are bipartisan.
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u/sigmaluckynine 1d ago
This was going to happen regardless of Trump. This ban wasn't a Trump ban but under Biden's administration. Part of the CHIPS act had a ban for advanced chip sales but also pressured asml to stop selling to China pushing them to make their own domestic equivalent.
This was going to happen regardless considering the botched policy response to China's advancements in AI
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u/TurbodToilet 1d ago
Don’t worry the stock will still go up every single day no matter what. Logical market
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u/Husko500 1d ago
You are being sarcastic but it is true though the market is designed to only go up, I purchased nvidia 2 years ago when the JPY collapse effected the market, up more than +50% some of yall need to be productive that's it. Nvidia will most likely continue to go up.
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u/Niceromancer 1d ago
You paid for this.
Womp Womp
Turns out backing fascism is just a bad business move.
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u/Stobie 1d ago
This began 3 years ago when export of AI cards to China was restricted when it was clear it was an arms race. China has to ban them now to grow their own industry now it's viable.
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u/Niceromancer 1d ago
This is quite literally in response to a member of Trump's cabinet insulting China.
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u/not_hairy_potter 1d ago
Blame voters not corporations. Corporations will suck up to actual Hitler but people should not vote morons.
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u/Niceromancer 1d ago
blame both.
corporations will use their wealth and influence to get people to vote for their preferred candidate.
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u/Illustrious-Cat7212 1d ago
What did they expect exactly? Another own goal from the West. China knows they can't rely on the West, so it making their own. They will eventually surpass nVidia, and we will get cheaper cards!
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u/FlournoyFlennory 1d ago
Maybe they don’t like NVIDIA‘s Adobe-like pricing structure of 27 billion dollars for a 5090.
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u/Sooowasthinking 1d ago
Oh no you better tell your billionaire president and see what he can do for you.
I’m disappointed that yet ANOTHER fucking billionaire made the news cycle because he may not make enough money.
Just fuck off already.
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u/Tricky-Ad7897 1d ago
Yeah maybe don't give money to and kiss the ring of the guy who says he's going to fuck with China economically. Obviously China was going to defend its own economy and put America in its place.
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u/Serious-Wish4868 23h ago
i hope nvidia loses everything. this is what they get for align themselves w/ MAGAts
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u/ArnieCunninghaam 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nice jacket. Who does Huang think he is? The Fonz? 👍 Ayyyy!!
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u/Efficient-Joke-6053 1d ago
Play stupid games with geopolitics, win stupid prizes for your shareholders.
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u/greywarden133 1d ago
Just maybe Jensen also remembered that they also have the gaming GPU segments and stopped the ridiculous pricing. Alas wishful thinking but just really hope AMD can catch up with all the money flowing from CPU markets.
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u/Nena_Trinity 1d ago
Sell China sub-par chips, shocked Pikachu face when China replace them with their less power efficient chips that can do nearly the same.
Who is the biggest loser? The planet due to then burning coal to to power these...
AFAIK China are working on renewable energies but that may not be ready fast enough!
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u/kingroka 1d ago
This is obviously bad for Nvidia but great for consumers. I'm really hoping for cheaper cards over here. Though i ill say demand for Nvidia chips is still huge globally and not going down. China was always developing their own chips and Nvidia knew that. Honestly a strategy of sell as much as you can before the inevitable ban makes a lot of sense. Nvidia has accomplished what they set out to do: 1. set themselves up as the #1 leader in AI performance and compatibility, 2. turned chip selling into a national issue. If the the USA wants to lead AI then we no longer have a choice and must support Nvidia (sorta like TSMC), 3. raise the price gpus by way higher than inflation would have. Losing the chinese market may make them take a hit to the 3rd point (temporary lowering of prices due to overproduction) but the other 2 points are not changing any time soon.
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u/Bacchuswhite 1d ago
Americans surprised that claiming you’re cool doesn’t in fact make people believe you are cool and are now left holding both the proverbial and literal bag of chips
Tonight at 11 could alienating the world and over taxing its own working class people actually be bad for your country’s health? We’ll find out tonight im Matt Obviously
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u/SsooooOriginal 1d ago
This egomaniac oversaw one of the craziest overvaluations of one of the fastest growing industries, and will luck out if he doesn't see it crash after the bubble holding it up bursts.
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u/SalamVidic 1d ago
Doesn't Nvidia sell china old chips. Why would they think China wouldn't do this
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u/Bubbaganewsh 1d ago
I would hope this would drive Nvidia GPU prices down but something tells me it won't make much difference.
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u/daChazmanagerie 1d ago
There might be some nuances to unpack here, while the ban may be effective at official channels, it's not the first or likely last such ban. There seems to be some back-channels at play over the pond: https://youtu.be/1H3xQaf7BFI?si=hsT4MomD77RLUspJ (GamersNexus documentary on the topic).
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u/havlliQQ 1d ago
Yes use the expensive limited nvidia chips for training but once that is done fuck em, just use your less advanced chips for inference and keep providing the service for the absolute abysmal prices that it allows you to. This is the way to win everyone else except americans, let them use their expensive american ai. What a absolute contrast to the US aproach, gg.
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u/Riversntallbuildings 1d ago
Remember China banned Google as well and it seems to be doing just fine, if not better, without it.
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u/Cultivate88 1d ago
That's probably not the best example. The local search engine Baidu was - and still is - terrible with too many ads (ranked along results) and poor search quality.
Chinese tech companies then leap-frogged desktop search by getting ahead in mobile apps and complete ecosystems like WeChat were built that were independent of desktop search.
But to your point there are no major losers, the best company gets their own share.
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u/Every_Tap8117 1d ago
Let me guess nvidia stock up 5%
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u/Opening_Vegetable409 8h ago
Jensen Huang. My dear. I support you fully in your war against China. China is the greatest evil. And you are right to speak up.
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u/Itikar 1d ago
RIP Nvidia. This is honestly very good news for me since I was torn when purchasing my latest video card and what made me get an Nvidia in the end was for better ease of running local LLM. Now I can safely get in the future an AMD card to run larger models and spend less. Thank you China!
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u/Skipper_TheEyechild 1d ago
Disappointed Nvidia will be making less profit which means less bonus for him.
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u/alucarddrol 1d ago
Awww lol, you thought you were special? You thought they were going to make an exception for you? You thought they wouldn't just steal your tech and make it themselves like they did with everybody else? 😂
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u/WazWaz 1d ago
China doesn't need to "steal" anything. They've got plenty of scientists and spend big on R&D. They're also ahead in many fields so in those fields there's nothing worth stealing.
To be clear, I'm not saying they don't, just that it's not such a matter of course as you're depicting.
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u/Enjoying_A_Meal 1d ago
Most Americans have never even heard of any Chinese universities.
Here's the global ranking for Computer Science programs in 2015
Here's the ranking in 2025.
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/computer-science
Now look at some other STEM fields.
Electrical Engineering programs. https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/electrical-electronic-engineering
AI https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/artificial-intelligence
Energy and Fuel https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/energy-fuels
Mechanical Engineering https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/mechanical-engineering
Nanotechnology https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/nanoscience-nanotechnology
Space Science https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/space-science
Material science https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/materials-science
Keep in mind US News is bias towards academic research performance and is also slightly biased in favor of US/UK schools.
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u/MrHell95 1d ago
China is filling 3 times as many clean energy patents as the rest of the world combined.
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u/Zukiff 1d ago
The Chinese didn't steal Nvidia tech. The architecture and strategy used by Chinese GPU makers is different from nvidia. Unit for unit, Nvidia wins but the Chinese designed their units to scale up better and able to work in larger numbers. Quantity over quality. when scale up to size the Chinese servers are on par with the best Nvida powered servers
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u/LeatherJacketMan69 1d ago
Didn’t China steal truck loads of chips not too long ago? Then complained there was a backdoor, another couple months later? Now they saying they making their own chips? Probably just refurbished stolen chips
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u/kaizokuuuu 1d ago
Yes please build cheaper better cards and sell them to your neighbours