Silicon Fence: how will a ban on exporting chips without Washington's consent affect the development of AI

The US administration is preparing a document that could exceed any import tariffs in terms of its impact on the global economy. The US Department of Commerce is developing rules according to which the export of advanced chips for artificial intelligence (primarily accelerators from Nvidia and AMD) to anywhere in the world will be possible only with the direct approval of the US government. In fact, this means that the era of the free market in the field of high-tech is finally becoming a thing of the past, and computing power is equated to weapons. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.

The mechanics of digital control

The new export control architecture, if adopted in its current form, will radically rewrite the current rules. The previous administration restricted shipments to China and about 40 other countries that raised national security concerns. The Trump team is reversing the presumption: now the whole world is subject to licensing.

Photo: Global Look Press/Kobe Li

The regulation will be multi-level and directly linked to the scale of the computing cluster. Basic shipments of up to 1,000 of the latest processors (for example, Nvidia GB300) require a simplified approval procedure. To create larger data centers, companies will have to undergo a preliminary audit, disclose their business models, and consent to physical inspections of facilities by American auditors.

The most stringent requirements apply to megaprojects. If a company plans to deploy a cluster of more than 200,000 chips (these are the volumes required to train basic AI models or create national sovereign clouds), the government of the host country must be involved in the process.

Photo: Global Look Press/Soeren Stache

The United States is ready to approve such supplies only on condition of strict security guarantees and reciprocal "commensurate investments" in the American economy. The working model of this mechanism has already been tested in the countries of the Middle East.: The UAE and Saudi Arabia receive advanced chips on the condition that for every dollar invested in AI infrastructure at home, they are required to invest a dollar in specialized projects in the United States. A similar "entrance ticket" is now planned to be issued to Europe, India and the countries of Southeast Asia.

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China and tariff blackmail

The official rhetoric boils down to protecting the American technology stack. In practice, Washington is solving two specific tasks.

The first is an attempt to strangle the Chinese AI industry. The ban on direct shipments to China has long been circumvented through smuggling and renting cloud facilities. Chinese corporations such as Alibaba, physically unable to buy server racks with Nvidia, rent computing clocks in data centers in Malaysia, Thailand or the Emirates. Total licensing gives the U.S. Department of Commerce transparency in global supply chains. By issuing a license to build data centers in the Middle East or Asia, Washington will prescribe a ban on providing computing services to any Chinese residents.

Photo: Global Look Press/IMAGO/Michael Bihlmayer

The second is the monetization of the technological monopoly. Chips turn into a trump card for any trade negotiations. With Trump reshaping global trade with universal tariffs, access to Nvidia processors is becoming an ideal lever of pressure. Any attempts by the European Union to impose taxes on American digital services or challenge steel tariffs can be immediately stopped by halting the issuance of export licenses for European data centers.

Consequences of the hard line

The degree of impact of the new rules on the global economy will depend on law enforcement practices. If the licensing process proves predictable, the market will adapt to the increased transaction costs. However, choosing a hard line — with bureaucratic delays, political bargaining, and sudden license revocations — threatens to cause serious upheaval.

Photo: IZVESTIA/Evgeny Pavlov

First, it will inevitably slow down the global deployment of AI infrastructure. The construction of a data center with a capacity of 1 gigawatt requires billions of dollars in capital investments and many years of planning. Investors are extremely reluctant to enter projects where a key equipment supplier may cancel a contract upon a call from the Oval Office. Risk premiums for projects outside the United States will increase dramatically, and the cost of renting computing power to end users in Europe and Asia will increase.

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Secondly, such a dictate can cause rejection even among America's close allies (not all of them are as accommodating as Saudi Arabia). The requirement for access by American inspectors to sovereign facilities and forced counter-investments can be perceived as a direct encroachment on economic independence. India or France, which have their own ambitious plans for the development of national AI, are unlikely to accept the role of submissive vassals in Washington's digital hierarchy.

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This is where the main strategic risk for the United States arises (the "Huawei paradox"). Right now, buyers of computing power have no alternative — Nvidia products dominate the market thanks to their impeccable architecture and software ecosystem (CUDA). Chinese analogues are objectively weaker, produced in smaller volumes and more difficult to set up. At the same time, Washington directly warns third countries about possible sanctions for using Huawei equipment.

Nevertheless, if the political price of American products becomes unbearable, states will start looking for emergency exits. Excessive pressure from the United States will create guaranteed demand for Chinese products, encouraging Beijing to pour even more funds into refining its processors. In an attempt to maintain an absolute monopoly, Washington risks accelerating the creation of an alternative technological ecosystem beyond its control, splitting the global digital market into isolated blocks. However, given the practice of recent years, such a development is the most likely.