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H1Bs now require a $100k payment per year (I believe, seeing some remarks saying it might be per visa) to the government due to Donald Trump executive order, plus if you are currently overseas and hold a H1B you need to pay $100k effective immediately on your next entry into the USA if you are not within the country by the 20th of September.
As a foreign non-Lawyer I don't know how effective this is going to be/liable to be immediately derailed in the courts, but I do think it's a positive step towards ensuring skilled immigration is used for the genuinely effective instead of ye olde 'I can import a foreigner who I have more power over at a 10% discount rate to domestic workers'. I'm also deeply skeptical of the 'productivity' of the vast majority of tech H1B hires and wish them the best of luck in attempting to offshore the competencies required to make AI-powered Grindr for Daily Fantasy Sports
This is an annual $100k fee, it's basically telling H-1B applicants they aren't welcome in the US as nobody is going to pay that much extra. Plus it's going to destroy the US international student college market as outside the very top schools a big part of the draw is a chance to work and stay in the US after graduation and nobody outside of Citadel etc. will pay $100k per year in fees for a new grad.
Good boon for the UK/Canada though as it means that instead of American companies hiring in the US they'll instead offshore the jobs and hire here instead. The country can generally do with some of the over inflated US salaries coming over here too.
I feel the US will regret this 10 years down the line, much like how they are now regretting limiting Nvidia sales to China forcing them to build their own homegrown system.
What? This is not happening unless there is very new news. China's home grown system is still much worse.
FT article this week: https://www.ft.com/content/8fd79522-e34f-4633-bc87-ef0aae2d9159
Archive link: https://archive.is/UKulo
Yes, they continue to try and play catch up, what I'm definitely not seeing is the regret for making them do that rather than just giving them the more powerful chips. Lack of access to nvidia chips is demonstrably slowing down their AI progress.
What is the end goal here? Or any goal?
OK, you're slowing them down alright. They will not have as capable models, as quickly or cheaply, in the next 4-6 years. Then what? Is this just banking on an AGI superweapon to make economic dimension irrelevant, or on the windfall from economic growth this is supposed to beget? Huawei is superior in networking equipment, China has an overabundance of energy and skilled labor, if they scale up production of even past-generation compute chips (and mainly HBM), they will have a fully adequate and incompatible domestic ecosystem and Nvidia and others will never reenter their market, and American slice of it will be that much smaller.
Do I really need some kind of special reasoning to oppose sending scarce resource that already sells out in western markets to a geopolitical rival to not only not direct gain but very straightforward direct losses to domestic firms? To sell our opposition the rope it needs to hang us is something a particularly short sighted firm might advocate for, but to do so below market rate? This is madness.
This lock-in effect is just nonsense and has not worked for literally a single firm that has sold out to china. China is not going to forego building their own echo-system and hasn't for any other sector they've found strategically important.
It's banking on the certainty that surrendering our major advantage in the AI race to china for no reason or gain will turn out badly for us, obviously. I can't even fathom how a thinking person could convince themselves otherwise. You've already highlighted their advantages, is your position that the race is already over despite us currently being ahead?
This has always been the goal and the chips would only be used to push towards this goal faster. Our one chance at dominance in this sector is remaining ahead in AI and reaping compound interest on that lead whether it's AGI or simply accelerated AI and chip development. If it's not enough then I just don't buy this fantasy that selling out now is going to give us a better seat in the future.
This is pretty asinine. You're defending export controls with the claim that their absence would… distort markets? Do you think that's what Nvidia is trying to do, sell GPUs below market rate, despite having an unsaturated domestic market that would generate higher margins? Why do you imagine they would hurt themselves like that? Might it be time to install some loyal apparatchiks on board, or do a little witch hunt for Communist agents?
As I've said before, "China" is not omnipotent and cannot create an ecosystem solely through political will and subsidies, they've been trying for decades and it hasn't been working so long as Nvidia was the obvious superior choice. Even now, nobody wants to use CANN if afforded the chance. I think this is how Jensen views this: he's straightforwardly fighting as the CEO of American company Nvidia, not just for line going up in quarterly reports but for enduring global dominance of his stack.
Are you avoiding the question, or does it not parse for you?
I think that to discuss whether "the race" is over, it's important to establish whether a race is happening and what it is that you are racing towards. The US is ahead in AI. Again, without American chips, China will be developing AI slower for the next few years. Is that a "race"? What happens when you reach the finish line? Don't huff and puff, say concretely. Do you build an AGI superweapon that disables their nukes with nanobots? Or what? What's the end goal, in the face of which every thinking person would deem hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of profits a mere short-sighted distraction? Can you spell it out?
Not enough for what? Like, what's the theory of victory here? Repeating the Great Divergence, now with automation, relatively growing so quickly that China is forever left in the dust? Lights-out factories spawning across the US, producing ungodly goods optimized by AGI, incomprehensibly advanced weapons systems, Pax Americana becoming permanent?
How likely do you think that is? And what happens if this doesn't work out?
I think the answers are basically "yes/likely/better not to think of this", and personally, I believe this is all deluded and very much in the spirit of last days of Nazi Germany. Both sides will have adequate AI to increase productivity, both will have "AGI" at around the same time, you're not going to have some dramatic inflection point, you will not leave them in the dust as a military or economic power, you'll just slow down global economic growth somewhat, and in the long run end up poorer and have a smaller slice of the global market. That's all.
You'd have to ask Jensen Huang why he's so hungry for demand despite not saturating the domestic market. The traitor, the treasonous little worm, is fighting bills that merely demand he offer the chips to domestic buyers for the same price. His public logic is the same short sighted nonsense of a "toehold" that you propose. This is a man who lies through his teeth at every opportunity. He claims that selling chips to China won't reduce chips available for western markets, this is a lie, in his earning report he very clearly says they already sell out of the chips.
China is already exerting the maximum amount of demand and political pressure it can to try and compete on chips. The internal market demand is irrelevant. The government will guarantee every chip is sold and prop up all the companies making them. Whether or not AI labs can use NVDIA hardware has zero actual influence on the development of their ecosystem. Hardware "lock-in" on these labs is an entirely made up concept.
Specifics could shake out a number of ways depending on where, whether and how you think AI will Plateau. In all cases besides it basically capping out at gpt-5 level dominance in this field is critical. If it is powerful enough to actually do high level engineering work then it instantly obviates China's other major advantage in having a big workforce. If it scales all the way to AGI then forget about it, winning that race is all that matters.
Winner gets to be the center of commerce and yes some latitude that comes along with having the most powerful military. These things come with social and political influence. Social and political influence that I think is better in the hands of democratic powers, as flawed as they are, than the autocratic CCP. We know what PAX Americana looks like and it looks pretty good actually. Billions rising up out of poverty. General spread of democratic institutions. And we know who Xi is allied with, nations like North Korea and Russia.
I'm happy that the Chinese people are prospering. I certainly don't want to take that away from them. But CCP dominance hasn't even been particularly good for them. China is host to the poorest and least prosperous Chinese people in the world. It's not a regime I would like to see replicated and given strength and more than Soviet Russia was a regime I would have liked to see replicated and given strength. surely you understand the "equals across the sea" isn't an option on the table. That isn't what is in store if we give up all our advantages in this sector.
China will take the chips, use them to accelerate their position, including in advancing their own semiconductor industry. I don't know how you could actually believe giving them the chips now would actually guarantee a slice of this market. As soon as China has even slightly competitive chips they will crumple up NVDIA and toss it out like so much garbage. It's what happens with every firm that tries to compete in China.
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