Not everyone is happy that the Trump administration gave Nvidia the green light to start selling its H20 advanced AI chips in China again. A group of 20 national security experts and former government officials wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Monday urging the administration to reverse its recent decision.
The letter called the decision a “strategic misstep” that could harm the U.S.’s AI advantage in both military and civilian applications. It emphasized the H20’s AI inference capabilities, which allow trained models to make decisions on new data.
“The H20 is a potent accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip,” the letter stated. “Designed specifically to work around export control thresholds, the H20 is optimized for inference, the process responsible for the dramatic capabilities gains made by the latest generation of frontier AI reasoning models. For inference tasks, the H20 outperforms even the H100, an AI chip this administration has restricted access to due to its advanced capabilities.”
The letter also warned that selling these chips in China could worsen the U.S. AI chip shortage, support China’s military efforts, and weaken overall export controls. “The decision to ban H20 exports earlier this year was the right one,” it said. “We ask you to stand by that principle and continue blocking the sale of advanced AI chips to China as America works to maintain its technological edge. This is not a question of trade. It is a question of national security.”
The signatories include Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term; Stewart Baker, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; and David Feith, a former member of the National Security Council, among others.
This letter follows the Department of Commerce’s recent approval for Nvidia to resume AI chip sales in China, reportedly tied to ongoing rare earth element trade discussions. At the time, Lutnick downplayed the decision, calling the H20 Nvidia’s “fourth best” AI chip.
Last week, the Trump administration released its AI Action Plan, which emphasized the need for U.S. AI chip export restrictions but lacked specifics on how those controls would be implemented.