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   "I think it's a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging"   
   Anthropic's CEO warns Davos about letting Nvidia sell AI chips to China   
      
   Date:   
   Thu, 22 Jan 2026 03:30:00 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei riled Davos attendees by condemning U.S.-approved   
   Nvidia chip sales to China   
      
   FULL STORY   
      
   Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei cut through the polished choreography of the World   
   Economic Forum in Davos this week when he flatly implied that Nvidia, one of   
   his own company's biggest backers, was a 'nuclear' threat to geopolitics   
   during an interview with Bloomberg .    
      
   The interview triggered immediate global hubbub across the tech, diplomatic,   
   and security spheres over his response to the U.S. approval of AI chip sales   
   to China.    
      
   The arrangement ends a ban on the sale of high-performance AI chips to China.   
   The U.S. now allows Nvidia and AMD to resume sales of certain AI chips,   
   including the H200 line, to pre-approved customers in China.    
      
   I think this is crazy, Amodei told a stunned audience during the session. Its   
   a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging that Boeing   
   made the casings.  It was an especially bold reaction from the leader of   
   Anthropic, a company that $1.5 trillion chipmaking giant Nvidia has invested   
   over $10 billion into so far.    
      
   Theyre powerful enough to dramatically accelerate Chinese AI capabilities in   
   many ways, with military and security being one that has Amodei particularly   
   worried. Amodei sees this as a real and immediate threat because AI models    
   are essentially cognition, that are essentially intelligence.    
      
   He suggested thinking of the models powered by the chips as 100 million    
   people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner, all under the control of one   
   country or another.    
      
   People were audibly shocked during the interview. Anthropic is one of the   
   leading homes of cutting-edge AI models. The Claude assistant is often noted   
   as a strong rival to ChatGPT in many ways, thanks in no small part to Nvidias   
   GPUs.    
      
   Friction over Chinas access to AI chips reflects a growing fault line inside   
   the tech industry. Chipmakers and cloud service providers hoping to hold onto   
   or expand their control of the AI market are tugging against companies like   
   Anthropic with geopolitical fears over unfettered access to AI hardware by   
   authoritarians.   
      
   Global chip war    
      
   Adding to the volatility is Nvidia's somewhat indispensable AItraining chips.   
   Its architecture has become a foundation for model development, with few   
   alternative providers, though AMD and Intel are keen to catch up. But it    
   means that when Nvidia sells chips to China, it creates more than just new   
   commercial rivals.    
      
   Nuclear weapons and airplane casings are unsubtle analogies, but Amodei    
   almost certainly chose them for that reason. Davos is where CEOs talk like   
   they're chewing on a technical manual and marketing guidebook at the same   
   time. A straightforward and consequential projection of the future must have   
   thrown plenty of attendees off balance.    
      
   You might dismiss Amodei and the whole debate as high-level geopolitical    
   drama with little relevance to everyday life. But what gets decided at the   
   level of chip exports affects how fast the next AI-powered feature and device   
   come out, and what they can do.    
      
   The U.S. Commerce Department has stated that any sales to China are subject    
   to rigorous controls and that buyers are vetted for ties to military   
   operations. But enforcement remains a murky affair, especially when front   
   companies, joint ventures, or subcontracting relationships can blur lines.    
      
   Amodei didnt name China explicitly, but no one needed him to. The entire   
   discussion was a rebuke of U.S. complacency in treating AI as a neutral    
   export rather than a lever of global influence. And while Nvidia might argue   
   that the chips being exported are less advanced, Amodeis counterpoint is that   
   even slightly outdated chips can be networked at scale to produce   
   transformative capabilities.    
      
   And as Chinese AI labs become more adept at optimizing existing hardware, the   
   line between whats considered to sell and what isnt begins to erode.    
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/ai-platforms-assistants/i-think-its-a-bit-like-selli   
   ng-nuclear-weapons-to-north-korea-and-bragging-anthropics-ceo-warns-davos-abou   
   t-letting-nvidia-sell-ai-chips-to-china   
      
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