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U.S. Adds Export Restrictions to More Chinese Tech Firms Over Security Concerns

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The additions included companies that are customers of Intel and Nvidia, and one firm that was the focus of a New York Times investigation last year.The Trump administration on Tuesday added 80 companies and organizations to a list of companies that are barred from buying American technology and other exports because of national security concerns.The move, which targeted primarily Chinese firms, cracks down on companies that have been big buyers of American chips from Nvidia, Intel and AMD. It also closed loopholes that Trump administration officials have long criticized as allowing Chinese firms to continue to advance technologically despite U.S. restrictions.One company added to the list, Nettrix Information Industry, was the focus of a 2024 investigation by The New York Times that showed how some Chinese executives had bypassed U.S. restrictions aimed at cutting China off from advanced chips to make artificial intelligence.Nettrix, one of China’s largest makers of computer servers that are used to produce artificial intelligence, was started by a group of former executives from Sugon, a firm that provided advanced computing to the Chinese military and built a system the government used to surveil persecuted minorities in the western Xinjiang region.In 2019, the United States added Sugon to its “entity list,” restricting exports over national security concerns. The Times investigation found that, six months later, the executives formed Nettrix, using Sugon’s technology and inheriting some of its customers. Times reporters also found that Nettrix’s owners shared a complex in eastern China with Sugon and other related companies.After Sugon was singled out and restricted by the United States, its longtime partners — Nvidia, Intel and Microsoft — quickly formed ties with Nettrix, the investigation found.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A.I. Is Changing How Silicon Valley Builds Start-Ups

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    Tech start-ups typically raised huge sums to hire armies of workers and grow fast. Now artificial intelligence tools are making workers more productive and spurring tales of “tiny team” success.Almost every day, Grant Lee, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, hears from investors who try to persuade him to take their money. Some have even sent him and his co-founders personalized gift baskets.Mr. Lee, 41, would normally be flattered. In the past, a fast-growing start-up like Gamma, the artificial intelligence start-up he helped establish in 2020, would have constantly looked out for more funding.But like many young start-ups in Silicon Valley today, Gamma is pursuing a different strategy. It is using artificial intelligence tools to increase its employees’ productivity in everything from customer service and marketing to coding and customer research.That means Gamma, which makes software that lets people create presentations and websites, has no need for more cash, Mr. Lee said. His company has hired only 28 people to get “tens of millions” in annual recurring revenue and nearly 50 million users. Gamma is also profitable.“If we were from the generation before, we would easily be at 200 employees,” Mr. Lee said. “We get a chance to rethink that, basically rewrite the playbook.”The old Silicon Valley model dictated that start-ups should raise a huge sum of money from venture capital investors and spend it hiring an army of employees to scale up fast. Profits would come much later. Until then, head count and fund-raising were badges of honor among founders, who philosophized that bigger was better.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Do DeepSeek’s A.I. Advances Mean US Tech Controls Have Failed?

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    DeepSeek’s A.I. models show that China is making rapid gains in the field, despite American efforts to hinder it.The United States has worked steadily over the past three years to limit China’s access to the cutting edge computer chips that power advanced artificial intelligence systems. Its aim has been to slow China’s progress in developing sophisticated A.I. models.Now a Chinese firm, DeepSeek, has created that very technology. In recent weeks, DeepSeek released multiple A.I. models and a chatbot whose performance rivals that of the best products made by American firms, all while using far fewer of the high-cost A.I. chips that companies typically need. Over the weekend, DeepSeek’s chatbot shot to the top of Apple’s App Store charts as people downloaded it around the world.The development has raised big questions about export controls built by the United States in recent years. The Biden administration set up a system of global rules and steadily expanded them to try to keep advanced A.I. technology — particularly chips made by Nvidia — out of Chinese hands. They were concerned that technology would give China an edge not just economically, but also militarily.DeepSeek’s development has provoked a fierce debate over whether U.S. technology controls have failed. Here’s what to know.DeepSeek’s innovations suggest the Biden administration may have acted too slowly to keep up with private companies sidestepping its controls.DeepSeek has said that its most recent model was trained on Nvidia H800s. This is an A.I. chip that Nvidia developed specifically for the Chinese market after export controls were first imposed, and that caused a fair amount of drama in Washington.When the United States put restrictions on Nvidia’s most advanced chips in 2022, Nvidia quickly adapted by creating slightly downgraded chips that fell just under the threshold the government had set. These chips were technically legal for Chinese companies to use, but allowed them to achieve practically the same results.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    White House Ignites Firestorm With Rules Governing A.I.’s Global Spread

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    The tech industry is fighting new regulations, expected soon, that aim to keep the cutting-edge technology in the United States and allied countries.The next big fight over offshoring is playing out in Washington, and this time it involves artificial intelligence.The Biden administration, in its final weeks in office, is rushing to issue new regulations to try to ensure that the United States and its close allies have control over how artificial intelligence develops in the years to come.The rules have touched off an intense fight between tech companies and the government, as well as among administration officials.The regulations, which could be issued as early as Friday, would dictate where American-made chips that are critical for A.I. could be shipped. Those rules would then help determine where the data centers that create A.I. would be built, with a preference for the United States and its allies.The rules would allow most European countries, Japan and other close U.S. allies to make unfettered purchases of A.I. chips, while blocking two dozen adversaries, like China and Russia, from buying them. More than 100 other countries would face different quotas on the amount of A.I. chips they could receive from U.S. companies.The regulations would also make it easier for A.I. chips to be sent to trusted American companies that run data centers, like Google and Microsoft, than to their foreign competitors. The rules would establish security procedures that data centers would have to follow to keep A.I. systems safe from cybertheft.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Backers, Including Elon Musk, Clash With Far Right Over Immigrant Workers and H-1B Visas

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    A fierce dispute erupted in the president-elect’s camp between immigration hard-liners and tech industry leaders including Elon Musk.Weeks before President-elect Donald J. Trump is to take office, a major rift has emerged among his supporters over immigration and the place of foreign workers in the U.S. labor market.The debate hinges on how much tolerance, if any, the incoming administration should have for skilled immigrants brought into the country on work visas.The schism pits immigration hard-liners against many of the president-elect’s most prominent backers from the technology industry — among them Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who helped back Mr. Trump’s election efforts with more than a quarter of a billion dollars, and David Sacks, a venture capitalist picked to be czar for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy.The tech industry has long relied on foreign skilled workers to help run its companies, a labor supply that critics say undercuts wages for American citizens.The dispute, which late Thursday exploded online into acrimony, finger-pointing and accusations of censorship, frames a policy quandary for Mr. Trump. The president-elect has in the past expressed a willingness to provide more work visas to skilled workers, but has also promised to close the border, deploy tariffs to create more jobs for American citizens and severely restrict immigration.Laura Loomer, a far-right activist and fervent Trump loyalist, helped set off the altercation earlier this week by criticizing Mr. Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian American venture capitalist, to be an adviser on artificial intelligence policy. In a post, she said she was concerned that Mr. Krishnan, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in India, would have influence on the Trump administration’s immigration policies, and mentioned “third-world invaders.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How A.I. Could Reshape the Economic Geography of America

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    Chattanooga, Tenn., a midsize Southern city, is on no one’s list of artificial intelligence hot spots.But as the technology’s use moves beyond a few big city hubs and is more widely adopted across the economy, Chattanooga and other once-struggling cities in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and South are poised to be among the unlikely winners, a recent study found.The shared attributes of these metropolitan areas include an educated work force, affordable housing and workers who are mostly in occupations and industries less likely to be replaced or disrupted by A.I., according to the study by two labor economists, Scott Abrahams, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, and Frank Levy, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These cities are well positioned to use A.I. to become more productive, helping to draw more people to those areas.The study is part of a growing body of research pointing to the potential for chatbot-style artificial intelligence to fuel a reshaping of the population and labor market map of America. A.I.’s transformative force could change the nation’s economy and politics, much like other technological revolutions.“This is a powerful technology that will sweep through American offices with potentially very significant geographic implications,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he studies the regional effects of technology and government policy. “We need to think about what’s coming down the pike.”At issue is a new and rapidly growing breed of the technology known as generative A.I., which can quickly draft business reports, write software and answer questions, often with human-level skill. Already, predictions abound that generative A.I. will displace workers in call centers, software developers and business analysts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Amazon Warehouse Workers in New York City Join Protest

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    The workers’ union hopes that adding employees at the Staten Island warehouse to a protest started by delivery drivers will increase pressure on Amazon.Signaling an escalation in a labor campaign that began at seven Amazon delivery hubs on Thursday, workers at the company’s largest Staten Island warehouse began a protest there at midnight on Saturday.By late morning, a group of around 100 people — a small percentage of the more than 5,000 workers at that warehouse — had gathered outside. Union organizers had set up tents, food stations and a heater next to a bus station across the street from the warehouse. Many of the workers said they had been scheduled to work that day and did not clock in, while others said they had not been scheduled to work.They were joined by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, who spoke briefly and told the workers that “the law is on your side.”“I want all of you to know that Amazon can’t just share the benefits of your hard work at the top,” Ms. James said. “They need to make sure that you are being paid.”New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, visiting Amazon workers on Saturday morning at the Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesThe workers who joined the labor action said they wanted Amazon to provide better pay, sick leave and working conditions.Dakota Santiago for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • 113 Shares179 Views

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    Nvidia’s Global Chips Sales Could Collide With US-China Tensions

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    The chipmaker expects more than $10 billion in foreign sales this year, but the Biden administration is advancing rules that could curb that growth.In early August, the king of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, traveled from the mountains of his landlocked Asian country to the headquarters of Nvidia, a maker of artificial intelligence chips in the flatlands of Silicon Valley.King Wangchuck did a two-hour tour and listened as Jay Puri, Nvidia’s head of global business, discussed how Bhutanese investment in data centers and Nvidia chips could combine with the kingdom’s biggest natural resource, hydropower, to create new A.I. systems.The pitch was one of dozens that Nvidia has made over the past two years to kings, presidents, sheikhs and government ministers. Many of those countries went on to pour billions of dollars into government efforts to build supercomputers or generative A.I. systems, hoping to gain a competitive foothold in what could be the century’s defining technology.But in Washington, officials worry that Nvidia’s global sales spree could empower adversaries. Now the Biden administration is working on rules that would tighten control over A.I. chip sales and turn them into a diplomatic tool.The proposed framework would allow U.S. allies to make unfettered purchases, adversaries would be blocked entirely, and other nations would receive quotas based on their alignment with U.S. strategic goals, according to four people familiar with the proposed restrictions, who did not have permission to speak publicly about them.The restrictions would threaten an international expansion plan that Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, calls “sovereign A.I.” Mr. Huang has hopscotched the globe this fall, logging over 30,000 miles in three months, and the company expects to make more than $10 billion in sales this year from countries outside the United States.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Biden Cuts Intel’s Chip Award

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    The Silicon Valley company will receive less money from the CHIPS Act after winning a $3 billion military contract and changing some of its investment commitments.The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would award up to $7.86 billion in direct funding to Intel, with the U.S. chip giant set to receive at least $1 billion of that money before the end of the year.The money is a reduction from Intel’s preliminary award of $8.5 billion, which President Biden announced during a visit to the company’s Arizona plant in March. The Commerce Department said it had reduced Intel’s grant because the chip maker, the biggest recipient of money under the CHIPS Act, also received a $3 billion contract to make semiconductors domestically for the military.But the Commerce Department also detailed in a project document that Intel, which is under financial pressure because of a sales slump, had extended timelines for some projects beyond a 2030 government deadline.The company now plans to invest $90 billion in the United States by the end of the decade, after previously saying it would spend $100 billion over the next five years. It also reduced the estimated jobs it would create in Ohio, where it will require 3,500 fewer employees than the 10,000 it previously estimated, the Commerce Department said.Commerce and Intel officials said those changes weren’t a factor in the final award.Intel’s shifting timeline and jobs projections speak to the challenges the Biden administration has run into as it tries to rev up domestic chip-making. The CHIPS Act, a bipartisan bill passed in 2022, provided $39 billion to subsidize the construction of facilities to help the United States reduce its reliance on foreign production of the tiny, critical electronics that power everything from dishwashers to iPads.Nailing down its CHIPS award has been a priority for Intel, which last month reported the biggest quarterly loss in the company’s 56-year history. It has been cutting costs and fending off takeover interest from rivals, after the total value of the company fell to around $107 billion, from $500 billion in 2000. (Other chip makers have also been facing challenges, because of a cyclical slump in the industry.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More