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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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