AI Chip Photo: VCG

In a Bloomberg interview published on Thursday, a White House tech official repeated the rhetoric of maintaining pressure on China over technology, while claimed that China is becoming increasingly adept at circumventing US export controls and is now likely less than two years behind the US in semiconductor design capabilities. The rhetoric reflects a contradictory approach by US officials, who still seek to curb China's AI development, even as these efforts fail to slow China's rapid progress, said a Chinese expert.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday, David Sacks, the White House's top official on cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence policy, expressed his so-called concern over the rapid progress of Huawei Technologies Co, noting that the company is quickly narrowing the technological gap with international competitors. He also cited the recent breakthrough by Chinese AI firm DeepSeek as evidence that China continues to make significant strides despite US restrictions.

"Before DeepSeek, people thought that Chinese AI models were years behind and we realized that they are only months behind," Sacks was quoted as saying in the Bloomberg report. 

In an exclusive interview with the People's Daily published on June 10, Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei said that "the US has exaggerated Huawei's achievements — the company isn't that powerful yet." However, he also noted that "we use mathematics to compensate for physics, non-Moore's Law approaches to complement Moore's Law, and group computing to make up for single-chip limitations, which can also achieve practical results." 

In the Bloomberg interview, Sacks criticized the Biden administration's proposed "AI diffusion rule," which he noted had previously been rolled back under the Trump administration. He asserted an advocacy for a more nuanced approach to chip export controls, claiming that US allies are willing to comply with security requirements while partnering with American technology companies.

"The leading American semiconductor should not go to China, but we have export controls on that," he said. "I don't think that we need a new globalized regime on every single GPU transaction to achieve the objective," according to Bloomberg.

Earlier in the months, Sacks reportedly claimed that China is only "months" behind the US in AI, while vowing to ensure that the US will not lose in the race. "China is not years and years behind us in AI. Maybe they're three to six months," said Sacks. "It's a very close race," according to a Reuters report on June 11. 

The claims reflect a contradictory approach by US officials, who seek to curb China's AI development, even as these efforts fail to slow China's rapid progress, said Ma Jihua, a veteran telecom industry analyst.

Ma told the Global Times on Thursday that the US is trying to exert extreme pressure through technology controls that could however trigger backlash, as China's chip industry and AI technologies have continued to upgrade and innovate in the face of heavy US restrictions. 

"Sacks' remarks are not aimed at easing AI-related restrictions on China. Instead, they reflect a policy approach that differs from the Biden administration's," Ma warned, noting that the current US government has relaxed controls on other nations and even encouraged them to adopt US technologies and products, while focusing its efforts on suppressing Chinese competitors. 

The expert noted that the US fears not only losing ground in the global market, but also the potential blowback from its own restrictive policies. In many ways, it is a reluctant choice driven by anxiety over China's accelerating technological rise, Ma added.