In a marked reversal in foreign policy from his first term, President Trump announced Monday that the U.S. will now allow China’s communist regime to purchase some of the most advanced American-made microchips available on the market. A growing cohort of experts and lawmakers say the move will severely undercut national security by allowing the U.S.’s biggest global adversary to use the powerful technology to develop more advanced weaponry and cyber warfare tactics.

In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that the move will boost the U.S. economy while also taking into account national security. “I have informed President Xi of China that the United States will allow Nvidia to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security,” he stated. … “$25% will be paid to the United States of America. This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers.”

Notably, the move came a week after the president met with Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, in which the two “discussed H200 exports, people familiar with the matter said.” Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company by market share at $4.5 trillion due to exploding demand for its high-powered AI chips. Since the beginning of Trump’s second term, the company “has been applying a full-court press” on the administration to ease restrictions on the global sale of its chips, which it argues will secure the U.S.’s world dominance in the technology sector.

But experts like Aaron Bartnick, a former Biden administration tech and security official who is now at Columbia University, say that the decision is “shortsighted” due to how the H200 chip will likely advance China’s own chip abilities. The Institute for Progress think tank estimates that the H200 is “almost six times as powerful” as Nvidia’s previous H20 chip, which was approved for export to China earlier this year.

White House AI czar David Sacks justified the move by claiming that not allowing China to acquire the chips would lead to Chinese tech competitors like Huawei to intensify their efforts to catch up with the technology. But former Homeland Security and National Security Agency official Stewart Baker disagreed, remarking, “There’s no world in which they are not going to continue to press as hard as possible to have a domestic industry that will ultimately have as its goal the bankruptcy of Nvidia and the dependence of the United States on Chinese AI.”

Democratic lawmakers are also voicing concerns. “Access to these chips would give China’s military transformational technology to make its weapons more lethal, carry out more effective cyberattacks against American businesses and critical infrastructure, and strengthen their economic and manufacturing sector,” eight senators, including Chris Coons (Del.) and Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), observed in a statement. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) further contended that the chip decision is a “profound national security mistake and a gift to our top strategic competitor.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s own Justice Department appeared to acknowledge the national security threat posed by the export of the Nvidia chips through an enforcement action announced Monday. The DOJ stated that it was charging two businessmen for allegedly attempting to illegally export “at least $160 million worth of export-controlled Nvidia H100 and H200 Tensor Core graphic processing units (GPUs)” to China. As the press release noted, the chips “are designed to process massive amounts of data, advancing generative AI and large language models and accelerating scientific computing” and “are used for both civilian and military applications.”

Gordon Chang, an author who serves as a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, expressed serious concerns about the administration’s course reversal on export controls of the chips during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday.

“The H200 chip is far more advanced than anything that we have allowed,” he explained. “… [T]here are a lot of people, including the Commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who say … ‘We want to keep China addicted to our technology stack.’ Well, China will never be addicted to our stack. They demand self-sufficiency, and they’re working very hard toward it, putting a lot of resources. What they want are good American chips because they want to bridge a gap. They know that their chips now are not as good as ours, but they could very well be in the near future. But in that gap, they do need America’s chips to train their AI models and for other things. So no, we shouldn’t be doing this.”

Chang went on to argue that the ultimate goal of the Xi Jinping regime is not to compete with the U.S., but to subjugate it.

“[In] May 2019, [the] People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, carried a landmark editorial that declared a ‘People’s War’ on us in 2023,” he pointed out. “PLA Daily, which is the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, defined ‘People’s War’ as ‘total war.’ So we know what they want. Xi Jinping has been pushing this notion that he’s the world’s only legitimate ruler, which means he thinks of the United States, at best, as a colony. This is an existential struggle. President Trump needs to get on the page.”

Chang further underscored that China’s communist regime is using “unrestricted warfare” to undermine the U.S., which will likely be aided by advanced microchips. “… China will use these chips in its military. China has this doctrine of military civil fusion, which means that everything that a civilian institution has gets pipelined to the military. The Chinese military is being configured to kill Americans. So whether we talk about strategic aspects or not, the point is we should never help any country kill Americans. It’s as simple as that.”

Chang also highlighted how Beijing will likely use the advanced chip technology to further enhance its surveillance capabilities, which are already part of the world’s most extensive and sophisticated system. “We know that a lot of American technology has gone into China's surveillance state, from Microsoft to other companies. This never should have been permitted in the first place. But we are giving China a big advantage if we are increasing their ability to use artificial intelligence to surveil the Chinese people.”

“And they’re exporting it to other repressive regimes,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins added. “Yeah, absolutely,” Chang concurred.