According to CRN, President Trump told CBS News’ 60 Minutes program that he won’t allow Nvidia to sell its most advanced AI chips to China and stated “every other country outside the United States won’t have access too.” The president specifically mentioned that “the most advanced, we will not let anybody have them other than the United States,” referring to chips like the Grace Blackwell Superchip in Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 platform. However, Nvidia partners interviewed by CRN expressed little concern, with most senior executives and directors believing the statement was either misspoken or would never happen. The skepticism comes against the backdrop of Nvidia’s growing sovereign AI business, which CFO Colette Kress said in August was on track to generate more than $20 billion this year. Industry partners pointed to recent major international deals, including Nscale’s plan to use 300,000 Grace Blackwell GPUs worldwide and South Korean deals representing 260,000 GPUs, as evidence that global restrictions are unlikely.
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The Economic Impossibility of Isolation
What Trump’s statement fundamentally misunderstands is how deeply embedded Nvidia’s technology has become in global economic development strategies. The company’s sovereign AI initiative isn’t just about selling chips—it’s about creating entire national AI ecosystems that countries are investing billions to develop. When nations like the UK commit to deploying 60,000 Blackwell GPUs domestically as part of larger 300,000-unit global deployments, they’re not making reversible purchasing decisions. These are multi-year infrastructure projects with contractual obligations that would trigger massive legal and diplomatic consequences if suddenly blocked. The $20 billion sovereign AI revenue stream Kress highlighted represents nearly a quarter of Nvidia’s total revenue—no administration would realistically jeopardize that economic engine.
The Technical Enforcement Nightmare
Even if the political will existed, the practical implementation of such a blockade would be technologically unworkable. Nvidia’s most advanced chips, including the Blackwell architecture, aren’t standalone products but components in complex systems that get integrated into global supply chains. Once these chips leave US borders, tracking and controlling their movement becomes nearly impossible. We’ve seen this play out before with previous export restrictions—determined nations develop elaborate transshipment networks through intermediary countries, creating a cat-and-mouse game that even the most sophisticated enforcement agencies struggle to manage. The notion that the US could effectively monitor and control every advanced AI chip globally is a logistical fantasy.
The Alliance Conundrum
As Dominic Daninger of Nor-Tech correctly noted, the US has decades of established technology sharing relationships with key allies that would be severely damaged by such restrictions. Countries like the UK, Japan, Australia, and South Korea are not just customers but strategic partners in semiconductor development and national security. Blocking their access to critical technology would undermine intelligence sharing agreements, defense partnerships, and joint research initiatives that form the bedrock of US global influence. The geopolitical cost would far outweigh any perceived competitive advantage in AI development, potentially driving allies to accelerate their own semiconductor industries as insurance against future US unpredictability.
The Innovation Backfire Effect
History shows that technology restrictions often accelerate the very competition they’re meant to prevent. When the US restricted advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China, it catalyzed a massive domestic investment in chip production capabilities. A global blockade would likely have similar effects, pushing Europe, Asia, and Middle Eastern nations to fast-track alternative AI hardware development. Companies like Graphcore, Cerebras, and numerous Chinese AI chip designers would suddenly find themselves with willing global customers looking to diversify away from US dependency. The long-term consequence could be fragmenting the global AI ecosystem and creating multiple competing standards—exactly the opposite of maintaining US technological leadership.
The Market’s Verdict
The most telling response came from the market itself—Nvidia’s stock price rose 2.17 percent following Trump’s comments, indicating investors see this as political theater rather than substantive policy. Wall Street understands that Nvidia’s business model depends on global scale, and that the company has navigated export restrictions before by creating compliant versions of its technology for different markets. The real risk isn’t sudden policy changes but the gradual erosion of trust in US technology reliability, which could slowly push international customers toward developing domestic alternatives or seeking partnerships with more predictable suppliers.
