Notes on Jensen v Dwarkesh

MATCH Act, kobe energy, cyber as shiny object, Jensen's inner fire, lawyers v engineers

This post originally appeared in ChinaTalk.

“Without access to foreign tools the US could control, Chinese chip and memory makers would not be in a position to even produce the meager amounts they can today.”

Some notes of what struck me most from the instant classic of a pod.

Are AI chip exports a red herring?

The Trump administration has agency over the two variables most relevant to whether China will have enough compute to really compete with the US: how many chips they can make and how many chips they can buy. But for all the drama we’ve had this administration around whether Trump will allow Jensen to sell chips to China, we’ve had basically zero movement on the tooling side. Without access to foreign tools the US could control, Chinese chip and memory makers would not be in a position to even produce the meager amounts they can today.

This administration teased controls on sub-systems in Trump’s July 2025 AI Action Plan, but absent the headfake around the Affiliates Rule that was wound down after Beijing escalated on rare earths, we’ve had zero movement to close loopholes.