The US, China, and chips – a Q&A with Nazak Nikakhtar

Midjourney

Behind the scenes of the artificial intelligence race has been a competition for the most powerful computer chips in the world. It’s a race fought between large companies, but also by governments eager to control access to chips — and thus, AI development.

In this arena, the United States has a huge advantage. Many of the most important chip companies — including AMD, Intel, and Nvidia — are headquartered in the US. And through export controls, the Biden administration has been able to restrict the sale of specific chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China and its allies. The ongoing trade war with China, which started in earnest under the Trump administration, has expanded and focused on AI under Biden.

GZERO spoke with Nazak Nikakhtar, who served from 2018 to 2021 as the Department of Commerce’s assistant secretary for industry & analysis at the International Trade Administration and oversaw export controls while fulfilling the duties of the under secretary for industry and security at Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

She is now a partner at the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington, DC. We asked her about her time in the Trump administration, the goal of current US export policy, and what proposals she’d like to see under Biden — or the next administration — to promote the country’s AI ambitions and keep China at bay.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

GZERO: How has the rapid pace of artificial intelligence development changed the need for US export controls in the past few years? Was this a focal point when you were last at Commerce in 2021?

Nikakhtar: Artificial intelligence has certainly been a focal point for export controls, and it came to the forefront in many ways since ECRA [the Export Control Reform Act of 2018] made explicit the need to control emerging technologies.

It’s critical that the US government develop a robust control mechanism for emerging technologies, given that they are emerging so they are quickly evolving. This requires an innovative approach to export controls where the targets should be adversary nations rather than allies. We should be working to relax export controls to allied nations while building greater, more expansive, and more robust restrictions for adversaries.

Is the number one export control goal keeping the chips and equipment necessary for artificial intelligence development out of the hands of China?

Nikakhtar: The goal is all-enabling capabilities, including chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. [China] is misusing AI to oppress its own population, perpetrate gross human rights violations, and embolden the People’s Liberation Army. The US and its allies should not be complicit in this.

How do you think the Biden administration has handled the expansion of export controls? Have they been effective at limiting China’s access?

Nikakhtar: I commend the Biden administration for endeavoring to create controls on sensitive technologies to the PRC and other adversary nations. However, the effectiveness of the controls lies in the details of the rules. Unfortunately, our rules today fall short. They continue to enable circumvention by PRC entities and third-country entities that support the PRC.

How can the administration limit that circumvention?

Nikakhtar: Fundamentally, when it comes to the PRC and other high-risk circumvention countries, broader rules generally reduce the avenues available for circumvention. We also need to be cognizant of the fact that entities in the PRC have (and hire) the required engineering talent to use non-choke point technology to produce cutting-edge items, which again means that the scope of our rules needs to be broader. Finally, the PRC’s various national security and anti-foreign sanctions laws demand that PRC entities not comply with US national security laws, which means that any items we export to the PRC will, as a matter of PRC law, fall into the PLA’s and other malign actors’ hands. Therefore, the question the US government needs to ask itself, when licensing items to the PRC, is whether it can tolerate the PRC government having access to the exported technology because it will inevitably fall into dangerous hands within the PRC and likely even beyond (e.g., Iran and Russia).

How seriously do you take reports that Huawei has made strides with its chip development?

Nikakhtar: Very seriously. Of course Huawei has, because the US and our allies have not taken adequate measures to weaken Huawei’s and the PRC’s access to technologies necessary to make dangerous high-tech items. Our collective export control rules remain very porous.

Are there specific proposals you would like to see implemented in the final few months of this administration?

Nikakhtar: We need an overhaul of the US export control system to better restrict exports of sensitive technologies to US adversaries and develop more flexible rules for allies. The current approach isn’t nimble enough to achieve these goals simultaneously.

How do you feel about the tension between the US government and companies looking to boost their sales who keep running into stringent rules?

Nikakhtar: Companies can boost sales to allied nations, and the US government should encourage them to do so. This is a matter of substitution. The less we export to adversaries, the more we have the ability to build out the supply chains of our allies and better integrate our capacities with theirs to grow our technologies and economies faster.

More from GZERO Media

A Russian army soldier walks along a ruined street of Malaya Loknya settlement, which was recently retaken by Russia's armed forces in the course of Russia-Ukraine conflict in the Kursk region, on March 13, 2025.

Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS

The Russian leader has conditions of his own for any ceasefire with Ukraine, and he also wants a meeting with Donald Trump.

Mahmoud Khalil speaks to members of the media about the Revolt for Rafah encampment at Columbia University on June 1, 2024.

REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

The court battle over whether the US can deport Mahmoud Khalil, the 30-year-old Palestinian-Algerian activist detained in New York last Saturday, began this week in Manhattan. Khalil, an outspoken activist for Palestinian rights at Columbia University, was arrested Saturday at his apartment in a university-owned building at Columbia University by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, and he is now being held in an ICE detention center in Louisiana.

The Israeli Air Force launched an airstrike on Thursday, targeting a building in the Mashrou Dummar area of Damascus.
(Photo by Rami Alsayed/NurPhoto)

An Israeli airstrike destroyed a residential building on the outskirts of Damascus on Thursday in the latest Israeli incursion into post-Assad Syria.

Lars Klingbeil (l), Chairman of the SPD parliamentary group, and Friedrich Merz, CDU Chairman and Chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, talk at the end of the 213th plenary session of the 20th legislative period in the German Bundestag.

Germany’s government is in a state of uncertainty as the outgoing government races to push through a huge, and highly controversial, new spending package before its term ends early this spring.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, a Republican, speaks as the U.S. vice president visits East Palestine, Ohio, U.S., February 3, 2025.
Rebecca Droke/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

On Wednesday, Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin redefined the agency’s mission, stating that its focus is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home, and running a business.”

Paige Fusco

Canada has begun thinking the unthinkable: how to defend against a US attack. It suddenly realizes — far too late – that the 2% GDP goal on defense spending is no longer aspirational but urgent. But what kind of military does it need? To find out, GZERO Publisher Evan Solomon spoke with retired Vice Admiral Mark Norman, the former vice chief of defense staff in Canada and currently a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

The energy transition is one of society’s biggest challenges – especially for Europe’s largest economy – according to a survey commissioned by the BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt and undertaken by the Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research. Sixty percent of those polled believe the energy transition is necessary but have doubts about how it is being implemented. A whopping 63% would like to be more involved in energy-transition decisions affecting their region. The findings strongly suggest that it’s essential to get the public more involved in energy policymaking – to help build a future energy policy that leads to both economic prosperity and social cohesion. Read the full study “Attitudes Toward the Energy Transition” here.