DION WIGGINS
“U.S. sanctions meant to weaken China’s AI capabilities backfired, collapsing Nvidia’s dominance in China and accelerating the rise of sovereign alternatives like Huawei’s Ascend and Biren GPUs. China now has enough domestic GPU capacity not only to fully replace Nvidia at home but also to export AI hardware and full-stack solutions abroad.
On August 12, 2025, Chinese regulators delivered an ultimatum to the country’s tech giants: stop buying Nvidia and shift to domestic GPUs, effective immediately. As a result, Nvidia is being actively avoided in China while Chinese GPUs expand across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Nvidia lost billions in revenue while China gained geopolitical leverage by proving AI sovereignty at scale. This is no longer just about chips, it’s about who controls the future rules of global AI.
Put simply, America’s attempt to choke China’s AI future by turning Nvidia’s GPUs into a geopolitical weapon will go down as one of the most spectacular cases of FAFO in modern history.”
More to come. Via LinkedIn
This article is part of an ongoing series dissecting the global AI realignment—and exposing how Western narratives often obscure what's really happening in China and other markets. If you’ve read “No, Digital Sovereignty Doesn’t Mean You’re Anti-America or Pro-China: It’s Anti-Dependence,” you already know the framing: this isn’t cheerleading for China. It’s about recognizing reality, rejecting dependency, and reclaiming control.
Then there is William Burns from TECH POLICY PRESS
“But investing in AI is also a potent way of maintaining the status quo, while appearing to shake it up, because it posits a technological future without the systemic change that other reforms imply. In that light, we must resist the spectacle. AI sells a vision of progress where algorithms can unlock secrets faster, better, cheaper; yet, the secrets of nature are not so easily revealed, and knowledge without understanding is no knowledge at all.”
AUTHORS
William Burns has almost 20 years of experience in science and technology policy at the intersection of health, environment, food, and sustainable energy. His original training was a PhD in malaria biochemistry followed by an MSc in science communication.
