“China has effectively a back door: using companies in Southeast Asia to let its companies train its models. If you can get access to a data center in Malaysia or Singapore, Alibaba and other companies can kind of catch up. They can get around the restrictions that the U.S. has in place.”
The Bulwark · Policy · November 2026
Context
The host asked why US chip export controls exist. Barnes explained the original aim of keeping a lead over China and how Southeast Asian data centers let Chinese firms work around it, context for the Nvidia chip-smuggling probe.
Transcript
…him, it would have enormous implications for the broader AI race between the U.S. and China. It would also run counter to or would complicate several years of policy coming out of Washington. Limiting how much hardware NVIDIA can sell in China so as to avoid falling behind in the AIA race.
Julian, that's what I wanted to ask you about. We have these current export controls, right, on some of the kinds of chips, the most advanced frontier chips that NVIDIA is responsible for. Why do those export controls exist in the first place?
Well, I mean, export controls kind of began in the first Trump administration and then were doubled down in the Biden administration as they Biden administration officials would talk about a small garden with high walls. They would say, like, look, on the most important chips, and we're talking about NVIDIA's black wells here, you want to make sure that China doesn't get them, right? This is all about keeping the U.S. lead, six months to nine-month lead, and potentially extending it. NVIDIA publicly says that they don't want China to have to be to there be a delay before China gets the most advanced chips. But, you know, NVIDIA has not been a company that has been wonderfully enthusiastic about export controls here. And they felt that the Biden administration was way too tight and way too restrictive on who they were selling their chips to. NVIDIA exists to sell chips, as many chips as they can to as many people as they can. And so that's the issue here, right? Like, if you're going to keep an edge, you need the people who have the most compute, the most black wells…
Julian, what is the strongest evidence that we have at this point that Alice Wong was working for Chinese intelligence?
So it's important for everybody to understand, like, we are working in the world of intelligence, and we are not talking about evidence, right? It's not a court of law. Now, what NVIDIA's board in their investigation might be able to find out might be interesting. They might be able to look at…
I'm just curious, how common are these kinds of honey traps, if in fact, intelligence officials think it was a honey trap?
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