Subject: China’s moves into AI & U.S. Policy Response
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ch...
China’s Z.ai and America’s Self-Defeating AI Strategy
The company’s success despite U.S. sanctions proves export restrictions are counterproductive.
By Aaron Ginn, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 5, 2025
China’s DeepSeek shocked the global AI community in January by building a frontier model at a fraction of Western costs. …
Z.ai, formerly Zhipu AI, last week launched GLM-4.5, a production-level open-source model priced at 13% of DeepSeek’s cost. It matches or exceeds Western standards in coding, reasoning and tool use. Z.ai runs on only eight Nvidia H20 chips, which Nvidia recently gained reapproval to sell in China. That’s better performance than DeepSeek with about half the hardware…
China is taking a top-down approach that combines—on an international scale—GPU infrastructure diplomacy, open-source development and low-cost offerings on everything AI, from models and hardware to engineers.
The new “AI Plus” initiative aims to integrate Chinese models into key industries and export Chinese AI and hardware to the Global South—no export license, no questions asked…
The research firm Bernstein projects that Nvidia’s global AI market share will drop a whopping 12% this year alone, if restrictions largely remain in place. China’s foundry capacity has vastly surpassed Washington’s expectation, and China is shipping chips abroad several years ahead of schedule…[end quote]
The rest of the article is an editorial urging the deregulation of exporting U.S. chips.
The U.S. government has just published “America’s AI Action Plan” under the aegis of President Trump.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-...
America’s AI Action Plan has three pillars: innovation, infrastructure, and international
diplomacy and security…
Remove Red Tape and Onerous Regulation…The Federal government should not allow AI-related Federal funding to be directed toward states with burdensome AI regulations that waste these funds, but should also not interfere with states’ rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation…
Ensure that Frontier AI Protects Free Speech and American Values
We must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas…AI systems are becoming essential tools, profoundly shaping how Americans consume information, but these tools must also be trustworthy…
Recommended Policy Actions
• Led by the Department of Commerce (DOC) through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), revise the NIST AI Risk Management Framework to eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change. …
Led by DOC through NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), conduct research and, as appropriate, publish evaluations of frontier models from the People’s Republic of China for alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points and
censorship…[end quote]
This policy paper is 23 pages long. I only read the first couple of pages and already see radical changes in policy.
The declaration, “AI systems are becoming essential tools, profoundly shaping how Americans consume information, but these tools must also be trustworthy” is a clear expression of intent to turn AI systems into propaganda. One could say that AI may already be loaded with propaganda – with a progressive bias – but the new policy appears to be to eliminate information that doesn’t support a right-wing bias.
NIST (National Institute of Standards and Testing) is a purely data-driven institute that focuses on standards like the precise length of the second. Ordering it to “eliminate references” that NIST’s technical experts deem to be purely observational and factual (such as climate change) is similar to ordering the BLS to misrepresent the employment numbers or the Federal Reserve to cut the fed funds rate when inflation is still elevated and potentially rising.
I really don’t understand the meaning of “alignment with Chinese Communist Party talking points.”
The Chinese advances are an imminent threat to Nvidia whose stock has propelled the growth in SPX.
The U.S. AI Action Plan may or may not directly impact the development of AI in America, depending upon how government funding and softer pressure influences the companies such as Google.
What do you'all think of this?
Wendy