… But it highlights how U.S. sanctions are pushing China to develop its own chips, which in turn attract other controversial states. That potentially allows China to extend its reach across an entire parallel supply chain. …
… Even if the U.S. midterms later this year help leash some of the more turbulent aspects of the Trump administration, they won’t end American ambitions to pull control of the global chip and AI supply chains away from China, and tuck it into Washington’s own catalogue of control. …
… Highly limited domestic HBM supply constrains how many Ascend-class accelerators Huawei can assemble. Huawei alone shipped around 812,000 chips last year and projects some $12 billion in processor revenue for 2026, a pace that its own supply chain has struggled to sustain. …
… With a crucial U.S.-China summit looming in September, the AI supply chain is being weaponized, once again, for global trade and supply negotiations, turning Silicon Photonics into a bargaining chip. …
… Renting is no cheaper, with an FT survey finding that GPU rates inside China now match or exceed U.S. prices, reversing the discount that the abundant smuggled supply once provided. …
… Taiwanese law doesn’t classify the unauthorized export of AI chips to China as a crime, so prosecutors are currently leaning on liberal interpretations of existing statutes to build their case. …
… Reports of underground hardware in China include thriving repair shops working on illicit Nvidia GPUs and firms stripping restricted NVIDIA silicon off dead boards to build custom "Franken-cards," show chip smuggling is a significant issue. …
… Huawei alone shipped roughly 812,000 AI chips and is projecting $12 billion in AI processor revenue for 2026 . Morgan Stanley estimates China's total AI chip market could reach $67 billion by 2030, with domestic supply covering roughly 76% of demand. …
… China, however, isn’t a neutral buyer for Qualcomm at the moment: The country’s market regulator opened an antitrust investigation into its Autotalks acquisition in October, and has pressed domestic data center operators to source at least 50% of their chips locally while steering Alibaba, ByteDanc… …
… There is also a domestic dimension, as the Korean AI-chip scene is made up largely of accelerator startups, making Huawei's arrival — backed by its supply scale and software depth — read as a competitive threat. …