The Trump administration’s decision to permit Nvidia to resume the sale of its H20 advanced AI processors in China has not been well-received by all parties.

A letter to the United States was composed by a group of 20 national security experts and former government officials.

On Monday, July 28, Howard Lutnick, the secretary of the Department of Commerce, urged the Trump administration to rescind its recent decision to permit Nvidia to recommence the sale of its H20 AI processors in China.

The letter referred to the Trump administration’s recent decision as a “strategic misstep” that will have a negative impact on the U.S.’s AI “edge” for both military and civilian use cases.

The letter explicitly targeted H20’s AI inference, which involves the use of a trained AI model to make decisions based on unobserved data.

“The H20 is a powerful accelerator of China’s frontier AI capabilities, not an outdated AI chip,” the letter stated.

“The H20 is optimized for inference, the process that is responsible for the significant capabilities gains achieved by the most recent generation of frontier AI reasoning models, and it is specifically designed to operate within export control thresholds.”

The H20 surpasses the H100, an AI processor that this administration has restricted access to due to its sophisticated capabilities, in inference tasks.

The letter also asserted that the sale of H20 chips in China will exacerbate the current AI chip bottleneck in the United States, that these chips could be utilized to support China’s military, and that this decision will undermine overall chip export controls.

The letter stated that the decision to prohibit H20 exports earlier this year was the correct one.

“We request that you continue to uphold that principle and prevent the sale of advanced AI chips to China in order to preserve America’s technological advantage.” This is not a matter of commerce. It pertains to national security.

Stewart Baker, the former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under George W. Bush; David Feith, a former member of the National Security Council; and Matt Pottinger, the former deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, are among the people who signed the letter.

This letter is being issued two weeks after the Department of Commerce (DOC) granted Nvidia permission to resume the sale of its AI processors in China in connection with ongoing trade negotiations with China regarding rare earth elements.

Lutnick attempted to minimize the decision at the time, asserting that Nvidia’s H20 was the company’s “fourth best” AI processor.

Last week, the Trump administration unveiled its AI Action Plan, which underscored the necessity of U.S.

There was a lack of specificity regarding the nature of the export constraints proposed for AI chips.