Anthropic is producing some of the best models in the world at the moment, but it appears that it believes that the Chinese are still far too close for comfort.
Speaking to Bloomberg at Davos, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei delivered a stark warning about the Trump administration’s reported willingness to ease chip export restrictions to China. The AI leader didn’t mince words, comparing the potential policy shift to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea,” as he outlined why maintaining technological advantage in AI development is critical to national security.
When asked about the administration’s stance on providing high-speed chips and video chips to Chinese companies, Amodei confirmed his concerns. “The thing that is holding them back, and they’ve said it themselves, the CEOs of these companies say it’s the embargo on chips that’s holding us back,” he explained. “They explicitly say this and now indeed there are some policies and I hope they change their mind to explicitly send, not quite our latest generation of chips, although it was reported that even that was being considered, but the generation of chips that’s just one back that’s still extremely powerful.”
Amodei emphasized the significant lead the United States currently holds in chip manufacturing capabilities. “We are many years ahead of China in terms of our ability to make chips. So I think it would be a big mistake to ship these chips,” he said.
The Anthropic CEO then painted a vivid picture of what’s at stake in the AI race, framing it in terms of raw cognitive power. “The analogy I’ve thought of, if you think about the incredible national security implications of building models that are essentially cognition, that are essentially intelligence, right? I’ve called where we’re going with this a country of geniuses in a data center. Imagine a hundred million people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner, and it’s gonna be under the control of one country,” he warned.
His conclusion was unequivocal: “I think this is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging.”
A Consistent Voice Against Easing Export Controls
Amodei’s comments at Davos represent a continuation of his hawkish stance on chip exports to China. He had previously asked for export curbs of chips to China in early 2025, emphasizing the strategic importance of maintaining the United States’ technological edge in AI development.
His concerns come at a critical juncture in US-China tech policy. In December last year, the US decided to allow Nvidia H200 sales to China while taking a 25% cut, a move that sparked immediate debate in the tech community. Just days later, the rationale became clearer when the US Commerce Secretary explained that the decision was intended to split Chinese developers between US and Chinese tech ecosystems to slow them down.
However, Amodei’s warning suggests he views this strategy as fundamentally flawed. Even older-generation chips, he argues, provide enormous computational power that could accelerate Chinese AI development. His “country of geniuses in a data center” metaphor underscores the transformative nature of advanced AI systems and why allowing potential adversaries access to the hardware needed to build them poses existential risks. Interestingly, Amodei has also hinted that open-source isn’t as important for AI as other fields, suggesting he takes a broader cautious approach to AI proliferation beyond just hardware exports. And as the Trump administration considers its tech policy toward China, Amodei’s stark warning from Davos adds a prominent voice to the debate over whether economic incentives should outweigh national security concerns in the race to develop artificial general intelligence.