The United States and China are racing to build ever-more-advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that will power the economies and, increasingly, the militaries of the future. To date, the U.S. has sought to restrict China’s access to America’s best AI technology, but some are now pushing to reverse that trend and expand U.S. exports of advanced AI chips to China. That would be a historic mistake.

As it stands, America is firmly in the lead of the AI race. U.S. software companies are responsible for class-leading AI models such as ChatGPT, while hardware industry leader Nvidia, the world’s first $4 trillion company, is producing the semiconductors required to power AI at a quantity and quality that Chinese companies can still only dream of.