The “Huawei” issue remains an open wound for Republicans. They hoped that the Trump administration’s restrictions had finally put China’s largest technology company, Huawei, out of action, but as we know, the wounded Huawei has not only recovered but seems to have come back stronger than before. The numbers speak, the latest quarterly reports speak.
The wound occasionally bleeds again, and it happened Friday when Republican lawmakers they noticed that Huawei, despite the sanctions and restrictions, presented a notebook with an Intel AI processor
To clarify, although given our audience it would not be necessary, the notebook is the MateBook they are because the writing IA is no longer present on the potato chip packets. It is true that Intel’s processor can process machine learning models, but it is also true that we are talking about a commercial AI that has nothing to do with the sacrosanct issues linked to the supply of NVIDIA and AMD chips for data centers and super computers to China. In short, all AI cannot be lumped together.
The paradox is that it was precisely the Trump administration that gave Intel, as well as Qualcomm and AMD (but not only) permission to these American companies to sell processors to Huawei for consumer products, this since 2020. In these years during the Biden administration several times several members of Congress asked to revoke this license, but they relented after they were promised that the license it would expire by the end of this year and would not be renewed.
Huawei’s presentation irritated the hawks again, because everyone was convinced that the Department of Commerce had not approved a new license that appears to exist.
“One of the biggest mysteries in Washington is why the Commerce Department continues to allow shipments of U.S. technology to Huawei“Republican Rep. Michael Gallagher, chairman of the House of Representatives Special Committee on the United States and China, said in a statement to Reuters.
Someone then explained that that type of computer processor would not be among those included in the recent cascading restrictions on shipments of AI chips to China, but the question remains open.
Why can Intel still sell its processors to Huawei? The Commerce Department has not responded at this time.
Tags: announcement Huawei MateBook
