Dario Amodei, who is the CEO of Anthropic, has criticized the US government’s decision to allow chipmakers like Nvidia to sell their powerful AI chips to China. Anthropic is the creator of the popular AI chatbot cloud and is backed by Amazon and Google. Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Amodei said the decision could have serious security implications for the US and compared the “sale” to a nuclear weapons trade with North Korea.

Highlighting the power of chips and AI in an interview with Bloomberg, Amodei said it is “crazy” that companies like Nvidia and AMD have been given the green light from the Trump administration to sell their AI chips to China after a brief pause. Nvidia and other chipmakers are still not allowed to sell their most powerful chips to China-based AI companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek, but allowing them to sell their second-best options could also be a threat to the US in terms of national security and the race for global dominance.

Chinese AI companies are only months behind US companies like Anthropic and OpenAI in terms of AI capabilities, warn Amodei and other AI pioneers like DMind CEO Demis Hassabis, and the worry is that, if they get access to the most powerful chips in the world, it will only accelerate their growth. The US currently holds an edge on hardware which gives it a competitive edge in AI as well.

Amodei said, “Imagine that 100 million people are smarter than any Nobel laureate. And it would be under the control of some country. So, I think it’s crazy.” He added, “It’s like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.”

In the interview, Amodei warned about potential national security risks and the future of the US if China takes over the latest Nvidia or AMD chips. He said, “We are 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. The analogy I thought about was the incredible national security implications of building models that are essentially cognition, which is essentially intelligence.”

“The CEOs of these companies (like Nvidia) say it is the restrictions on chips that are holding us back. They say this clearly,” he said without naming names. He added, “I hope they change their mind about not sending our latest generation chips.”

Nvidia has argued that the US chip ban could encourage China to develop its own domestic alternatives, thereby excluding US chip companies from a huge market. In other words, it could be bad for business.

Last September, Amodei warned that US dominance in semiconductors is the country’s ultimate strategic advantage over China, and the AI ​​chip ban is one area where Washington still holds a decisive edge. “Selling these chips to China is mortgaging our future as a country,” he said. On the semiconductor or chips front, he said at the Axios AI+DC summit last year, “It can control the destiny of nations. It can control the future of freedom and democracy.”