(Nathan Laine/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The best AI chips will one day be made in America, according to Vice President JD Vance.
“To safeguard America’s advantage, the Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American designed and manufactured chips,” he said in a speech on Tuesday at the Paris AI Summit.
President Trump has said he plans to tariff foreign-made chips, including those from Taiwan's TSMC, which produces cutting-edge silicon for Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and others. Though it has a production facility in Arizona, TSMC makes most of its processors in Taiwan. As a result, the tariffs risk raising prices for PCs, smartphones, and graphics cards, in addition to enterprise-grade GPUs for AI training, although US chip maker Intel stands to benefits.
While Vance didn’t mention the tariffs in his speech, he did talk about the US' need to harness AI, despite concerns the technology might disrupt society. Specifically, Vance opposed reining in AI with more rules, which the European Union has done. Instead, he’s betting artificial intelligence will unlock productivity gains for human workers rather than take jobs away.
“It is not going to replace human beings. It will never replace human beings,” he said, later adding: “We need our European friends in particular to look at this frontier with optimism, rather than trepidation.
“We believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off,” he added. “And we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-AI policies.”
Vance's other key point was an insistence that the US will dominate the AI industry. “The United States is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way,” he said.
While the White House invites other countries to follow the US on AI, Vance signaled the Trump administration will retaliate against foreign governments that try to regulate US tech companies.
“The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety, it will be won by building, from reliable power plants to the manufacturing facilities that can produce the chips of the future,” he said. Vance also noted the Trump administration is developing an “AI action plan” that’ll avoid a “precautionary regulatory regime" while ensuring the technology benefits human workers.
Last month, Trump rescinded a slew of executive orders from former President Joe Biden, including one intended to ensure safe, secure, and trustworthy AI. A day later, he announced that OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank had committed to spending $500 billion for AI data centers.