In early August, the king of Bhutan, Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, traveled from the mountains of his landlocked Asian country to the headquarters of Nvidia, a maker of artificial intelligence chips in the flatlands of Silicon Valley.

8月初，不丹国王吉格梅·凯萨尔·纳姆耶尔·旺楚克从自己位于亚洲内陆高山的国家来到地势平坦的硅谷，参观了人工智能芯片制造商英伟达的总部。

King Wangchuck did a two-hour tour and listened as Jay Puri, Nvidia’s head of global business, discussed how Bhutanese investment in data centers and Nvidia chips could combine with the kingdom’s biggest natural resource, hydropower, to create new A.I. systems.

旺楚克国王进行了两个小时的参观，期间英伟达全球业务负责人杰伊·普里向其介绍了不丹在数据中心以及在英伟达芯片方面的投资如何能与该国最大的自然资源——水电结合起来，以创建新的人工智能系统。

The pitch was one of dozens that Nvidia has made over the past two years to kings, presidents, sheikhs and government ministers. Many of those countries went on to pour billions of dollars into government efforts to build supercomputers or generative A.I. systems, hoping to gain a competitive foothold in what could be the century’s defining technology.

这一提案是英伟达过去两年向各国国王、总统、酋长和政府部长提出的数十项建议之一。许多国家随后投入数十亿美元用于建设超级计算机或生成式人工智能系统，希望能藉此在可能定义本世纪的技术中占据竞争优势。

But in Washington, officials worry that Nvidia’s global sales spree could empower adversaries. Now the Biden administration is working on rules that would tighten control over A.I. chip sales and turn them into a diplomatic tool.

然而，在华盛顿，官员们担心英伟达的全球大推销可能会增强对手的力量。拜登政府正在制定规则，以加强对人工智能芯片销售的控制，并将其转化为外交工具。

The proposed framework would allow U.S. allies to make unfettered purchases, adversaries would be blocked entirely, and other nations would receive quotas based on their alignment with U.S. strategic goals, according to four people familiar with the proposed restrictions, who did not have permission to speak publicly about them.

据四位知情人士透露，该提议框架允许美国盟友进行不受限制的采购，而对手国家的采购则将被完全禁止，其他国家要根据其与美国战略目标保持一致的程度获得配额。这些人士因无权公开发言而要求匿名。

The restrictions would threaten an international expansion plan that Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, calls “sovereign A.I.” Mr. Huang has hopscotched the globe this fall, logging over 30,000 miles in three months, and the company expects to make more than $10 billion in sales this year from countries outside the United States.

这些限制将威胁到英伟达首席执行官黄仁勋所谓的“主权人工智能”计划。他今秋在全球东奔西走，三个月内飞行超过3万英里，而他的公司预计今年在美国以外的国家销售额将超过100亿美元。

Now, interested buyers like Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Bhutan could be caught in the contest for A.I. supremacy between the United States and China. Nvidia chip purchases may require cooperation with approved American and European cloud service operators and other assurances to the U.S. government that the technology won’t be shared with China.

现在，像沙特阿拉伯、马来西亚和不丹这样的潜在买方可能会被卷入美中之间的人工智能霸权竞争中。对英伟达芯片的采购可能需要与经过批准的美欧云服务运营商合作，并向美国政府提供其他保证，以确保技术不会与中国共享。

Mr. Huang has kicked off a last-minute lobbying effort to defang the rules, but it may be too late.

黄仁勋已经发起最后一刻的游说行动，试图削弱这些规则，但可能为时已晚。

“Every administration has made it very clear that unless the Chinese government changes its posture and the way it operates on the global stage, technology competition between the U.S. and China will continue,” said Klon Kitchen, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on national security and technology. “Companies like Nvidia should anticipate a tightening of the screws.”

“每届政府都非常明确表示，除非中国政府改变其在全球舞台上的姿态和运作方式，否则美中之间的技术竞争将继续，”美国企业研究所专注于国家安全和技术的非常驻高级研究员克隆·基钦表示。“像英伟达这样的公司应该早就预料到监管会收紧。”

‘This Tsunami of Interest’

“一场兴趣海啸”

In 2019, Sasha Ostojic, a former Nvidia executive from what is now Serbia, learned that his home country was considering A.I. chips from the Chinese company Huawei to support domestic start-ups. He encouraged Serbian officials to visit Nvidia first.

2019年，出身于现塞尔维亚的英伟达前高管萨沙·奥斯托伊奇了解到他的祖国正在考虑从中国公司华为购买人工智能芯片，以支持本国初创企业。他建议塞尔维亚官员先去英伟达一趟。

Serbian leaders left Nvidia’s headquarters persuaded that buying four Nvidia supercomputers, which cost about $500,000 each, would help accelerate their tech industry.

在参观过英伟达总部后，塞尔维亚领导人被说服了：购买四台英伟达超级计算机（每台约50万美元）将有助于加速其科技行业发展。

Some Serbians questioned the investment, said Stefan Badza, an adviser to the president of Serbia’s Parliament. But after the computers were received in 2021, Serbia’s start-up businesses swelled to 800, from 200.

塞尔维亚议会主席顾问斯特凡·巴扎表示，一些塞尔维亚人对这笔投资表示质疑。但在2021年收到这些计算机后，塞尔维亚的初创企业从200家增至800家。

The release of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022 made Serbia’s move look wise. An overnight sensation powered by artificial intelligence, the chatbot created a stampede of interest in A.I. chips from Nvidia, which controls 90 percent of that market. Part of the reason countries clamored to get the chips, even as a supply shortage made purchases difficult: ChatGPT was unavailable in more than two dozen of them, including Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. If those places wanted A.I. technology, it was apparent they’d have to build it on their own.

2022年末，OpenAI发布ChatGPT，瞬间成为热门话题，这让塞尔维亚的举措显得明智。这个由人工智能驱动的聊天机器人引发了对英伟达人工智能芯片的狂热需求，该公司控制该市场90%的份额。即便ChatGPT在包括沙特阿拉伯和越南在内的20多个国家都无法使用，部分国家仍然争先恐后地要获得芯片，有一部分原因是如果这些地方想要人工智能技术，显然只能自己搭建起这种技术。

本月，英伟达的杰伊·普里和黄仁勋与越南总理范明政及该国计划与投资部长阮志勇在河内合影。

“The unintended consequence rippled through the community that this is a really important technology that you probably don’t want to depend on a foreign country for,” said Keith Strier, who once worked for Nvidia and is now senior vice president of global A.I. markets at AMD, a rival chipmaker. “It triggered this tsunami of interest.”

“这一意外的后果在这个社群中引起了反响，那就是这是一项非常重要的技术，你大概率不想在这方面依赖外国，”曾在英伟达工作的基思·斯特里尔表示，他现在担任芯片制造的竞争对手AMD的全球人工智能市场高级副总裁。“这引发了一场兴趣海啸。”

In capitals across the world, there was a deepening conviction that A.I. should be treated as a utility. Its perceived importance made officials fear that they must spend money or risk falling behind rivals economically and militarily. And many wanted the added security of keeping data inside national borders, where they could guard sensitive information.

世界各国首都越来越深刻地认识到，人工智能应被视为一种公用事业。对于其重要性的认知让各国官员担心，如果不投入资金，他们可能在经济和军事上会落后于对手。此外，许多人希望确保数据保留在国土之内，以便保护敏感信息。

Nvidia responded to countries’ growing interest by building a division to work with governments, Mr. Puri said in an interview. He and Mr. Strier would meet with foreign leaders to discuss their computing needs, and Mr. Huang would whip up enthusiasm for investments in data centers filled with Nvidia’s chips.

普里在采访中表示，对于这种情况，英伟达的回应是组建了一个与政府合作的部门来应对各国日益增长的兴趣。他和斯特里尔会见外国领导人，讨论他们的计算性能需求，而黄仁勋则激发了各国对满是英伟达芯片的数据中心的投资热情。

The purchases have transformed the way governments approach computing. Until recently, smaller nations largely rented computing power from cloud computing giants like Microsoft and Google. It spared them the expense of paying for software updates, engineering support and semiconductor advancements. Now they’re taking on that work themselves.

这些采购改变了政府处理计算的方式。直到最近，小国基本上都是向微软和谷歌等云计算巨头租用计算能力。这使它们免去了支付软件更新、工程支持和半导体进步的费用。现在，他们开始自己承担这些工作。

Denmark was among the stampede of countries to contact Nvidia. Its leaders had first spoken to Mr. Huang in 2019, but had felt no urgency to invest, said Peder Lundquist, the chief executive of EIFO, the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark. After using ChatGPT, he said, Danish leaders understood the power of the technology and reached out to Nvidia to buy its chips.

丹麦是众多与英伟达联系的国家之一。丹麦出口与投资基金首席执行官佩德·伦奎斯特说，该国领导人在2019年首次与黄仁勋谈论相关事宜，但当时没有感到必须立刻投资。他说，在使用ChatGPT之后，丹麦领导人了解了这项技术的威力，并主动联系英伟达购买其芯片。

10月，黄仁勋与丹麦人工智能高管纳迪娅·卡尔斯滕，以及丹麦国王弗雷德里克十世。丹麦是众多与英伟达联系的国家之一。

EIFO and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, a Danish nonprofit focused on research, teamed up to invest $100 million on a supercomputer. Unveiled in October after six months of construction, it featured 1,528 A.I. chips and weighed more than 30 tons.

出口与投资基金和专注于研究的丹麦非营利组织诺和诺德基金会联手投资1亿美元建造了一台超级计算机。经过6个月的建造，这台超级计算机于今年10月亮相，使用了1528块人工智能芯片，重量超过30吨。

“We need to innovate and have a strong connection between applied research and businesses,” Mr. Lundquist said. “To excel, supercomputing power is incredibly important.”

“我们需要创新，需要在应用研究和企业之间建立紧密的联系，”伦奎斯特说。“要想脱颖而出，超级计算能力极其重要。”

A.I. Diplomacy

AI外交

As countries lined up to buy Nvidia’s chips, the Biden administration passed rules to keep tabs on the company’s sales. It worried that nations with ties to China, which has set a goal of becoming the world’s A.I. leader by 2030, might provide Chinese researchers and companies with access to Nvidia chips, so it required that some countries get a license for purchases.

在各国竞相购买英伟达芯片的同时，拜登政府也通过了一些规定来观测该公司的销售情况。拜登政府担心，与中国有联系的国家可能会向中国研究人员和公司提供英伟达芯片，因此要求一些国家获得购买许可。中国的目标是到2030年成为世界人工智能领导者。

The United Arab Emirates was one of the first countries to seek a license. In 2022, it earmarked $100 billion for A.I. investments and wanted to build the region’s fastest supercomputer.

阿拉伯联合酋长国是首批申请许可证的国家之一。2022年，阿联酋拨出1000亿美元用于人工智能投资，并希望建造该地区速度最快的超级计算机。

U.S. officials saw an opportunity. For almost a decade, they had struggled to persuade countries to stop using Huawei, even after warning of cybersecurity risks and the company’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

美国官员看到了机会。近十年来，他们一直苦于难以说服各国停止使用华为，即使在就网络安全风险和华为与中国共产党的关系提出警告之后。

Licensing requirements offered a new solution in the form of Nvidia chips.

许可证要求提供了一种新的解决方案，即通过英伟达芯片。

As part of an agreement that would give the use of a large number of Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips, the Emirates’ leading A.I. firm, G42, promised to relinquish its use of Huawei technology. In October, it unveiled a supercomputer filled with $30 million in Nvidia chips.

作为允许使用大量英伟达尖端芯片协议的一部分，阿联酋领先的人工智能公司G42承诺放弃使用华为技术。今年10月，该公司推出了一台超级计算机，里面装满了价值3000万美元的英伟达芯片。

Over the summer, White House national security and Commerce Department officials began telling chip industry executives that they were developing a new A.I. policy, two people familiar with the discussions said. Administration officials said the current licensing process for the Emirates and other countries was cumbersome. They wanted to introduce rules that made it easier to build A.I. data centers abroad, while improving their ability to track chips and guard against their diversion to China.

据两位熟悉相关讨论的人士称，今年夏天，白宫国家安全和商务部官员开始告诉芯片行业高管，他们正在制定一项新的人工智能政策。政府官员表示，阿联酋和其他国家目前的许可程序非常繁琐。他们希望出台一些规则，使在国外建立人工智能数据中心变得更容易，同时提高他们追踪芯片的能力，防止芯片流入中国。

They also wanted to make it easier for a country like the Emirates to buy Nvidia chips by replacing the licensing process with a bulk approval system that permitted sales to countries up to a preset limit.

他们还想让阿联酋这样的国家更容易购买英伟达芯片，方法是用批量审批系统取代许可程序，允许向不超过预设限额的国家销售。

9月，拜登总统欢迎阿拉伯联合酋长国总统谢赫·穆罕默德·本·扎耶德访问白宫。

This month, a draft of the rules began to circulate among chip lobbyists. The restrictions would provide speedier approval for data centers built by cloud computing providers from the United States and Europe, with a cap of hundreds of thousands of chips. But the process would be slower, with more scrutiny, for companies from other countries.

本月，一份规则草案开始在芯片游说人士中流传。这些限制将为美国和欧洲云计算提供商建立的数据中心提供更快的审批速度，芯片数量上限为数十万个。但对其他国家的公司来说，审批过程会更慢，审查也会更严格。

Mr. Huang and Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, called Biden administration officials to say the rules would hurt the company, three people familiar with the calls said. Others in the industry voiced similar concerns.

三位熟知内情的人士表示，黄仁勋和英伟达的法律总顾问蒂姆·泰特曾致电拜登政府官员，称这些规定会损害公司利益。其他业内人士也表达了类似的担忧。

In a statement, Ken Brown, an Nvidia spokesman, said, “We fully support national security and are happy to provide any information the government needs to inform policy.” He added, “Caps on mainstream data center products would be a major shift in approach that wouldn’t reduce the risk of misuse but would threaten economic growth.”

英伟达发言人肯·布朗在一份声明中表示：“我们完全支持国家安全，并乐意提供政府在制定政策时所需要的任何信息。”他还说：“对主流数据中心产品设置上限将是方法上的重大转变，不仅不会降低滥用的风险，反而会威胁经济增长。”

The Commerce Department declined to comment.

商务部拒绝发表评论。

The rules are expected to be unveiled in the coming weeks, the people said, and Mr. Huang has reached out to people close to the incoming Trump administration in the hope that they might roll back the rules in January.

这些人说，这些规定预计将在未来几周内公布，黄仁勋已经和能够接近即将上任的特朗普政府的人士进行了接触，希望他们能在1月收回这些规定。

How the Trump administration would handle this policy is unclear, said Gregory C. Allen, director of the Wadhwani A.I. Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But Republican leaders in the House and Senate have attacked past Biden administration restrictions on chip technology and China as too weak.

战略与国际研究中心瓦德瓦尼人工智能中心主任格雷戈里·艾伦说，目前还不清楚特朗普政府将如何处理这一政策。但众议院和参议院的共和党领导人曾抨击拜登政府过去对芯片技术和中国的限制过于软弱。

“We’re in an A.I. race with China, and we don’t want American companies giving Gatorade and Nike shoes to opponents in that race,” Mr. Allen said. “We want them on our side and on our side exclusively.”

“我们正在与中国进行一场人工智能竞赛，我们不希望美国公司在这场竞赛中把佳得乐和耐克鞋送给对手，”艾伦说。“我们希望它们站在我们这边，而且只站在我们这边。”