Bruin AI Current Events
Power Plays in Tech | Trump’s Antitrust Push
Good afternoon!
Thanks to everyone who joined us at the 2025 SoCal AI Responsibility Summit! We were thrilled to host students from across California, feature speakers from industry giants like Google, Nvidia, and Microsoft, and spotlight cutting-edge student research. The event also marked the exciting culminaton of our Responsible AI Hackathon. Congrats again to all our winning teams!
In this week’s edition, we break down the Biden-to-Trump continuity in Big Tech antitrust enforcement and dive into Washington’s latest crackdown on Nvidia as the US tightens export controls amid rising AI tensions with China.
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🧭 Ethics
- Karen
Nvidia Crackdown
Low-cost, high-performance models such as DeepSeek developed in China have been able to rattle American markets, prompting the Trump administration to reconsider existing export controls and launch a new wave of restrictions on Nvidia, this time focusing on the sale of the advanced H20 chips to China. The H20 has been in particularly high demand as it was used to train DeepSeek’s most recent model, surpassing many more expensive models in performance. The move is the latest step in a broader crackdown aimed at curbing China’s rapid rise in artificial intelligence.
Nvidia disclosed that it expects to take a $5.5 billion revenue hit after Washington blocked shipments of its H20 chip to China. The H20 had been designed specifically to comply with earlier US restrictions. However, with even that now off the table, Nvidia’s China business is expected to “fall to nearly zero,” according to analysts, as Chinese tech giants move toward domestic suppliers.
The export restrictions are part of a broader policy strategy: to slow China’s access to cutting-edge US technology, especially semiconductors that could supercharge military applications. But they also reflect mounting alarm in Washington over DeepSeek’s rise. The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is investigating how the start-up acquired access to an estimated 60,000 Nvidia chips—20,000 of which were restricted from export to China. Lawmakers believe some may have been funneled through intermediaries in Singapore. The committee has demanded that Nvidia hand over sales data going back to 2020 from 11 countries across Asia.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Chinese trade officials this week in Beijing, telling them the US controls have had a “significant impact” on the company’s business. Still, Nvidia said it will “continue to spare no effort” to serve the Chinese market within legal bounds.
The crackdown is already pushing China’s tech giants to pivot. Companies like ByteDance and Tencent, which ordered hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips last year, are now accelerating the shift to domestic chipmakers like Huawei, Cambricon, and Hygon. Huawei’s Ascend series processors, in particular, have emerged as leading contenders to fill the vacuum.
For Washington, this is a double-edged sword. While the new restrictions deny China short-term access to top-tier chips, they also risk boosting Huawei’s long-term standing. Nvidia’s former dominance helped delay Huawei’s rise in AI chipmaking. Now, Huawei may have the breathing room to catch up. US officials are betting the cost is worth it to protect national security. But industry voices warn that without access to the Chinese market, US chipmakers may be ceding long-term influence.
This crackdown is one more manifestation of the technological Cold War between the US and China that will determine who leads the next generation of global infrastructure. Whether the US can starve China of chips without pushing it to become self-sufficient faster is an open question. For now, Nvidia is caught in the middle.
-Tobin
Trump’s Continued Antitrust Efforts
Despite hopes from Silicon Valley that his second term might mean lighter regulation, the Trump administration has largely stayed the course on antitrust enforcement against the tech industry. From court battles over Google’s dominance to trials involving Meta’s acquisitions and looming cases against Apple and Amazon, the Trump administration is signaling that its approach won’t veer far from the aggressive line against Big Tech’s market power during the Biden years.
This past week, a federal judge ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in online advertising. The decision marked a major win for the Department of Justice (DOJ), which accused Google of using exclusionary tactics to dominate ad tools that serve both buyers and sellers. The court found that Google’s control over all three critical pieces of the digital ad pipeline—publisher tools, advertiser tools, and exchange software—had harmed competition, raised costs, and stifled innovation. While the judge didn’t go as far as approving a breakup, the government is now weighing what remedies to pursue. Meanwhile, another high-stakes hearing begins this week over Google’s search monopoly, where the DOJ is pushing for the company to spin off its Chrome browser entirely.
These cases are part of a broader legal offensive that started in Trump’s first term, picked up speed under President Biden, and is now continuing with renewed momentum. Meta is currently in court over claims that it squashed emerging competitors by buying Instagram and WhatsApp, a strategy regulators describe as “buy or bury.” The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) case, filed under Trump and advanced by Biden, is expected to run into the summer and feature testimony from CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself.
Beyond Google and Meta, the FTC has accused Amazon of exploiting small sellers on its platform, with a trial set for next year. The DOJ sued Apple for creating a “walled garden” that makes it hard for consumers to leave its ecosystem. Apple is trying to get that case dismissed.
While antitrust generally has continued, the Trump administration is likely to take a slightly different approach to mergers and acquisitions. Biden’s antitrust team pushed the envelope with its aggressive theories of harm and lost several merger challenges. Trump’s new team is more cautious on blocking deals that do not reduce competition. Appointees say they want to “get out of the way of acquisitions that don’t present a competitive problem.”
In the context of this continuing environment of antitrust regulation, AI’s future is unclear. While Trump’s administration has rolled back some Biden-era efforts to regulate artificial intelligence, the antitrust lens hasn’t gone away. The DOJ is probing Nvidia’s market position, while the FTC is looking into Microsoft and OpenAI. The administration says it wants to protect competition without overregulating, a balancing act that tech companies are eager to influence.
For tech companies used to decades of unchecked growth, the era of accountability has taken hold across party lines. Though some remain optimistic that the Trump administration might shift its approach, the ongoing lawsuits, hearings, and investigations are continuing unabated.
-Tobin
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All the best,
Tobin Wilson, Editorial Intern
Karen Harrison, Newsletter Manager
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“The future of work isn’t just AI that knows everything. It’s AI that knows where to look, and tells you why it looked there.” - Sam Altman