I have some sympathy for certain domestic capabilities (e.g. chip fabrication) but this "AI" bubble cross-infecting government policy is frustrating to watch.
I think, though, that even if LLMs turn out to be a dead-end and don't progress much further... there are a lot of benefits here.
One of the US's key strategic advantages is brain drain.
We are one of the world's premier destinations for highly educated, highly skilled people from other countries. Their loss, our gain.
There are of course myriad other countries where they could go, many of them more attractive than the US in various ways. Every country in the world is in a sense competing for this talent.
the real fear should be that people wouldnt want to come. already chinese intl students are break even when considering US vs going back to china. who wants to deal with all the bureaucracy and hatred when they could just go back and work for deepseek.
I think the brain drain has peaked. Many people here in Europe don't think much of the US anymore, while 20-30 years ago it was THE place to go.
I'm sure many countries like India and China, for whom the US still might be somewhat attractive, are going to go the way of Europeans.
Speaking as an immigrant myself, so long as there's still noticeable wealth disparity, people will make the jump. The other aspect that makes US specifically especially attractive compared to some others is its family immigration policy - people generally want their family to join them eventually, and US has an unusually large allotment for that compared to many other countries.
Yeah it sounded like a gift to nVidia.
My prediction was that nVidia would ride the quantum wave by offering systems to simulate quantum computers with huge classical ones. They would do that by asking the government to fund such systems for "quantum algorithm research" since nobody really knows what to use QC for yet.
This move primes that relationship using the current AI hype boom.
So look for their quantum simulation-optimized chips in the near future.
GPU, gpgpu, crypto, ray tracing, AI, quantum. nvidia is a master at milking dollars from tech fads.