Source: The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
China is abandoning subtlety in its chip sovereignty campaign. Government officials now explicitly coerce AI companies to abandon US processors under threat of patriotic denunciation. The shift from incentive-based industrial policy to direct coercion suggests Beijing sees the performance gap with Nvidia as widening and its own timeline as compressed—and that Chinese chips remain inadequate for cutting-edge AI work. Voluntary adoption won't close the gap fast enough. The move will accelerate corporate hedging: companies will maintain US supply chains while appearing compliant. It will further splinter the global AI infrastructure market into incompatible regional stacks.