Intel CEO Pet Gelsinger claims that he's a "Christian farm boy at heart" who believes "values are the most enduring thing leaders create."

Oddly for an American Christian farm boy, Gelsinger isn't terribly interested in the patriotic interest of ensuring that cutting-edge American technology isn't used to strengthen America's greatest military adversary. Equally tragic is the stance of Nvidia's Taiwanese-American CEO Jensen Huang.

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Unconcerned that China wants to gain access to Nvidia's AI chips in order to build its unmanned warfare capacity to annihilate Taiwan's sovereignty, like Gelsinger, Huang regularly wails about U.S. restrictions on chip exports to China. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon is similarly opposed to China-related high technology product restrictions, though he at least cannot be described as unpatriotic (Amon is Brazilian).

This is relevant for two reasons.

First, the semiconductor industry's lobbying group, the Semiconductor Industry Association, has just released a new statement. It describes the U.S. government's "Repeated steps ... to impose overly broad, ambiguous, and at times unilateral restrictions... " on semiconductor chip exports to China. It then offers the platitude that the White House should work with Beijing to "ease tensions and seek solutions through dialogue, not further escalation. And we urge the administration to refrain from further restrictions until it engages more extensively with industry and experts to assess [whether they are fit for purpose]."

The obvious implication of this arrogant statement is that the White House has moved too fast and too aggressively on chip exports to China. The opposite is true: The White House is acting too slowly on chip exports. But the timing of the Semiconductor Industry Association's message is very deliberate.

As Bloomberg reports, the leaders of Intel, Qualcomm, and Nvidia are meeting with national security adviser Jake Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard on Monday. The CEOs' mission in Washington? To persuade the White House to do Beijing's bidding and relax export restrictions on their high-tech products. Or, at the very least, to persuade the White House to avoid further restrictions.

Their ethical subroutines might be malfunctioning but these CEOs aren't idiots. On the contrary, they are some of the brightest American executives of the modern era. There is no question that they know why the Biden administration and Congress are so concerned about China accessing their higher-end products.

It's not because, as Beijing so often claims, the U.S. wants to obstruct China's economic development. It's because, as China's regulatory frameworks on AI and technology prove, Beijing views the distinction between civilian technology and military technology as moot. It's because Xi Jinping's regime is prioritizing the development of the People's Liberation Army's weapons targeting and sensor systems in preparation for a near-term war with the U.S. over Taiwan. And it's because Qualcomm, Nvidia, and Intel products are increasingly critical towards the development of those systems.

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It is unconscionable that BlackRock's Larry Fink is so keen to invest in China's domestic tech industry. But that these American technology giants are willing to help the PLA better target American planes, cities, ships, and satellites is equally outrageous. Putting dollar signs before the lives of young American sailors should be a red line for any American CEO.

And certainly any Christian farm boy.