Over the past year, Chinese military agencies, state artificial intelligence research institutes, and universities have purchased batches of Nvidia semiconductors that the US has banned from exporting to China, Reuters reports, according to UNN.
Details
The sales to largely unknown Chinese suppliers underscore the difficulty Washington faces, despite its bans, in completely cutting off China's access to advanced U.S. chips that could fuel breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and military applications.
Buying or selling high-quality U.S. chips is not illegal in China, and publicly available tender documents show that dozens of Chinese organizations have bought and received Nvidia semiconductors since the restrictions were imposed.
These include the A100 and the more powerful H100 chip, which were banned from export to China and Hong Kong in September 2022, as well as the slower A800 and H800 chips developed by Nvidia for the Chinese market, but which were also banned last October.
Among the buyers were elite universities, as well as two organizations subject to US export restrictions - the Harbin Institute of Technology and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China - which have been accused of being involved in military affairs or affiliated with a military body, which is contrary to US requirements.
It is noted that after restrictions in the United States, an underground market for such chips emerged in China.
At the same time, Nvidia said it complies with all applicable export control laws and requires its customers to do the same.
Addendum
Chris Miller, a professor at Tufts University and author of The War of the Chip: The Struggle for the World's Most Important Technology, said it was unrealistic to think that US export restrictions could be watertight, given that chips are small and easy to smuggle.
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