Chinese AI Firm Circumvents Nvidia Ban
Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has reportedly trained large models on Nvidia's most advanced GPUs, circumventing a U.S. export ban. An official confirmed the use of top-tier chips, highlighting persistent challenges in the enforcement of technology export controls. The development underscores the difficulty in preventing sanctioned technology from reaching targeted entities through gray-market or rerouted channels.
- A senior U.S. official stated the chip in question is from Nvidia's most advanced "Blackwell" series, which is explicitly barred from shipment to China under current export controls. The administration believes DeepSeek will likely remove technical indicators from the hardware to obscure its origin. - The initial U.S. export controls, which began in October 2022, banned high-performance chips like Nvidia's A100 and H100. In response, Nvidia created compliant, lower-performance versions for China, the A800 and H800, but subsequent rule tightening in October 2023 also blocked these sales. - Circumvention of these controls often involves routing hardware through third-party countries. For example, a U.S. House Select Committee alleged DeepSeek specifically acquired restricted Nvidia GPUs that were supplied via intermediaries based in Singapore. - Another method used by Chinese firms to bypass physical export bans is to legally rent access to restricted chips, such as the A100 and H100, through U.S.-based cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services. - Despite its portrayal as a startup, DeepSeek is designated a "National High-Tech Enterprise" in China and receives significant state funding through entities like the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC). Research also shows connections between DeepSeek-affiliated researchers and the People's Liberation Army (PLA). - Beyond acquiring hardware, U.S. AI lab Anthropic has accused DeepSeek of "industrial-scale" theft of its AI models. The allegation claims DeepSeek used a technique called "distillation" to train its own models by processing millions of exchanges through fraudulent accounts on Anthropic's "Claude" AI. - Enforcement efforts have led to the U.S. Department of Justice shutting down a China-linked smuggling network that allegedly sent tens of millions of dollars worth of H100 and H200 GPUs to China by falsifying documentation.
