The United States and China fight an increasingly aggressive commercial war. In this pulse, both have imposed export controls to protect strategic sectors. Washington focuses on the most advanced chips, While Beijin responds with critical minerals restrictions. They seem firm measures, but everything indicates that they are not being fulfilled to the letter.
Chinese is avoiding restrictions. At the beginning of last year we learned that the popular liberation army He had managed to do with the most powerful NVIDIA GPUs, among which were the GPU A100 and H100. This was particularly relevant because the export of these products is prohibited by the US Department of Commerce.
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And they were not only the Chinese armed forces: also universities and research centers controlled by the government were using prohibited products. Washington believes that this has been possible by different ways, but concluded that the main channel were intermediary countries that collaborate with the Asian giant.
First Singapore, now Malaysia. As The Economist points out, Singapore was one Of the countries that raised suspicions, simply because the figures did not square. In the last quarter of 2023, Nvidia multiplied by five shipments to customers in Singapore compared to the same period of the previous year, which suggested a possible detour to Chinese users.
HGX H200, one of Nvidia’s most advanced products
Now the focus is in Malaysia. According to Financial TimesThe United States suspects that many of the Nvidia chips enter the country end up in Chinese hands, avoiding current commercial restrictions. Given this scenario, Washington has begun to press the Malaysian government to control the trail of these latest generation chips.
Tracking shipments is not so easy. The Minister of Commerce, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, has taken note of the requirement of the US and, he explains, has formed an interministerial working group to collaborate. However, he warns, that tracing chips shipments along the supply chain is not as simple as it seems and that it is a broad effort.
Malaysia has become One of the great world epicenters of data centers, which explains the massive arrival of chips for the facilities that support companies such as Microsoft or Bytedance, the Tiktok matrix. According to Aziz, Washington is also promoting internal measures to reinforce control over the supply chain.
Waiting for results. For now, it remains to be seen if the pressure of the North American country will take effect. Malaysia has reasons to cooperate: a commercial retaliation could put its flourishing data centers at risk. Fulfill could simply be a way to protect your strategic position on the global technological map.
The US does not want to give the arm to twist. The United States is doing everything possible to limit China’s access to avant -garde chips, mainly because of the Dual use risk: civil technologies that can also be applied in the military field. The concern is that these advances end up reinforcing the defensive and offensive abilities of the Chinese army.
Images | Nvidia + Photoshop
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