America Prepares New AI Chip Restrictions to Close China's Backdoor Access (msn.com) 13
The U.S. wants to limit China's access to advanced AI chips, reports the Wall Street Journal, with new rules to restrict sales in parts of the world.
"The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington. The latest round of curbs could come this month... Among the restrictions, the administration aims to introduce caps on shipments of AI chips to certain countries for use in large computing facilities, people familiar with the plans said. One grouping of countries — close U.S. allies — would be unrestricted, the people said, while another tier of countries would face limits on the number of chips that can go into data centers used for AI... The purchasing caps primarily apply to regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the people said...
The administration recently sent letters to major chip-makers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics informing them about some of the restrictions, these people said. The letters said the companies needed to apply for a license to transfer chips to China that are manufactured using advanced chip-making technology or meet other criteria. These criteria include a size and transistor-number limit as well as any indication that the chips are for use in training AI models, the people said. Previous regulations already limit the shipment of advanced GPUs and memory chips to China, but the new rules spell out more clearly to manufacturers what is banned.
U.S. officials "are also considering other options," the article points out. "The administration is considering placing controls on exports of the so-called weights that underlie advanced AI models, according to people familiar with the matter, and weighing further China-specific restrictions on chip manufacturing."
"The rules are aimed at China, but they threaten to create conflict between the U.S. and nations that may not want their purchases of chips micromanaged from Washington. The latest round of curbs could come this month... Among the restrictions, the administration aims to introduce caps on shipments of AI chips to certain countries for use in large computing facilities, people familiar with the plans said. One grouping of countries — close U.S. allies — would be unrestricted, the people said, while another tier of countries would face limits on the number of chips that can go into data centers used for AI... The purchasing caps primarily apply to regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the people said...
The administration recently sent letters to major chip-makers including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and Samsung Electronics informing them about some of the restrictions, these people said. The letters said the companies needed to apply for a license to transfer chips to China that are manufactured using advanced chip-making technology or meet other criteria. These criteria include a size and transistor-number limit as well as any indication that the chips are for use in training AI models, the people said. Previous regulations already limit the shipment of advanced GPUs and memory chips to China, but the new rules spell out more clearly to manufacturers what is banned.
U.S. officials "are also considering other options," the article points out. "The administration is considering placing controls on exports of the so-called weights that underlie advanced AI models, according to people familiar with the matter, and weighing further China-specific restrictions on chip manufacturing."
Hard to enforce (Score:2)
This will be very hard to enforce "with smugglers sneaking Nvidia’s top-of-the-line AI chips into China through channels such as ordinary freight or individuals carrying them through customs" but I understand the motivation.
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It was called COCOM. You can still look it up, albeit with some difficulty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Bullying... I mean.. diplomacy. The US government has agreements with the governments of Taiwan and S.Korea and the Netherlands that say that those governments will tell their corporations to do what the US government wants.
ASML is the company that builds the lithography equipment required to make the best chips. They license the technology for that equipment from... the USA. They agree to abide by US restrictions as part of that license.
The USA has set itself up to have leverage over all the players in
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>> They license the technology for that equipment from... the USA
Not disputing, but do you have a cite for that?
>> those governments will tell their corporations to do what the US government wants
That one also please.
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Even ignoring anything the US can do, Taiwan has the most to loose from China gaining advanced technology and would not want that to happen.
Trying to prevent China... (Score:3)
...from acquiring tech is futile. See the drug war for a good example
They will always find ways of getting it
Even worse, they may invent something better and refuse to sell it to us
Will probably be an advantage for China (Score:3)
If they have to do without Artificial Idiots, they can instead invest their efforts into actual advances.
Holding back the tide (Score:2)
I suspect this is likely going to end up being counterproductive. Restrictions have very little chance of doing anything other than diverting resources into domestic production and the Chinese have no shortage of talent and means to produce excellent AI hardware and models. From what I remember HBM was one of the last hurdles and they shaved a year off of the timeline for domestic production.
Just wish I can believe restrictions are actually security related and not just US corporations throwing up road bl