Are Nvidia's most powerful AI chips already in the hands of China's military?

Northwestern Polytechnical University of China, which has deep connections to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), procured powerful H200 AI chips from Nvidia despite being on the US export blacklist.

The university is among China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense,” an elite group dedicated to aiding the PLA. It carries out research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites.

A Reuters report, citing procurement records, revealed that the university bought two H200 chips in October for 874,700 yuan, or $1,23,000.

The report comes amid news of an alleged affair between Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Alice Huang, who was reportedly suspected of working as a spy for Beijing.

The NVIDIA H200 GPU is designed to make artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing faster and more efficient. It is the first GPU to use HBM3E, an advanced memory technology that provides more storage capacity and faster data processing. This helps improve the performance of generative AI, large language models such as ChatGPT, and complex scientific computing tasks.

A Bloomberg report had earlier said that several Chinese universities with military ties, including Jilin University, Beihang University, the University of Science and Technology of China, Beijing Institute of Technology, Zhuhai, Guilin University of Aerospace Technology and Xi'an Jiaotong University, apart from the aforementioned Northwestern Polytechnical University, were pursuing Nvidia's H200 AI chips.

Beihang University and Northwestern Polytechnical University are among the entities blacklisted by the US for their role in advancing the Chinese military. The H200 is usually denied to institutions that have been blacklisted.

Bloomberg had then quoted an Nvidia spokesperson as saying that it would be “silly” to think that the Chinese military would depend on “a few dozen second-hand GPUs.” “China has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications, with millions to spare,” the Nvidia spokesperson was quoted as saying then.

The Reuters report revealed that the university procured the chips from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology instead of obtaining them directly from Nvidia.

Procurement records show that Northwestern Polytechnical University also secured access to H200 chips and other powerful Nvidia AI processors this year through five contracts with Chinese companies.