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▲ flowerlad a day ago

Chinese AI companies are free to use any Nvidia GPU they want as long as the GPU is not physically located within China. It is entirely consistent with US export controls for Chinese AI companies to remotely use GPUs located in Singapore or Malaysia.

“In facilities across the region, Megaspeed rents Nvidia chips to Chinese tech giants such as Alibaba, an arrangement that does not violate current US export control regulations.” See [1].

[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/beyond-the-spy-sc...

▲sigmoid10 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Literally my first thought. Noone can stop them from training in data centers that are located elsewhere. It's not like some military hardware that needs to be physically shipped to China for them to make use of it. In fact why would they bother with Chinese compute providers if those are limited because of GPU export controls? They knew this for a long time and probably have been knocking on the door of providers in other countries for a while. Heck, they could be training inside the US. They already distribute their open model weights from the US.

▲gpt5 a day ago | parent [-]

The US definitely has the power to stop most of it. It just looks like the executive branch doesn’t yet have the legal authority to do it, but it’s in an advanced legislative state.

▲flowerlad a day ago | parent | next [-]

How are you going to monitor who is logging into a system, or who a job is being run for? If you want that level of control the machines should not be exported at all.

▲vikramkr 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Datacenters are very large and not very mobile and full of very expensive export controlled equipment and training runs are large expensive contracts. This is not exactly a difficult context to enforce KYC rules in

▲cowlevel 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same way they do for Iran: if they catch you providing services to someone in Iran, they send you to jail for life. And they monitor all financial transactions so they'll notice.

▲graemep 19 hours ago | parent [-]

They can do that to Americans. Harder for the rest of the world. How is the US going to monitor CIPS payments? How will they jail someone who never goes to the US? Just how much global jurisdiction is the US claiming?

▲throwaway2037 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In practice, the key ways that the US exerts influence outside of its own borders: (1) Sanction the company, which means any other company that does business with that company can also be sanctioned. (2) If enough companies are evading sanctions in a single country or the govt is helping those companies, then threaten to cut the country from USD settlement with the Federal Reserve, e.g., no USD FX allowed. That pretty much screws most economies. The "long arm" of the US govt is very, very, very long!

To be clear: I am not saying any of this is fair (or legal); I am only explaining how it works.

▲cowlevel 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How is the money going to end up in a US account via CIPS?

▲graemep 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Why would it need to end up in a US account?

▲cowlevel 11 hours ago | parent [-]

That's where Jensen Huang is

▲graemep 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Does he own any data centres outside the US?

▲tremon 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> How will they jail someone who never goes to the US?

The same way they "jail" UN-appointed judges that go against their masters' interests: de-platform them from all US-controlled payment and software platforms.

▲graemep 12 hours ago | parent [-]

That is not jail.

if you are referring to people at the ICC, they are cut off from US services, but that is a long way from being in jail.

▲cowlevel 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Can't travel, can't shop, can't have a cellphone or even a landline...

▲graemep 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes, they can. They cannot buy things from Amazon or book through booking.com, as that French judge said, but they can do things that do not require American systems. Do you have any evidence they cannot have phones? What stops they shopping in person? Or booking directly with a hotel?

> He said: “We are going 30 years back in time. It’s like a time machine returning us to a pre-digital world,” he told France TV.

https://vinnews.com/2026/03/23/icc-judge-who-issued-netanyah...

▲krageon 8 hours ago | parent [-]

If you would be so kind as to read your own source, it answers your questions

▲awesome_dude a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The same way that SAAS and IAAS (etc) providers do now for citizens of other countries under sanctions - IPs, Credit Cards

▲mahkeiro a day ago | parent [-]

So another company in Asia is going to execute the batch and send the result back to China. And you can add as many indirection levels as you like. This is going to be impossible to track.

▲vikramkr 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You'd just invert it. Make it so you have to be approved under export controls as a customer like they were gonna do for mythos (and like how mythos sort of still works) and make it an allowlist instead of a denylist

▲awesome_dude 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If that company is acting in defiance of sanctions, like any other company that acts as a middleman to circumvent sanctions, and it is caught, it will face severe consequences.

There's no gotcha here, companies the world over could just ignore any sanctions they wanted, and some try to, but they do so knowing they themselves are (potentially) breaking local and international laws.

You might have well asked "what if a company helps you by importing contraband instead of you doing it directly"

▲ 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]
[deleted]
▲Qiu_Zhanxuan 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

None of them are breaking local and international laws by doing so, unless a country's ruling says other countries laws supersede their own

▲awesome_dude 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the key reasons that a country like the USA can enforce sanctions is that it can tell other countries that if their companies/citizens/etc break the sanctions, then the USA will put restrictions on those countries ability to trade with the USA, which is why only a few countries will trade with Iran, North Korea, and Russia

▲nmfisher 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

At some point those countries will also tire of the USA trying to tell them what to do and will tell the USA politely to fuck off. This is basically what India did with US sanctions on Russia and Iran.

Given the USA has completely torched its reputation amongst allies in the space of a year, I would expect this to happen more often.

▲throwaway2037 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly right. The term I use is "economic network effect".

Does anyone know why does the US allows Canada to trade with Cuba? That one always stood out to me as a bit odd. My guess: Canada is the largest trade partner with the US, so the US probably has more to lose by sanctioning Canada.

▲cowlevel 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, that's called a treaty, or a trade agreement. Remember all the fuss about Investor/State Dispute Settlement clauses? Most countries have them with each other by now.

▲awesome_dude 19 hours ago | parent [-]

To add to this, if the provider suspects that a customer is facilitating sanction busting, or could reasonably be expected to have foreseen it, that's enough for a discussion with lawyers...

▲LtWorf 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Lol what consequences? Such shell companies can appear by the thousands every hour. Even if you ban 2 or 3 it doesn't matter.

▲awesome_dude 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Funny, sanctions have successfully applied to countries such as Russia, Iran, etc for decades...

They do try workarounds, and when those are caught there are consequences

You can sit back down now.

Edit: Is there going to be more "laws can be broken so let's not bother" arguments, because that's lame and boring

▲graemep 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> sanctions have successfully applied to countries such as Russia, Iran, etc for decades.

Largely because other countries are willing to go along with it, and to the extent they are willing to do so.

Even NATO countries import Russian gas. The UK rolled back sanctions on Russia to import diesel earlier this year. Most of the rest of the world did not impose effective sanctions and lots of people trade with them (including huge economies like China).

The rest of the world is to dependent on China to want to get involved. The US might succeed in the current administrations attempt to split the world into new cold war spheres of influence (because people are scared of China too) but its not going to be easy, it will be painful, and its not going to get many countries to completely agree to what the US wants.

▲LtWorf 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> They do try workarounds, and when those are caught there are consequences

Lol. Yeh we can all see how well the sanctions worked on Russia and Iran. Thanks for proving my point!

▲awesome_dude 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Again with the "laws are broken so let's not have them" argument.

▲LtWorf 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sanctions aren't laws. USA doesn't have universal jurisdiction. Electing someone USA doesn't like is not a crime.

▲awesome_dude 3 hours ago | parent [-]

- Sanctions aren't laws

Oh my poor sweet summer child, they are.

- USA doesn't have universal jurisdiction.

Not sure if you understand this, but nobody said they do, but, if you have a quick browse of the threads, it has been pointed out how they ensure cooperation from other countries.

- Electing someone USA doesn't like is not a crime.

Show me where anybody claimed anything close to that.

The truth is you've come here with a mindset based on a political ideology and that's blinded you to the objective discussion being held.

Further, the fact that I keep pointing out your argument is the same as the one where people claim laws are of no use because they are routinely broken does not mean anything other than I am telling you how pathetic your claim is.

Good day.

▲petesergeant a day ago | parent | prev [-]

You're going to make it the provider's problem, unleash the full wrath of the US Government on one or two who don't comply pour encourager les autres, and then it self-regulates(ish).

▲QuantumNomad_ a day ago | parent [-]

> pour encourager les autres

I was wondering why you wrote this part in French instead of English. Turns out it is a phrase that is sometimes loaned into English. It comes from the (French) writings of Voltaire.

https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-aut...

▲__m a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How so? They would need to forbid nvidia to sell to anybody but US customers

▲vikramkr 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Or our allies that we control. But in terms of how - remember the mythos launch? Im absolutely not saying it's necessarily a good idea, I'm just that it's not that hard if we want to do it.

▲LtWorf 19 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

And regulate all the owners of nvidia hardware. Including, somehow, those who aren't in the USA.

▲jjtheblunt a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

how would that work?

▲ a day ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
▲cowlevel 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They're also free to use Nvidia GPUs physically located in China. However, customs and border enforcement will try to stop them from moving GPUs physically located outside China to physical locations inside China. However, if they can bypass that, they can use the GPU.

▲what_hn 19 hours ago | parent [-]

This is the key statement. Lol

▲Thlom 21 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there any international regulation that forces China to comply with arbitrary US export controls? If not I can't see why Chinese companies are not free to use any Nvidia GPU they can get their hands on period (How the US would then react towards China, the Chinese company and Nvidia is another question).

▲cowlevel 20 hours ago | parent [-]

No there isn't. If they have an Nvidia GPU, then they have it

▲chasil a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I see that here also:

https://archive.ph/BiSrT

"A key player in getting Megaspeed off the ground was Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce leader that has also been an aggressive player in AI, said people familiar with the negotiations at the time. The U.S. had begun imposing export controls on advanced chips in late 2022, preventing Nvidia from selling them directly to China over concerns they could boost China’s military and surveillance capabilities.

"Alibaba was looking for a partner that could help it access computing power from data centers stuffed with Nvidia chips located outside China, the people said."

▲hereme888 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

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