BEIJING/SINGAPORE/NEW YORK — State-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services provided by Amazon or its rivals to access advanced U.S. chips and artificial intelligence capabilities that they cannot acquire otherwise, recent public tender documents showed.

The U.S. government has restricted the export of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years, citing the need to limit the Chinese military’s capabilities.

Providing access to such chips or advanced AI models through the cloud, however, is not a violation of U.S. regulations since only exports or transfers of a commodity, software or technology are regulated.

A Reuters review of more than 50 tender documents posted over the past year on publicly available Chinese databases showed that at least 11 Chinese entities have sought access to restricted U.S. technologies or cloud services.

Among those, four explicitly named Amazon Web Services, or AWS, as a cloud service provider, although they accessed the services through Chinese intermediary companies rather than from AWS directly.

The tender documents, which Reuters is the first to report on, show the breadth of strategies Chinese entities are employing to secure advanced computing power and access generative AI models. They also underscore how U.S. companies are capitalizing on China’s growing demand for computing power.

“AWS complies with all applicable U.S. laws, including trade laws, regarding the provision of AWS services inside and outside of China,” a spokesperson for Amazon’s cloud business said.

AWS controls nearly a third of the global cloud infrastructure market, according to research firm Canalys. In China, AWS is the sixth-largest cloud service provider, according to research firm IDC.

Shenzhen University spent $27,996 (200,000 yuan) on an AWS account to gain access to cloud servers powered by Nvidia A100 and H100 chips for an unspecified project, according to a March tender document. It got this service via an intermediary, Yunda Technology Ltd Co, the document showed.

Exports to China of the two Nvidia chips that are used to power large-language models, or LLM, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are banned by the United States.

Shenzhen University and Yunda Technology did not respond to requests for comment. Nvidia declined to comment on Shenzhen University’s spending or on any of the other Chinese entities’ deals.

Zhejiang Lab, a research institute developing its own LLM, called GeoGPT, said in a tender document in April that it intended to spend 184,000 yuan to purchase AWS cloud computing services as its AI model could not get enough computing power from homegrown Alibaba.

A spokesperson for Zhejiang Lab said that it did not follow through with the purchase but did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind this decision or how it met its LLM’s computing power requirements. Alibaba’s cloud unit, Alicloud, did not respond to a request for comment.

Reuters could not establish whether the purchase went ahead.

Moving to tighten access

The U.S. government is now trying to tighten regulations to restrict access through the cloud.

“This loophole has been a concern of mine for years, and we are long overdue to address it,” Michael McCaul, chair of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters in a statement, referring to the remote access of advanced U.S. computing through the cloud by foreign entities.

Legislation was introduced in Congress in April to empower the Commerce Department to regulate remote access of U.S. technology, but it is not clear if and when it will be passed.

A department spokesperson said it was working closely with Congress and “seeking additional resources to strengthen our existing controls that restrict PRC companies from accessing advanced AI chips through remote access to cloud computing capability.”

The Commerce Department also proposed a rule in January that would require U.S. cloud computing services to verify large AI model users and report to regulators when they use U.S. cloud computing services to train large AI models capable of “malicious cyber-enabled activity.”

The rule, which has not been finalized, would also enable the Commerce secretary to impose prohibitions on customers.

“We are aware the Commerce Department is considering new regulations, and we comply with all applicable laws in the countries in which we operate,” the AWS spokesperson said.

Cloud demand in China

The Chinese entities are also seeking access to Microsoft’s cloud services.

In April, Sichuan University said in a tender document it was building a generative AI platform and purchasing 40 million Microsoft Azure OpenAI tokens to support the delivery of this project. The university’s procurement document in May showed that Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology Co Ltd supplied the tokens.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment. Sichuan University and Sichuan Province Xuedong Technology did not respond to requests for comment on the purchase.

OpenAI said in a statement that its own services are not supported in China and that Azure OpenAI operates under Microsoft’s policies. It did not comment on the tenders.

The University of Science and Technology of China’s Suzhou Institute of Advanced Research said in a tender document in March that it wanted to rent 500 cloud servers, each powered by eight Nvidia A100 chips, for an unspecified purpose.

The tender was fulfilled by Hefei Advanced Computing Center Operation Management Co Ltd, a procurement document showed in April, but the document did not name the cloud service provider. Reuters could not determine its identity.

The University of Science and Technology of China, or USTC, was added to a U.S. export control list known as the “Entity List” in May for acquiring U.S. technology for quantum computing that could help China’s military, and for involvement in its nuclear program development.

USTC and Hefei Advanced Computing Center did not respond to requests for comment.

Beyond restricted AI chips

Amazon has offered Chinese organizations access not only to advanced AI chips but also to advanced AI models such as Anthropic’s Claude, which they cannot otherwise access, according to public posts, tenders and marketing materials reviewed by Reuters.

“Bedrock provides a selection of leading LLMs, including prominent closed-source models such as Anthropic’s Claude 3,” Chu Ruisong, president of AWS Greater China, told a generative AI-themed conference in Shanghai in May, referring to its cloud platform.

In various Chinese-language posts for AWS developers and clients, Amazon highlighted the opportunity to try out “world-class AI models” and mentioned Chinese gaming firm Source Technology as one of its clients using Claude.

Amazon has dedicated sales teams serving Chinese clients domestically and overseas, according to two former company executives.

After Reuters contacted Amazon for comment, it updated dozens of posts on its Chinese-language channels with a note to say some of its services were not available in its China cloud regions. It also removed several promotional posts, including the one about Source Technology. Amazon did not give a reason for removing the posts and did not answer a Reuters query about that.

“Amazon Bedrock customers are subject to Anthropic’s end user license agreement, which prohibits access to Claude in China both via Amazon’s Bedrock API [application programming interface] and via Anthropic’s own API,” the AWS spokesperson said.

Anthropic said it does not support or allow customers or end-users within China to access Claude.

“However, subsidiaries or product divisions of Chinese-headquartered companies may use Claude if the subsidiary itself is located in a supported region outside of China,” an Anthropic spokesperson said.

Source Technology did not respond to a request for comment.
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Abuja, Nigeria — A U.S. State Department official was in Nigeria this week to meet with local and regional authorities about the responsible use of artificial intelligence in military applications.

Mallory Stewart, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence and Stability, said her two-day visit with Nigerian officials from the regional bloc ECOWAS was part of the United States’ commitment to deepen security cooperation in Africa.

The U.S. government has been working with 55 nations, including African nations, “to agree upon responsible uses of AI in the military context, using AI in a manner consistent with international laws [and] recognizing inherent human bias,” Stewart told journalists Wednesday.

“We’ve learned the hard way [that there is] inherent human bias built into the AI system … leading to maybe misinformation being provided to the decisionmaker,” she said.

The goal, she continued, “is to hear from as many countries as possible that are at the stage of working in artificial intelligence to their military to see how we can minimize the risks.”

Last year, the Global Terrorism Index report named sub-Saharan Africa an epicenter of terrorism, accounting for nearly 60% of terror-related deaths. It is unclear whether the terror groups are using AI.

Nigerian authorities have been pushing for the integration of artificial intelligence in military operations, while acknowledging that adopting AI will require Africa-specific policies.

Security analyst Kabiru Adamu of Beacon Consulting said the use of AI in military operations has advantages.

“Given the position of the U.S. in terms of its military capacity and technological advancement, it will definitely be in the position to support Nigeria’s desires, especially if it’s able to contextualize some of the peculiarities within the Nigerian security space,” Adamu said. “We can’t isolate ourselves from the international committee of nations. AI is embedded in security, so we have to do it. But we need to be cognizant of the supporting infrastructure for good technology. Power is one of them, culture.”

The founder of Global Sentinel online magazine, Senator Iroegbu, said that while AI has benefits, the technology still needs to be treated with caution.

“It limits casualties in terms of the number of soldiers that will be deployed, so you conserve your boots,” Iroegbu said. “It helps penetrate rough terrains, gather more intelligence. It’s good that there’s growing awareness of the issue of artificial intelligence, but Nigeria needs to first of all try to define its own policy and strategy with regards to artificial intelligence. More sensitization needs to be done, and more policy aspect of it needs to be developed.”

In June, African ministers unanimously endorsed landmark continental AI strategy to advance Africa’s digital future and development aspirations. And last week, the African Union approved the adoption of AI in public and private sectors in member states, including Nigeria.
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