U.S. Lawmakers Target China’s AI Chip Access Through Cloud Loophole

U.S. lawmakers are closing a digital loophole that lets Chinese firms rent American AI chips from data centers in Southeast Asia to fuel their AI ambitions.

The U.S. House passed the Remote Access Security Access Act to extend AI chip export controls to cloud-based access by foreign entities. House Chairman John Moolenaar said:

"The CCP’s AI ambitions are being fueled by its access to American chips housed in data centers located outside of China,"

According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, Chinese companies like INF Tech allegedly accessed 2,300 Nvidia GB200 GPUs via rented servers in Indonesia. Alibaba and ByteDance are accused of training large language models (Qwen and Doubao) using Nvidia chips in offshore data centers.

The bill targets remote access to U.S.-controlled hardware, closing a loophole where chips are rented abroad to bypass export restrictions. Nvidia’s H200 chips are approved for export to China, but Blackwell and Vera Rubin architectures remain restricted.