Free Republic

A Chinese university with links to the country's military bought two of Nvidia's powerful H200 AI chips last month despite being on a U.S. export blacklist, according to Reuters. Northwestern Polytechnical University purchased the chips for 874,700 yuan ($123,000) on October 21 through a local supplier, Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, rather than directly from Nvidia. The university is among China's so-called Seven Sons of National Defense, a group of institutions with ties to military research. Based in Xi'an, Northwestern Polytechnical conducts research related to military aircraft, missiles and satellites. The H200 is one of Nvidia's most powerful processors for training...

A wave of right-wing social media accounts launched near-identical attacks against a little-known Republican-backed bill aimed at restricting the export of advanced AI chips to adversaries, raising questions about whether the effort was coordinated to derail legislation publicly opposed by Nvidia. The AI OVERWATCH Act was introduced on Dec. 18, but seemingly out of nowhere on Thursday, a group of influencers and X accounts — including Laura Loomer, Ryan Fournier, Wall Street Mav and Defiant L’s — launched a barrage of attacks against the bill, ModelRepublic first reported. The timing, language and even shared errors across the posts prompted some...

Psst, wanna buy some innovation?An estimated $1 billion worth of smuggled high-end Nvidia AI processors have reportedly found their way onto the Chinese black market, despite the US government's strict restrictions on exports of the tech. The eyebrow-raising figure, which Nvidia has neither confirmed nor refuted, was revealed by the Financial Times, which claims to have based its reporting on a combination of interviews and analyses of company filings and sales contracts. If accurate, the report sheds light on the limitations of the US trade policy's ability to control the movement of much sought-after AI technology around the world. The...