National Cyberspace Administration of China's约谈 with NVIDIA on July 31 has drawn widespread attention from the outside world.
It was revealed that NVIDIA's computing chips have serious security issues. Previously, U.S. congressmen called for advanced chips exported by the U.S. to be equipped with "tracking and positioning" functions, and it is reported that NVIDIA's computing chips have already matured in "tracking and positioning" and "remote shutdown" technologies.
Observer.com's technology commentator pointed out that the statement about U.S. congressmen in the news article has factual basis, and the U.S. is trying to strengthen its technological pressure on China through legislation.
Which bill? What intention?
According to Observer.com's investigation, currently, the U.S. Congress is indeed discussing a bill that would require NVIDIA and other companies to embed location tracking modules into chips. The legislative agenda involved is the Chip Security Act (Chip Security Act).
The bill requires the U.S. Department of Commerce to enforce "chip security mechanisms" for "covered integrated circuit products" under export control, to prevent unauthorized transfer, theft or use. Among them, "chip security mechanism" is defined as a security function enabled through software, firmware or hardware, or a physical security mechanism, specifically including "location verification functions", used to track the geographical location of the chip or detect whether it has been illegally transferred.
The Senate and House versions of the Chip Security Act were introduced in May this year, with almost identical content, and are currently still in the proposal stage, not yet passed.
The bill stipulates that the U.S. Department of Commerce must develop detailed implementation rules within 180 days after the bill is passed, ensuring that chips have feasible location verification technology when exported, re-exported, or transferred domestically to foreign countries, and requiring exporters to report to the Bureau of Industry and Security of the Department of Commerce about the transfer or tampering of chips.
Additionally, the U.S. Department of Commerce needs to work with the U.S. Department of Defense to study other potential security mechanisms, and evaluate the cost, performance impact, potential vulnerabilities and feasibility of anti-tampering of the technology each year for the next three years.
U.S. politicians and media have long been hyping up the claim that advanced chips restricted for export to China are being secretly transferred to China. China emphasizes that the U.S. politicizes, over-safeguards, and instrumentalizes economic and trade and technological issues, continuously increasing restrictions on chip exports to China. This behavior hinders the development of the global semiconductor industry and will ultimately backfire, harming both sides.
How to implement chip tracking?
One of the main proponents of the House version of the Chip Security Act, Representative Bill Foster from Illinois, is a rare "scientist congressman" who is very familiar with chip manufacturing technology. It was he who first proposed in Congress to install a "digital leash" on controlled chips, namely, location tracking functions and remote shutdown functions, which can immediately disable the chips once they are illegally transferred.
Bill Foster repeatedly claimed that this solution is technically quite mature and easy to implement.
As early as January 2024, researcher Tim Fister from the New America Security Center wrote a report detailing the implementation mechanism of chip location tracking, known as the "on-chip governance mechanism".
Tim Fister suggested designing a flexible governance mechanism for AI chips, with the core being to install a "security module" on each high-performance AI chip to ensure that the chip uses authorized and latest version of firmware and software. This module can remotely verify the status of the chip, force the chip to update regularly to fix security vulnerabilities, and also remotely control whether the chip is available, thereby effectively enforcing export controls. In addition, the chip has a trusted execution environment that can securely prove the operation status of the chip.
The advantage of this mechanism is strong flexibility, which can automatically adjust the governance method according to different policy needs. Currently, remote verification technology has been implemented on some CPUs and GPUs, and can be easily extended to AI chips in the future. Ideally, this mechanism can also be combined with supply chain tracking and "know your customer" policies to better control the sales and use of chips.
Two administrations, two schemes
The author "Antarctic Native", who focuses on the intersection of geopolitics, multinational corporations, and technology governance, noted that how to solve the "transshipment issue" of chip exports to China has long been a concern of the U.S. government.
During the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce adopted a strategy of total control and allocation system for controlled chips worldwide, that is, the three-level country classification of the Artificial Intelligence Dissemination Rules and the GPU quota scheme. The core logic is to first set a just enough number of GPUs based on the actual needs of the transshipment country. This way, if these countries secretly sell the chips to China, it would lead to their own shortage of chips, forcing them to self-regulate on the transshipment issue.
Trump administration did not recognize the above approach, believing that it might hinder the U.S. GPU's global market share, weaken the competitiveness of U.S. companies, and even cause other countries to turn to Chinese-made GPUs.
One of the strategies of the Trump administration was to push Congress to legislate, granting the Department of Commerce the power to require chip manufacturers to embed location tracking modules into chips, thus more accurately monitoring and cracking down on chip transshipment.
"Domestic substitution, adding leverage"
"Antarctic Native" emphasized that NVIDIA will not like the Chip Security Act. With this act, it is uncertain whether the chip is "safe", but NVIDIA's business and customers will definitely become less secure. Normally, once a chip is sold, NVIDIA should not still have control over its subsequent use. No customer wants to buy a chip at a high price, only to find that it has a monitoring "backdoor" embedded inside, which is completely known by NVIDIA and the U.S. government wherever it goes.
"Antarctic Native" believes that adding such location verification mechanisms in the commercial market will leave an impression: the United States does not trust the global market, nor its allies, nor its own technical advantages. For China's domestic chips, this may be an opportunity, because they can avoid embedding such location verification mechanisms, providing customers with full trust, privacy, and security."
Recently, the Trump administration promised to cancel the restrictions on exporting H20 chips to China. And China has required NVIDIA to explain and submit relevant proof materials regarding the security risks of backdoors in H20 chips sold to China.
"In the context of increasingly fierce domestic competition, the National Cyberspace Administration's review of the H20 security risks may further weaken NVIDIA's market share in China, and the resumption of H20 sales may also face delays," observed the technology commentator at Observer.com, "This also conforms to China's direction of accelerating the promotion of domestic semiconductor substitution and achieving technological independence under the pressure of U.S. export controls. In addition, the timing of this inquiry also adds leverage for China in Sino-U.S. trade negotiations."
This article is an exclusive article from Observer.com, and it is not allowed to be reprinted without permission.
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7533214064541958691/
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