Despite measures to limit U.S. technology export to the Chinese military, chips designed by U.S. companies still end up in the hands of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to a report by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University.
CSET combed through over 66,000 publicly available PLA purchase records during the 8-month period from April to November 2020. The researchers identified 97 unique, high-end, Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips the PLA ordered. Nearly all of them were designed by U.S. firms Nvidia, Xilinx (now AMD), Intel, and Microsemi. The CSET report, released in June 2022, also noted that the researchers could not find any public records of PLA purchasing the high-end AI chips from Chinese companies, such as HiSilicon (Huawei), Sugon, Sunway, Hygon, or Phytium….