Lawmaker Asks for BIS Briefing on China’s Access to US University Supercomputers
House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar, R-Mich., asked the Bureau of Industry and Security to brief his panel on how it's restricting China’s access to U.S. university supercomputers.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
In a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick sent March 6 and released this week, Moolenaar said he’s concerned Chinese nationals may be trying to access the supercomputers to sidestep export controls on advanced computing chips. The foreigners could be performing research on behalf of entities that are prohibited from accessing the chips, or they could be seeking to gain information about the design or operation of the supercomputers, Moolenaar wrote.
"Access to supercomputers is part of what attracts students seeking to study advanced computing to American universities with these resources, but both [People's Republic of China] entities’ demonstrated desire to circumvent export controls on chips and the PRC's history of exploiting academic institutions’ openness call for vigilance surrounding these important resources," the letter says.
U.S. universities host 22 of the world’s 500 most powerful computers, and one potential concern is the University of Florida’s HiPerGator AI supercomputer, which uses Nvidia’s export-restricted A100 graphics processing unit (GPU) (see 2310240020), Moolenaar said. An assistant professor at the university who advertised potential access to HiPerGator AI in English and Chinese-language forums supervises at least two Ph.D. students who graduated from Chinese universities on the BIS Entity List and three others who graduated from Chinese universities that conduct military research.
Meanwhile, an upcoming version of the university's supercomputer, HiPerGator AI 2.0, will use Nvidia’s new Blackwell GPU, which is also export-restricted.
Although Chinese entities have tried to evade export controls by remotely accessing export-controlled chips "through indirect channels" -- including through cloud service providers (see 2409100024 and 2502250050) -- Moolenaar said China is using Chinese students as another way to acquire the technology.
"The PRC has recruited and used students, particularly PRC nationals, to siphon expertise and technological development from the United States," the lawmaker said. China uses students to "extract intellectual property" from American universities, allowing them to indirectly "acquire critical skills and knowledge in the United States and apply such knowledge and skills in PRC programs to compete militarily and economically with the United States. These highlight the importance of the guardrails related to accessing resources such as supercomputers at U.S. universities."
Commerce, BIS and the University of Florida didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter.