Somehow a “PLA-linked university” in the People’s Republic of China has gotten hold of Nvidia’s top-of-the-line H200 chips “despite US blacklist” (Reuters, November 11, 2026).
A Chinese university with deep ties to the People’s Liberation Army bought Nvidia’s powerful H200 AI chips last month despite being on a US export blacklist, procurement records show, highlighting gaps in Washington’s efforts to curb China’s access to advanced technology.
The findings come as Nvidia and its CEO Jensen Huang face mounting scrutiny in Washington over his lobbying for looser restrictions on sales of AI chips to China, following reports alleging he was targeted by a Chinese spying operation.
Huang has argued that continued US sales to China would preserve American technological leadership and keep Chinese customers reliant on US technology.
But some US lawmakers say access to Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips can speed China’s development of AI systems for weapons design, intelligence analysis and military modernization….
Northwestern Polytechnical University, a member of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defense” group of elite defense-focused universities, bought two H200 chips last month for 874,700 yuan ($123,000), according to an October 21 procurement record on its website.
The chips were purchased for its management school from Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology rather than directly from Nvidia, the record shows.
Parts versus wholes
Jensen Huang’s argument could also be applied to selling the very most advanced, finished U.S. weapon systems and planes and tanks to Beijing.
Yes, “some lawmakers” might say that giving Beijing access to the most advanced weapons that the U.S. military can secure would increase the threat to the United States and its allies. But, on the other hand, doing so might help the U.S. preserve or acquire “American technological leadership” in the advanced-weapons area “and keep Chinese customers reliant on” advanced U.S. weapons. Why didn’t the combatants in World War II think of this? If you want to weaken the enemy, make sure they get loads of your very best weapons. At the very least, you’ll increase market share.
The analogy is only barely a reductio ad absurdum because the proposition in its original form is already so absurd that there are only a few more centimeters, if any, of the road to full jaw-dropping absurdity to travel. If the sophisticated AI chips that Huang is eager to share with Beijing can be used for “weapons design, intelligence analysis [and cyberattacks] and military modernization,” and Huang is okay with this, why would he balk at selling finished U.S. weapons to Beijing?
Megaspeed
The Post’s reporting confirms that there is no need to sell top microchips directly to the CCP or the PLA in order for these entities to obtain chips originally acquired by other organizations in the People’s Republic of China.
In related news, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s now-ex girlfriend, the CCP operative Alice Huang (no relation) reportedly set up a company in Singapore as a way to get around controls on exporting of certain Nvidia chips to the PRC. The New York Times says that by December 2023, with the help of investors, Alice Huang had
restructured a company that would soon buy billions of dollars in Nvidia artificial intelligence chips. The U.S. government had barred Chinese companies from buying the advanced chips, but Ms. Huang had sidestepped this prohibition by creating a firm, Megaspeed, through a Singaporean shell company.
Her close relationship with Nvidia’s leader also appeared to smooth the way. Four days after the ownership change Megaspeed was named a Nvidia cloud partner, giving it access to the coveted components….
Many details of the relationship between Mr. Huang and Ms. Huang, including when they met and when she may have been recruited by Chinese intelligence, are not known. But Ms. Huang’s work with Megaspeed put her in the middle of a sprawling effort to accumulate A.I. chips across Southeast Asia and provide access to the technology to China’s companies [and, therefore, to the CCP and PLA].
So maybe Shaanxi Bosuan Network Technology, just a tech supplier, got the chips from Alice Huang’s nominally Singaporean firm Megaspeed. I’m not saying that this is what happened. Shaanzi Bosuan may have had any number of ways of illicitly obtaining the H200 chips before sending them in the direction of the People’s Liberation Army.
