Chinese companies may be unable to import the best US GPUs, but they have found a workaround: renting access to that hardware via cloud services. Now, the US House of Representatives is moving to bring that loophole under the export-control law.
The House of Representatives passed the Remote Access Security Act on Monday by an overwhelming 369-22 bipartisan vote. The bill extends the US Export Control Reform Act to treat certain forms of remote access to export-controlled items - including high-end GPUs and other AI chips - as subject to US export-control law.
"Our export controls are only as strong as the weakest link, and right now, the CCP has a real tool to sidestep these prohibitions," said bill sponsor Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY).
It's not like that's a hypothetical scenario, either: Chinese companies faced with export controls on high-end Nvidia GPUs and other chips have been acquiring access to them through platforms like Amazon Web Services since at least 2023.
According to our prior reporting, Chinese cloud providers such as Alibaba and Tencent may be enabling access to export-controlled GPUs for China-based customers by renting cloud hardware hosted outside the country. Microsoft and AWS, meanwhile, reportedly operate in China via local partners that offer cloud services broadly similar to those available elsewhere.
In short, this is a very real loophole in US export control laws - the chips aren't going anywhere, after all. This being the internet age, location doesn't really matter.
"This bill brings our laws into the digital age and makes it clear that cloud compute is subject to U.S. export control law, just like physical chips," said House Select Committee on China chairman Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI). "Closing these loopholes will strengthen U.S. national security and protect American innovation."
Passage of the bill through the Senate, and a signature from President Trump, aren't guarantees, and it's unknown how the upper chamber and the White House feel about the bill. We reached out to Lawler's team for more information, but didn't hear back.
It's also worth noting that the export of powerful AI chips from the US to China isn't as locked down as it was when this bill was introduced in April of 2025. Since then, the Trump administration has given Nvidia the go-ahead to sell H200 chips in China, and while not the most advanced Nvidia has to offer, they're definitely powerful.
Beijing has yet to give its stamp of approval to Nvidia for imports, but it's believed that they're likely to do so soon.
That said, China has been pushing its own chip companies to ditch American imports over national security concerns and instead develop its own competitive alternatives, a process that may still take time, though likely not much. ®
Source: The register