Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to the media at a lodge in Beijing, China July 16, 2025.
Alessandro Diviggiano | Reuters
Nvidia on Tuesday rejected Chinese language accusations that its information heart GPUs for synthetic intelligence embrace a {hardware} perform that might remotely deactivate the chips, which is usually known as a “kill swap.”
“NVIDIA GPUs don’t and shouldn’t have kill switches and backdoors,” wrote Nvidia’s Chief Safety Officer David Reber in a weblog publish on Tuesday.
The weblog publish comes after the Our on-line world Administration of China stated final week that it wanted Nvidia to offer paperwork about what it known as safety vulnerabilities within the H20, Nvidia’s information heart AI chip supposed for the Chinese language market. The regulator particularly talked about “backdoor” safety dangers, in keeping with the New York Occasions.
The assertion is an instance of how Nvidia is navigating geopolitical battle as its AI chips stay in excessive demand by international locations and corporations around the globe. U.S. lawmakers have proposed laws that may require AI chips beneath export laws to be geared up with location-tracking techniques.
The U.S. has positioned export controls on some Nvidia chips to China due to nationwide safety causes, saying that the nation may use the chips to achieve a bonus in AI or for army functions.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has argued that it’s higher for the U.S. if Nvidia’s chips change into the worldwide customary for AI computer systems, particularly amongst Chinese language builders.
The H20 generates billions in income per quarter for Nvidia in gross sales, though the corporate doesn’t sometimes escape its income particularly. The chip was briefly banned from export to China in April.
The corporate stated its steering would have been about $8 billion increased aside from misplaced gross sales from a current export restriction on its China-bound H20 chips.
The Trump administration stated in July that it will grant a waiver for the chips to renew gross sales.
Silicon Valley technologists and safety specialists usually imagine that backdoors — when a tool has a hidden perform that may permit a authorities or attacker to secretly take information from a pc or in any other case management it — are untenable in merchandise.
Apple, particularly, has publicly fought off authorities requests for what it calls “backdoors” prior to now as effectively.
Nvidia declined to remark additional on its weblog publish.
Reber argued within the weblog publish that secret backdoors are harmful vulnerabilities that may very well be utilized by hackers, not simply officers, and that they “violate the elemental ideas of cybersecurity.”
He additionally stated that if a kill swap or backdoor have been to be put in merchandise like Nvidia GPUs, that they might hurt U.S. nationwide safety pursuits.
“Hardwiring a kill swap right into a chip is one thing completely completely different: a everlasting flaw past consumer management, and an open invitation for catastrophe,” Reber wrote. “It is like shopping for a automobile the place the dealership retains a distant management for the parking brake — simply in case they determine you should not be driving.”
