Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks to the media at a resort in Beijing, China July 16, 2025.
Alessandro Diviggiano | Reuters
Nvidia on Tuesday rejected Chinese language accusations that its information heart GPUs for artificial intelligence embrace a {hardware} perform that might remotely deactivate the chips, which is often referred to as a “kill change.”
“NVIDIA GPUs don’t and mustn’t have kill switches and backdoors,” wrote Nvidia’s Chief Safety Officer David Reber in a weblog submit on Tuesday.
The blog post comes after the Our on-line world Administration of China mentioned final week that it wanted Nvidia to offer paperwork about what it referred to 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 accordance with the New York Times.
The assertion is an instance of how Nvidia is navigating geopolitical battle as its AI chips stay in excessive demand by international locations and firms around the globe. U.S. lawmakers have proposed legislation that will require AI chips beneath export rules to be outfitted 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 might use the chips to realize 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 normal 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 mentioned its steerage would have been about $8 billion larger apart from misplaced gross sales from a current export restriction on its China-bound H20 chips.
The Trump administration mentioned in July that it could grant a waiver for the chips to renew gross sales.
Silicon Valley technologists and safety consultants typically consider that backdoors — when a tool has a hidden perform that will permit a authorities or attacker to secretly take information from a pc or in any other case management it — are untenable in merchandise.
Apple, specifically, has publicly fought off authorities requests for what it calls “backdoors” up to now as effectively.
Nvidia declined to remark additional on its weblog submit.
Reber argued within the weblog submit that secret backdoors are harmful vulnerabilities that may very well be utilized by hackers, not simply officers, and that they “violate the basic rules of cybersecurity.”
He additionally mentioned that if a kill change or backdoor had been to be put in merchandise like Nvidia GPUs, that they’d hurt U.S. nationwide safety pursuits.
“Hardwiring a kill change right into a chip is one thing totally totally different: a everlasting flaw past person management, and an open invitation for catastrophe,” Reber wrote. “It is like shopping for a automotive the place the dealership retains a distant management for the parking brake — simply in case they resolve you should not be driving.”