Potential US Restrictions on Chinese Access to Cloud Services and AI Chip Exports

On the afternoon of July 4, a news post circulated on social media, and the headline alone suggests that if the future policy is implemented, it will cause a major shock in the overseas market.

Because overseas privacy policies are tightening, many companies targeting the US market are deploying their services on cloud platforms provided by US firms such as AWS and Google Cloud to ensure compliance.

The earliest report of this cloud service restriction came from the Wall Street Journal, citing an insider from the US government; the US Department of Commerce, Amazon, and Microsoft have not responded.

Reuters reports that the US government plans to further restrict Chinese companies from using US cloud computing services, and if the new regulation passes, Amazon and Microsoft would need government permission to provide Chinese firms with cloud services powered by high‑end AI chips.

Yahoo News says the US government intends to issue new policies mainly to limit Chinese companies from training AI models on US cloud platforms. The US Commerce Department already issued strict semiconductor export controls in October 2022, focusing on high‑end GPU chips used for AI model training.

Security experts note that the policy still has loopholes, pointing out that Chinese firms can still use US‑based cloud services to train models, and the new US plan is likely aimed at closing this gap.

Considering both sources, even if the US enacts the policy, it is unlikely to be a blanket ban on all cloud services for Chinese enterprises, because cloud services are a major profit line for Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.

Although the impact may be limited, if the policy is implemented, many AI startups expanding overseas will inevitably be affected; AI innovators without their own chips usually partner with cloud providers or apply for accelerator programs to obtain chip access.

Furthermore, the US government also plans to further restrict GPU chip exports to China. Yahoo reports that the Commerce Department intends to limit Nvidia's export of the A800 GPU this month, which is a substitute for the previously restricted A100 and H100 chips, with reduced high‑speed interconnect bandwidth to bypass export limits.