Chinese Companies Use Amazon Cloud Services to Access U.S. AI Technology

State-connected Chinese companies are using Amazon and other cloud services to access advanced American processors and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that they otherwise can’t obtain, according to recent public tender documents.

Chinese entities linked to the government are leveraging cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS) to gain access to cutting-edge U.S. chips and AI technology that they can’t directly buy due to export restrictions, as shown by public documents.

The U.S. government has restricted the export of high-end AI chips to China over the past two years to limit the Chinese military’s capabilities.

AWS controls nearly one-third of the global cloud infrastructure market, making it a significant player. In China, AWS ranks as the sixth-largest cloud service provider.

U.S. export regulations ban sending high-end AI chips like Nvidia’s A100 and H100 to China. However, using these chips through cloud services doesn’t break any rules since the restrictions apply only to physical exports. A review by Reuters of more than 50 Chinese tender documents from the past year showed that at least 11 Chinese entities sought access to restricted U.S. technologies or cloud services, with four explicitly naming AWS as their provider, accessed through intermediaries.

Another case involved Zhejiang Lab, which sought to spend 184,000 yuan on AWS cloud services to support its large language model (LLM) project, GeoGPT. However, the lab later decided not to proceed with the purchase.

The U.S. government is working to close this loophole. A bill was introduced in Congress in April to allow the Commerce Department to regulate remote access to U.S. technology, though its status remains unclear. The Commerce Department is also working on new regulations that would require U.S. cloud services to verify AI model users and report their activities.

Chinese entities are also seeking to use Microsoft’s cloud services. Amazon also offers Chinese organizations access to advanced AI models, such as Anthropic’s Claude, which they can’t access otherwise. Amazon promoted this access in marketing materials and public posts but later updated or removed some of these promotions after being contacted by Reuters.

An Amazon spokesperson said that Bedrock customers are subject to Anthropic’s end-user license agreement, which prohibits access to Claude in China. Anthropic confirmed it does not allow customers or end-users in China to use Claude, though subsidiaries of Chinese companies located outside China might be able to.

This situation highlights the complexity of regulating access to advanced technology and the strategies employed by Chinese entities to circumvent restrictions.