USA considers export restrictions on AI chips for some Middle Eastern countries

Countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could soon be subject to export restrictions on chips specially designed for artificial intelligence. This is currently being discussed within the US government under the outgoing Joe Biden, as is now being reported. After limiting deliveries of modern AI accelerators to China, for example, the USA is now also targeting countries in the Middle East.

Bloomberg writes that limits are being placed on the export of licenses to certain countries, citing people familiar with the matter. As with the US sanctions against China's semiconductor industry, these export restrictions are also justified on the grounds of US national security interests. However, neither the office of the US Department of Commerce responsible for export regulations nor affected manufacturers such as Nvidia, AMD and Intel have so far wanted to comment on the matter.

The potential sanctions are likely to primarily affect G42, the leading AI company in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). G42 is part of the UAE's state fund Mubadala and Mubadala bought AMD's chip production in order to establish Globalfoundries. G42 is currently investing in a global network of AI supercomputers called Condor Galaxy together with Cerebras.

Arab AI company reacts calmly

When asked about the possible export restrictions, G42 CEO Peng Xiao said yesterday in Dubai , according to Bloomberg: "I don't think it's anything new. There is a reason why there are export controls in the first place. I'm not surprised that this is continuing." The US had previously restricted shipments of AI chips from companies such as Nvidia and AMD to over 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia due to fears that they could resell the semiconductor products to China.

If the current US government decides to impose export restrictions on AI chips for certain countries, it would be a tight deadline for adoption in the final months of Joe Biden's term of office. This is because such rules would be difficult to enforce and could put a strain on US diplomatic relations with the countries concerned. In-depth consultations on the design of the rules and possibly consultations with affected countries and companies would therefore be necessary.

Reactions from critics and chip manufacturers

Critics fear that an extension of the export restrictions could harm the USA in the long term. If other countries such as China catch up in chip development and are able to offer corresponding competitor products in the future, countries subject to export restrictions could turn to these chips instead of those from the USA.

It is also unclear how chip manufacturers would react to a possible extension of the export restrictions. Now that Nvidia is no longer allowed to export its top chips A100 and H100 to China, the company has introduced the A800 and H800 models. In principle, these were the regular A/H100 chips with unthrottled computing power, but their Nvlink interface was simply slowed down by a third (from 600 to 400 GByte/s) in order to just meet the export requirements.

(fds)