Nvidia Corp has published a blog post reiterating that its chips did not have backdoors or kill switches and appealed to US policymakers to forgo such ideas saying it would be a "gift" to hackers and hostile actors.
The blog post, which was published on Tuesday in both English and Chinese, comes a week after the Chinese government summoned the US artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant to a meeting saying it was concerned by a US proposal for advanced chips sold abroad to be equipped with tracking and positioning functions.
The White House and both houses of US Congress have proposed the idea of requiring US chip firms to include location verification technology with their chips to prevent them from being diverted to countries where US export laws ban sales. The separate bills and White House recommendation have not become a formal rule, and no technical requirements have been established.
Photo: I-Hwa Cheng, AFP
"Embedding backdoors and kill switches into chips would be a gift to hackers and hostile actors. It would undermine global digital infrastructure and fracture trust in US technology," Nvidia said.
The company's products have no backdoors that would allow remote access or control, it said last week.
A backdoor refers to a hidden method of bypassing normal authentication or security controls.
Nvidia emphasized that "there is no such thing as a 'good' secret backdoor — only dangerous vulnerabilities that need to be eliminated."
A senior US official confirmed on Tuesday that the US is exploring ways to equip chips with better location-tracking capabilities.
“There is discussion about potentially the types of software or physical changes you could make to the chips themselves to do better location-tracking,” said Michael Kratsios, one of the architects of a US AI action plan unveiled by US President Donald Trump last month.
“That is something we explicitly included in the plan,” the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.
Kratsios, who was in South Korea to attend an APEC Digital and AI Ministerial Meeting, said during the interview that he’s not had conversations “personally” with either Nvidia or Advanced Micro Devices Inc about exploring location-tracking technology.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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