Foreign Access to Supercomputers?

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Chairman of the House Select China Committee has written Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik asking for a briefing on exxport controls on access to American universities' supercomputing resources.

The letter highlights risks in academic settings, where PRC nationals might exploit supercomputer access to support restricted entities or conduct research advancing “the PRC’s military modernization goals and remit the results (including any resulting model) back to China.” It cites the University of Florida’s HiPerGator AI, which uses Nvidia’s A100 GPUs—chips legally restricted from export to China—as an example.

An assistant professor at the university reportedly promoted access to the supercomputer in both English and Chinese-language forums while supervising Ph.D. students from “PRC universities on the BIS Entity List and three others who graduated from PRC universities flagged as medium or high risk for their work on defense research.” The university is also developing HiPerGator AI 2.0, which will incorporate Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU, another export-restricted chip.

The letter further warns that PRC entities have sought to bypass U.S. export controls by “remotely accessing computing assets abroad and importing export-controlled chips through indirect channels.”

It also describes how China “has recruited and used students, particularly PRC nationals, to siphon expertise and technological development from the United States” through talent recruitment programs. These programs encourage PRC nationals and U.S. academics to “extract intellectual property from institutions and organizations in the United States” or acquire skills that they later apply in China to “compete militarily and economically with the United States.”

Given these risks, the letter calls for BIS to clarify how export control laws apply to supercomputer access by PRC nationals at U.S. universities to ensure the protection of American technology and national security.