Back in February, China’s North Industries Corporation, or Norinco for short, unveiled the P60, an autonomous military vehicle capable of travelling at speeds of up to 50km/h, along with the ability to conduct combat support actions without human input. Recently, a report by Reuters highlights how much of that autonomy was powered by DeepSeek, which in turn relies heavily on sanctioned NVIDIA H100 GPUs owned by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Reuters discovered that, despite China’s recent nationwide ban on local companies, the news portal found 35 patents, the majority of which were filed by China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT), and opther educational institutions. All of which are actively conducting research for the Chinese military, and all of them admitted to using NVIDIA’s AI chips to further their research.
As many of you know, the US began heavily restricting China’s access to NVIDIA’s GPUs and AI Chips back in 2022. Regardless, the engine of commerce continues to run and in this case, it opened up a thriving black market in the country, especially for its H100 and A100 AI Chips.
The report states that the PLA and its affiliates actively and continuously seek out NVIDIA chips, especially those that are currently on the US’ export control list. “China has more than enough domestic chips for all of its military applications, with millions to spare,” Nvidia told Tom’s Hardware in a statement. “While we can’t track individual resales of products sold years ago, recycling small quantities of old, second-hand products doesn’t enable anything new or raise any national security concerns. Using restricted products for military applications would be a nonstarter, without support, software, or maintenance.”
To be absolutely fair, China isn’t the only country experimenting with AI in its military. A defense startup in the US is currently work on an AI-powered drone killer, while Sweden is currently experimenting with an AI drone swarm technology that would allow one operator to control hundreds of drones. Meanwhile, Russia’s military is playing around with an AI-powered drone. These examples showcase to the world that AI is becoming increasingly weaponised.
