Nvidia says its AI chips have no ‘kill switches and backdoors,' countering Chinese claim

ISTANBUL

Nvidia denied on Tuesday a Chinese accusation that the US chip maker’s AI chips have mature tracking and location and remote shutdown technologies.

The company said its chips have no "backdoors or kill switches."

"NVIDIA GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors," wrote Nvidia’s Chief Security Officer David Reber in a blog post.

"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 U.S. technology. Established law wisely requires companies to fix vulnerabilities — not create them," he noted.

Reber made the case that secret backdoors "violate the fundamental principles of cybersecurity" and are serious weaknesses that hackers, not just authorities, may exploit.

Additionally, he stated that US national security interests would be harmed if a kill switch or backdoor were incorporated into goods such as Nvidia GPUs.

“Hardwiring a kill switch into a chip is something entirely different: a permanent flaw beyond user control, and an open invitation for disaster,” noted Reber. “It’s like buying a car where the dealership keeps a remote control for the parking brake — just in case they decide you shouldn’t be driving.”

The response followed the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC)'s summoning Nvidia last week to clarify the "backdoor security risks" associated with its H20 computing chips.

The CAC said US artificial intelligence experts revealed that Nvidia's computing chips have mature tracking and location and remote shutdown technologies.

In April, Washington restricted Nvidia from selling its H20 chips to China in an escalation of a tech war with Beijing, saying it would be required to have an export license "for the indefinite future" to sell the chips to the country.

Nvidia said it expected to write down charges of up to $5.5 billion in its fiscal first quarter due to US export requirements on its H20 chips for the Chinese market.

Last month, Nvidia stated that it would resume sales of H20 AI chips to China after the US pledged to remove licensing restrictions.