US Set To Check China's Access To Cloud Service Providers Like AWS And Azure: Report

In a bid to protect advanced technology, the US is looking to limit China's access to Cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft's Azure.

In a bid to protect advanced technology, the US is looking to limit China's access to cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft's Azure. Washington is mulling making it mandatory for cloud service providers to seek government permission before serving Chinese companies that employ such platforms to train artificial intelligence (AI) models, says a report by The Wall Street Journal. The Joe Biden-led administration is preparing to restrict Chinese companies’ access to US cloud-computing services, according to people familiar with the situation, in a move that could further strain relations between the world’s economic superpowers, the report added.

A Commerce Department proposal is expected in July under which the Biden administration is likely to revise export controls to make it harder to sell some chips to China without a license. The move is aimed in part at Nvidia’s A800 chip, which the US-based company designed after the earlier controls were announced. The product’s configuration comes just within those limits.

To recall, in more than the past one and a half years, the Biden administration and the members of Congress have beefed up exploration of what can be done to address security concerns about the Cloud computing divisions of Chinese tech behemoths such as Huawei and Alibaba.

In the past few years, the US has restricted China’s access to crucial technologies while trying to limit the reach of Chinese tech and telecommunication companies abroad.

Earlier in January, the US stopped approving licenses for its companies to export most items to Chinese tech giant Huawei, news agency Reuters had reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, China opposed the US abusing an overly broad notion of national security to suppress Chinese firms unreasonably, the report added. Back in 2020, chip-making major Qualcomm got permission to sell 4G smartphone chipsets to Huawei.