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Chinese universities performing military research acquired Super Micro servers with sanctioned Nvidia AI chips — public documents reveal purchases were completed in 2025 and 2026 despite US export controls

What happened

Harbin Institute of Technology and Beihang University acquired Super Micro servers with Nvidia A100 GPUs in 2025 and 2026 despite US export controls. This highlights ongoing smuggling operations involving SMCI executives, raising compliance risks and disrupting the restricted AI chip supply chain.

Impact and signal

High impactImpact score: 85/100

Affected components and suppliers

Nvidia A100AI Servers

Super Micro ComputerNvidia

NVIDIA A100

sanctionsexport_controlsmugglingmilitary_research

Source and time

Source: Tom's Hardware · 3/28/2026 · View original source

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Chinese universities performing military research acquired Super Micro servers with sanctioned Nvidia AI chips — public documents reveal purchases were completed in 2025 and 2026 despite US export controls

What happened

Impact and signal

Affected components and suppliers

Source and time

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