U.S. export controls on semiconductors are widely known to be permeable, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) steadily creating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) models with exfiltrated chips. This paper presents the first concrete, public evidence of how leading PRC AI labs evade and circumvent U.S. export controls. We examine how Chinese companies, notably Tencent, are not only using chips that are restricted under U.S. export controls but are also finding ways to circumvent these regulations by using software and modeling techniques that maximize less capable hardware. Specifically, we argue that Tencent's ability to power its Hunyuan-Large model with non-export controlled NVIDIA H20s exemplifies broader gains in efficiency in machine learning that have eroded the moat that the United States initially built via its existing export controls. Finally, we examine the implications of this finding for the future of the United States' export control strategy.

翻译：美国对半导体的出口管制众所周知存在漏洞，中华人民共和国（中国）正利用外流芯片稳步创建最先进的人工智能（AI）模型。本文首次提供了具体、公开的证据，揭示中国领先的AI实验室如何规避和绕过美国出口管制。我们考察了中国企业（特别是腾讯）不仅在使用受美国出口管制限制的芯片，还通过采用能最大化低性能硬件效能的软件与建模技术，找到了规避这些法规的途径。具体而言，我们认为腾讯能够利用非出口管制的NVIDIA H20芯片驱动其混元大模型，这体现了机器学习效率的广泛提升，这些提升已侵蚀了美国通过现有出口管制最初建立的护城河。最后，我们探讨了这一发现对美国未来出口管制战略的影响。