NVIDIA on its AI GPUs: 'there are no back doors in NVIDIA chips. No kill switches. No spyware'

A couple of months ago there was a proposal from a US lawmaker that would mandate on-chip location verification and boot restrictions for AI chips, aiming to stop NVIDIA AI GPUs from being smuggled into China, and now NVIDIA has directly responded to this.

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NVIDIA said in a recent blog post that "NVIDIA GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors" after some pundits and policymakers proposed requiring hardware "kill switches" or built-in controls that could remotely disable GPUs without user knowledge and content, with NVIDIA noting "some suspect they might already exist".

The company writes: "NVIDIA has been designing processors for over 30 years. 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".

NVIDIA underlines it at the end of its article, writing: "For decades, policymakers have championed industry's efforts to create secure, trustworthy hardware. Governments have many tools to protect nations, consumers and the economy. Deliberately weakening critical infrastructure should never be one of them. There are no back doors in NVIDIA chips. No kill switches. No spyware. That's not how trustworthy systems are built - and never will be".

The company also notes that some people point out smartphone features like "find my phone" and "remote wipe" as models that could be used for a proposed GPU kill switch, but as NVIDIA says, that comparison doesn't hold water. There are optional software features, controlled by the user, and they're not hardware-level backdoors.

Hardwiring a kill switch into a chip is "something entirely different" says NVIDIA, a permanent flaw beyond user control, which is an open invitation for disaster, says the company. NVIDIA adds: "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. That's not sound policy. It's an overreaction that would irreparably harm America's economic and national security interests".