China has found ways to circumvent sanctions and trade bans to import powerful AI processing chips, which are likely being used to train AI systems for military purposes. Security experts have warned US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the potential risks, citing the chips' use in autonomous weapons systems and intelligence surveillance platforms. The deal highlights the high cost of market access amid escalating tech trade tensions, creating financial pressure and strategic uncertainty for tech vendors like OpenAI's new, smaller open models available on AWS.