U.S. approved Chinese firms to handle Nvidia H200 chips, report says

Even in summary form, that is the part that sticks. Export controls are supposed to draw lines. The Times describes approvals that appear to run close to those lines, and in some cases through companies it says had empty offices and troubling ties.

The available summary is spare, and that matters. It does not name the companies, explain what “handle” means in each case, or describe why the department approved them. That leaves a lot unresolved, including whether officials treated these firms as permissible intermediaries under existing rules or whether the screening itself missed obvious problems.

Still, the Times’ account points to something more revealing than a paperwork dispute. Sanctions policy does not live only in the headline restrictions; it lives in the approvals around them. If companies with links to sanctioned entities were cleared to handle these chips, the pressure point is not the existence of rules but the judgments used to administer them.

For now, the clearest fact is also the most awkward one for Washington: the Times says dozens of Chinese firms were approved, and some of them had ties to businesses the U.S. had already flagged as national-security concerns.