Source: Financial Times (paywall)
Nvidia is using verbal directives to cloud computing clients to enforce a requirement that at least 51% of compute services go to non-Chinese buyers. This shifts chip export controls from government regulation to vendor-level supply-chain enforcement, positioning Nvidia as an informal gatekeeper of US foreign policy while maintaining plausible deniability through back-channel conversations rather than written rules. Cloud providers depend on Nvidia's supply and cannot afford to lose access, so the mechanism works by outsourcing enforcement to a private company and creating opacity that makes the policy harder to challenge or verify.