These clones transfer American IP to China. History below.
• In August 2015, the U.S. barred Intel (and implicitly AMD) from selling high-end server chips to a few (but not all) Chinese customers due to national security concerns. Intel complied.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2908692/us-blocks-intel-from-selling-xeon-chips-to-chinese-supercomputer-projects.html
• A few months later, China went to Lisa Su to get basically the same chip from AMD via a complicated joint venture that complied with the letter of the law -- because the chip would not be sold by a U.S. company but would rather be sold by the Chinese JV (so no need to ask the U.S. for permission to export it to Chinese customers).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2016/04/21/amd-forms-china-x86-server-soc-jv-and-gets-293-million-to-start/#33633ca79df8
• A month ago, China started producing these Epyc server chip clones. As this article explains, they have a different name but are EXACTLY Epyc chips.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/china-zen-x86-processor-dryhana
• The U.S. government is due to publish a report on Chinese theft of U.S. semiconductor IP that could name and shame AMD. "ASSESSMENT OF THE U.S. INTEGRATED CIRCUIT DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY" https://www.reddit.com/r/AMD_Stock/comments/87z5h9/ustr_china_jv_scheme_exposed/
• Based on the timing, it's clear the ONLY reason this JV was set up was to circumvent the government's ban.
• These chips will be in the hands of those very customers the U.S. government said couldn't have them.
• They will be taking market share from Epyc and only paying AMD a tiny royalty, instead of the large margins it would have made on Epyc.