The effort to keep tabs on the chips, which drew bipartisan support from U.S. lawmakers, aims to address reports of widespread smuggling of Nvidia’s chips into China in violation of U.S. export control laws.
Nvidia’s chips are a critical ingredient for creating AI systems such as chatbots, image generators and more specialized ones that can help craft biological weapons. Both President Donald Trump and his predecessor, Joe Biden, have implemented progressively tighter export controls of Nvidia’s chips to China.
But Reuters and other news organizations have documented how some of those chips have continued to flow into China, and Nvidia has publicly claimed it cannot track its products after they are sold.
U.S. Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois who once worked as a particle physicist, said the technology to track chips after they are sold is readily available, with much of it already built in to Nvidia’s chips. Independent technical experts interviewed by Reuters agreed.
Foster, who successfully designed multiple computer chips during his scientific career, plans to introduce in coming weeks a bill that would direct U.S. regulators to come up with rules in two key areas: Tracking chips to ensure they are where they are authorized to be under export control licenses, and preventing those chips from booting up if they are not properly licensed under export controls.
Foster told Reuters that there are already credible reports – some of which have not been publicly disclosed – of chip smuggling occurring on a large scale.
