Mr Viral
Proposed legislation gaining steam in Congress this week would require high-end GPUs and AI chips to include location-tracking safeguards to ensure US-designed components don’t end up in nations against Uncle Sam’s wishes, with exporters on the hook for compliance.
On Thursday, a group of bipartisan legislators introduced [PDF] the Chip Security Act in the House of Representatives, following a similar bill introduced in the Senate last week.
If passed, the proposed bill would require that, within 180 days of enactment, certain advanced chips and systems as defined by US export control codes be equipped with some kind of “location verification mechanism,” which would help detect and report diversion or misuse after export.
Exporters would be responsible for reporting violations to the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the event chips are diverted, misused, or tampered with.
In other words, if (say) Nvidia accelerators were sold to Singapore and suddenly showed up in mainland China, or the tracking tech was somehow disabled, the GPU giant would need to flag it.
Proponents of the bill, including Congressman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) and Bill Foster (D-IL), argue the measure is needed to stop high-end GPUs from being rerouted to the Middle Kingdom through smuggling networks and shell companies.
“With advanced AI chips being smuggled into China and posing a national security risk, Congress must act,” Foster said in a canned statement.
“In order for the United States to maintain our technological advantage, we must employ safeguards to help ensure export controls are not being circumvented, allowing these advanced AI chips to fall into the hands of nefarious actors,” Huizenga added.
The House bill comes a week after Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) introduced a similar bill in the Senate.
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Neither bill specifies exactly how these tracking mechanisms would work, only that, within six months of enactment, the Commerce Secretary must require covered AI chips to include location verification capabilities using feasible and appropriate techniques. Longer-term security requirements would be evaluated over the following year.
AMD and Nvidia declined to comment on the proposed rules. Intel had not responded by the time of publication.
The House bill comes just days after the Trump administration scrapped Biden-era diffusion rules, which sought to crack down on the smuggling of GPUs and other high-end chips into China and other nations of concern by capping exports of compute to most nations outside the US and a select few allies.
The White House has promised to introduce new export restrictions, but apart from a few vague promises to safeguard US national security, details remain razor thin. ®
