US seeks to thwart smuggling of Nvidia GPUs with location tracking

The United States has reportedly been investigating reports that Nvidia GPUs have landed illegally in China to be used by Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek, and one US lawmaker will be introducing a new bill that aims to track the locations of AI chips--like the ones made by Nvidia--after they're sold, reports Reuters and Neowin. The smuggling of CPUs and GPUs is nothing new. PC components have often been smuggled across the ocean to countries like China and other East Asian countries for years. But with the rising power of AI and the implications of AI on technological prowess, it's not unusual that the US government wouldn't want that tech falling into rival hands. The proposed legislation would oblige US authorities to develop regulations for location verification of AI chips.