The US explores tracking chips to prevent them from getting to China

The Trump administration is exploring the use of location trackers for chips to prevent them from getting to China. This was confirmed by a US official, who told Bloomberg that they had been explicitly advised by the White House to move forward with this plan. 

Now, according to Michael Kratsios, Science Advisor to the President, they are exploring the possibility of installing advanced location trackers in the chips to prevent them from getting to the Asian country.

Nvidia has rejected selling chips to the Chinese market; however, there have been reports of some of the chips avoiding the curbs and getting into the country. The FBI reported arresting two Chinese nationals after being caught for allegedly having “exported to China tens of millions of dollars’ worth of sensitive microchips used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications”.

This proposal, however, has not been discussed with companies like Nvidia or AMD, explained Kratsios.  

For years, the US have been promoting measures to avoid acquiring chips and technology from Chinese companies, and preventing Chinese companies from getting top technologies from US manufacturers. These measures have been strengthened during the Trump administration, citing national security concerns, such as surveillance and espionage. 

However, other reasons, such as slowing the Chinese advance in developing Artificial Intelligence technologies and supercomputing capabilities, have been considered. For these reasons, the administration has promoted measures like curbing exports of the most advanced chips to the Asian country.

Since April, Nvidia has been banned from exporting the more advanced processors to the country, a decision that was recently partly removed. Now the company can sell their H20 chips to China.