The AI race is the modern-day space race, and the US is concerned that China will make too much progress too quickly. This is precisely why President Trump recently suggested that the likes of NVIDIA only allowed to sell limited versions of its AI chips to Chinese customers.
How could this be policed? Through the use of trackers, according to sources familiar with the matter.
As Reuters reports, authorities in the US have secretly placed location tracking devices in certain chip shipments. The concern is that AI chips considered too advanced could be illegally diverted to China away from whatever their officially stated destination is.
This means of tracking shipments has not been revealed by the US government, but by two separate sources described as having “direct knowledge of the previously unreported law enforcement tactic”.
With AI chips having so much potential, there are huge profits to be made from using the most advanced versions available. The US is looking to protect itself in a fast advancing and somewhat unknown market, and it is China that is seen as posing one of the greatest threats.
Tracking shipments in this way is indicative of the level of fear the US has – it is a method used to track arms shipments. The sources who revealed the new technique of monitoring shipments said that the trackers can help build cases against people and companies who profit from violating US export controls.
This is far from being the first time that tracking devices have been used to curb export control violations, but to use the “decades-old investigative tool” to monitor the movements of chips is less common. Semi-conductor shipments have been tracked in the past, but the threat posed by AI is forcing officials to take things more seriously.
Reuters cites a quintet of people working in the AI server supply chain as saying that manufacturers including Dell, Super Micro, NVIDIA and AMD are known to be subject to tracking.
But while the tracking of AI chip shipments is not something that the US government is talking about publicly, it is something that has already been anticipated by buyers in China. Shipments are carefully inspected to locate tracking devices so they can be removed before shipping to unauthorized destination.
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