US wants to track location of your graphics cards and CPUs to prevent China smugglings

The US Government is introducing a bill today to "prevent diversion of advanced chips to America’s adversaries and protect U.S. product integrity". In simple terms, the idea is to track the location of various hardware components like graphics cards and processors so that smuggling of such parts can be prevented.

Smuggling of CPUs and GPUs is not a new thing and it has happened in the past too where components like these are caught miles away across the ocean in places like China and other east Asian countries.

However, with the ongoing AI war between nations, US has had been investigating reports of whether Nvidia GPUs illegally landed up in China to benefit Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek.

As such, in order to tackle such situations, the company is making changes to the US Chip Security Act so as to add a location verification mechanism to such devices, and there's more. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), who has introduced the bill, has also provided a gist of all the changes in the press release:

The Chip Security Act would direct the Secretary to:

• Require a location verification mechanism on export-controlled advanced chips or products with export-controlled advanced chips within 6 months of enactment and require exporters of advanced chips to report to BIS if their products have been diverted away from their intended location or subject to tampering attempts.
• Study, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, other potential chip security mechanisms in the next year and establish requirements over the next few years for implementing such mechanisms, if appropriate, on covered advanced chips. This longer timeline accommodates the years-long technological roadmap for development of the next generation of advanced chips.
• Assess, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, the most up-to-date security mechanisms annually for three years and determine if any new mechanisms should be required
• Make recommendations annually for three years on how to make export controls more flexible, thus streamlining shipments to more countries.
• Prioritize confidentiality when developing requirements for chip security mechanisms.

You can find the official press release here on the government official's website.

Specific details about the hardware components have not been mentioned as the announcement only notes the presence of "3A090, 4A090, 4A003.z, and 3A001.z" ICs and computer parts. However, it is probably safe to assume that GPUs and NPUs, which are typically great at AI workloads, must be on the list.