A U.S. lawmaker is preparing to introduce a new bill aimed at tracking the whereabouts of artificial intelligence chips, including those made by Nvidia, after they leave the factory. The initiative, which has drawn rare bipartisan backing, is designed to address growing concerns over reports that Nvidia chips are being illegally smuggled into China, defying U.S. export restrictions.
Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips are foundational to a wide range of AI technologies, from chatbots and image generators to advanced systems that could potentially aid in developing biological weapons. Successive U.S. administrations, from Donald Trump to Joe Biden, have tightened controls on exports of these chips to China. Still, investigative reports from Reuters and others have revealed that some chips continue to slip through the cracks — and Nvidia has publicly stated it lacks the ability to monitor its products post-sale.
Representative Bill Foster, a Democrat from Illinois and former particle physicist, believes the tools to track these chips already exist, in some cases embedded within the chips themselves. Technical experts consulted by Reuters echoed his view. Drawing on his own experience designing computer chips during his scientific career, Foster plans to unveil legislation in the coming weeks. The bill would task U.S. regulators with establishing rules in two critical areas: confirming that chips are being used only where they’re legally allowed under export licenses and preventing unlicensed chips from even powering up.
Foster emphasized that this is an urgent, real-world challenge. “This isn’t some hypothetical future risk,” he told Reuters. “The problem is happening now — and we could soon find that the Chinese military or Communist Party is developing weapons or pushing toward artificial general intelligence, all powered by smuggled chips.”
Nvidia declined to comment on the matter.
The issue has taken on added urgency following the rise of China’s DeepSeek, an AI platform that rivals U.S. systems and was reportedly built using Nvidia chips barred from sale to China, according to SemiAnalysis. In Singapore, prosecutors have charged three Chinese nationals with fraud tied to servers that may have housed these restricted chips.
While not yet widely applied, chip-tracking technology is already in use. For example, Google monitors the location of its proprietary AI chips across its global data centers for security reasons, sources told Reuters. Google did not provide a comment.
Foster’s proposal would give the U.S. Commerce Department six months to draft regulations mandating the use of this technology.
Cross-party Momentum
Foster’s initiative has drawn support across party lines. Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the top Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, called on-chip location verification a “creative solution” worth exploring. Republican Representative John Moolenaar, who chairs the same committee, told Reuters there is strong bipartisan backing for requiring firms like Nvidia to build location-tracking features into their most powerful AI chips — especially since the technology is already available.
The proposed tracking system would work by having chips communicate with a secure server that measures signal transmission times, which can then be used to confirm their geographic location, since signals travel at the speed of light.
Tim Fist, a former engineer and now a policy director at the Institute for Progress, noted that this kind of tracking would give regulators at least a broad sense of where the chips are — a major step forward for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which currently has limited insight. “BIS doesn’t know which chips to prioritize for investigation once they’re overseas,” Fist said. With location tracking, “they could sort chips into those likely used legally and those that raise red flags.”
Foster’s second goal — stopping unauthorized chips from even turning on — presents more technical challenges, but he believes it’s time to begin tackling both fronts.