US secretly embeds trackers in AI chip shipments to catch smuggling to China, sources say
Sources say the trackers are used in shipments of servers from Dell and Supermicro, which include chips from Nvidia and AMD
They show the lengths to which the US has gone to enforce its chip export restrictions on China, even as the Trump administration has sought to relax some curbs on Chinese access to advanced American semiconductors.
The trackers could help build cases against people and companies who profit from violating US export controls, said the people who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Location trackers are a decades-old investigative tool used by US law enforcement agencies to track products subject to export restrictions, such as aeroplane parts. They had been used to combat the illegal diversion of semiconductors in recent years, one source said.
