Californian accused of shipping $300M worth of Nvidia chips to China without Uncle Sam’s approval A California business owner was arrested on Thursday after being charged with allegedly smuggling Nvidia hardware to China without the proper export licenses. Keeping the highest-end GPUs out of Chinese hands has been a priority for the US government. Greg Lui, 38, allegedly tried to export around $300 million worth of Nvidia …
Its Sooper InTeligents now, he wasted hus money, hiw sad!
the US government.
Greg Lui, 38, allegedly tried to export around $300 million worth of Nvidia kit - typically used for artificial intelligence (AI) development - via US-based freight businesses and Malaysian transshipment companies
The Federal Government has already given nVidia export licenses for their H20 and H200 series of AI chips. The H20 license was issued via the 15% revenue-sharing agreement established in August 2015 and the H200 via a conditional licensing framework that requires a much higher fee of up to 25%.
The odd thing here is that the H100 chip is significantly less powerful than the H200 for which approval has been given. So if you were China and intent on obtaining nVidia technology to drive your AI programs, why would you try and access H100 chips when you can lawfully obtain H200s?
It's important to note, however, that approval to export Blackwell chips - those which power the 50x0 family of consumer graphics cards - has never been approved for export to China in any form.
I think it's worth mentioning in the context of the article, because these additional data points suggest a certain lack of rationality on the part of the US government. On the one hand, they are intent on prosecuting an individual who stands accused of shipping older technology to China, but then with the other hand the government is signing export deals for more powerful gear.
From the outside, at least, this does not appear to be a rational strategy. I don't know if I am being unreasonable to expect a rational strategy given everything else we witness going on... but affording the US government the "Presumption of Rationality" (and not just the "Presumption of Regularity") is starting to feel a bit like an unjustifiable stretch at this point in time.
"suggest a certain lack of rationality on the part of the US government"
That's probably due to the incontinent orange manchild in a suit who's in charge. But don't worry, he'll probably announce a new tariff related deal with China next week - "A great deal, a beautiful deal, probably the best deal!" - where some of those currently banned chips can be sent to China for free. Then in three weeks it'll change again. And then possibly again. Probably.
I doubt this is the case, but it's possible the US govt arranged for newly manufactured H200s straight from Nvidia to be retrofitted with location tracking that Hoppers on the general market, or all H100s, don't have. Since there's an inevitability about China's AI capabilities in the long-term perhaps there's greater intelligence value in observing their development more closely rather than trying to slow it.
The official argument for the export is they want to drip-feed China some nice GPUs to make it more difficult for China to develop it's domestic GPU manufacturing. That doesn't hold up in a state where The Party controls all the big companies. When China's domestic GPUs are good enough a large demand will be created for them with a flick of a pen. Even better if they can make special exceptions for the most important users (the PLA?) to still access foreign chips.
Yea, more likely it's about propping up Nvida's share price and the administration's kickbacks for doing that. We can't have the little people getting a piece of that action.
And Ology is grateful for the lessons, but aside from that:
> Smuggling Nvidia hardware to China without the proper export licenses
As opposed to smuggling *with* the proper export licences? Just to keep your hand in and justify getting those pipes moved around to make space under the floor plates of your Corellian light freighter.
Try "Smuggling Nvidia hardware to China" or "shipping Nvidia hardware to China without the proper export licenses"
it will be interesting too see from this case how the circumvention of a law now becomes a criminal act. ofcourse the US will bend it as much as possible, but the ruling could have a major impact of how transactions are done
but.show the facts, the shipping and purchasing document before making all this noise.
