Plan to keep advanced chips from China with tracking tech gains support in Congress

Proposed legislation gaining steam in Congress this week would require high-end GPUs and AI chips to include location-tracking safeguards to ensure US-designed components don't end up in nations against Uncle Sam's wishes, with exporters on the hook for compliance.

On Thursday, a group of bipartisan legislators introduced [PDF] the Chip Security Act in the House of Representatives, following a similar bill introduced in the Senate last week.

If passed, the proposed bill would require that, within 180 days of enactment, certain advanced chips and systems as defined by US export control codes be equipped with some kind of "location verification mechanism," which would help detect and report diversion or misuse after export.

Exporters would be responsible for reporting violations to the US Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in the event chips are diverted, misused, or tampered with.

In other words, if (say) Nvidia accelerators were sold to ...