Nvidia reportedly told a lawmaker chip location tracking is doable

Rep. Bill Foster says Nvidia privately affirmed the Chip Security Act's tracking is implementable, though nothing is in writing and Nvidia hasn't confirmed it.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Bill Foster, who sits on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and cosponsors the Chip Security Act, told MIT Technology Review that Nvidia representatives privately said the bill's anti-smuggling measures are technically implementable. He says nothing was put in writing, but in technical discussions the reps responded along the lines of 'of course we can do this'. Nvidia did not respond to requests to confirm his account.

The bill would require geotracking or location verification of advanced AI chips to keep them from being smuggled to China. It allows facility inspections, company attestations, or ping-based location signals. The ping approach is the hardest to circumvent and was judged most cost-effective by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology in September. In December 2025 Nvidia announced Fleet Intelligence, a tool for customers to monitor chip performance across data center sites, and told Reuters it could indicate which country chips are in. It did not say whether the tool could prevent smuggling.

This cuts against the industry's public line. In March 2026 the Semiconductor Industry Association, which counts Nvidia as a member, opposed the bill as new, untested and potentially infeasible. If verification works, export controls become enforceable rather than aspirational, which decides who gets access to frontier compute. That is a gate on access, and the open question is whether it is a justified security measure or a lasting barrier.

Watch the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act, where this is one of three chip-security bills under consideration. Foster plans stricter legislation next year requiring licenses to operate advanced GPUs, verified before a chip could connect. Caveats: his account is unwritten and unconfirmed, and the bill's mechanisms would only locate chips, not disable smuggled ones. Reports about Megaspeed, a Singapore firm under investigation for smuggling GPUs, and a reportedly halted Commerce inquiry remain reported, not established.

Source: MIT Tech Review