Nvidia representatives told Illinois Representative Bill Foster that implementing the anti-smuggling measures in the proposed Chip Security Act would be technically possible, Foster told MIT Technology Review. The disclosure stands in contrast to the public position of the Semiconductor Industry Association, of which Nvidia is a member, which in March 2026 called the bill’s chip-tracking mandates “new, untested, and potentially infeasible.” Foster, a Democrat and cosponsor of the bill, said that when the technical details were discussed, the company’s reaction was “yeah, of course we can do this,” though nothing was put in writing. Nvidia has not publicly confirmed that such tracking is feasible and did not respond to requests for comment.
The Chip Security Act would require geotracking to verify the location of advanced AI chips in an effort to stop their diversion to China. It is one of three chip-security bills being considered for the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act, and it has drawn fresh attention amid turmoil at Nvidia, including the reported resignation of CEO Jensen Huang and a reported affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Among the people and firms linked to smuggling allegations is Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company under investigation for allegedly shipping advanced GPUs to China, which reportedly purchased chips from Supermicro, a server maker that packages Nvidia hardware. Nvidia’s December 2025 Fleet Intelligence tool, which lets customers monitor chip performance across data centers, can indicate which country a chip is located in, the company told Reuters, though it would not say whether the tool could prevent smuggling. When asked directly, Nvidia described diversion of its products as insignificant.
The draft bill allows several approaches to location verification, including facility inspections, company attestations, or ping-based systems in which a chip reports its location when it comes online. The ping-based method is the hardest to circumvent, and a September analysis by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology found it to be the most cost-effective option. However, the bill would only reveal where chips are, not disable smuggled hardware. Foster plans to introduce stricter legislation next year that would require licenses to operate advanced GPUs and verify a valid license before a chip could connect. Foster says the controversy has increased political pressure on companies to improve geographic validation of their chips, and he noted that he did not ask Nvidia why it wasn’t voluntarily adopting such tools if they were technically feasible.
Source: Nvidia privately confirmed it could track chips to fight smuggling, even as industry publicly questioned feasibility via MIT Technology Review