How banned AI chips end up in China - by Erich Grunewald
AI chips and servers reach China through distribution chains in which each seller vets only its direct customers, and no one is on the hook for what happens downstream.
This is a guest post written by Erich Grunewald, a prior “Power Law” contributor who writes on AI and compute topics at The Substrate. This post is crossposted from there. Check it out! ~ AI chips are being smuggled1 into China. How does this happen? That is, how are the smugglers able to do it? You might, for example, expect that sales of these chips could be vetted, and shipments tracked, by US authorities. But the relevant US agency is badly understaffed: it cannot possibly vet every sale of AI chips, let alone follow up after every sale to ensure the chips have not been smuggled. So…
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