Bill Foster, a former particle physicist and now a Democratic U.S. Representative, is spearheading the bipartisan bill. In comments made to Reuters, Foster claims the technology exists to track chips after they have been sold, despite NVIDIA last year claiming it “cannot track products after they are sold” in reference to pre-owned Jetson products finding their way to second-hand markets.
“This is not an imaginary future problem. It is a problem now, and at some point we’re going to discover that the Chinese Communist Party, or their military, is busy designing weapons using large arrays of chips, or even just working on (artificial general intelligence), which is as immediate as nuclear technology,” Foster said.
While not precise, the idea would be to track chips more generally, which would allow NVIDIA and the U.S. government to determine if advanced AI semiconductors are finding their way to China. However, that’s not the only thing the bill would introduce.
It also aims to have NVIDIA (and presumably others) implement a kill switch of sorts, to prevent chips from booting if they evade export controls and end up in places where they shouldn’t be. From our vantage point, it would act like wheel clamp (or boot), whereby illegally parked vehicles are prevented from driving away.