Representatives from Nvidia told Illinois lawmaker Bill Foster the company could technically build a system to track advanced chips, even while an industry group publicly argued the idea was unworkable.
Foster, a Democrat on the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is a cosponsor of the Chip Security Act. The bill would mandate geotracking for advanced AI processors to stop smuggling to China. It is one of three chip-security bills under review for the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act. Renewed attention focused on the legislation following Jensen Huang’s resignation and reports of an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
When the Chip Security Act was introduced in May 2025, lawmakers stated the technology to enforce it already existed. Nvidia has not publicly confirmed this. In March 2026, the Semiconductor Industry Association, of which Nvidia is a member, opposed the bill. The group wrote that the mandates for chip tracking were “new, untested, and potentially infeasible.”
Privately, however, Nvidia representatives working with Foster told the lawmaker the company could implement the measures. “They never put anything in writing,” Foster says. During technical discussions on the possibility of such safeguards, their reaction was “yeah, of course we can do this.” This private acknowledgment goes further than anything Nvidia has previously made public.
Other technology Nvidia has built for its customers suggests the company can indeed offer accurate tracking of its chips’ locations. In December 2025, the company announced a new tool called Fleet Intelligence. This software would allow customers to monitor how advanced chips were performing across different data center locations. In doing so, the tool could indicate which country chips were in, Nvidia confirmed to Reuters. The company would not elaborate on whether this technology could be used to prevent smuggling.
Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment or confirmation of Foster’s characterization.
In early October, when lawmakers were increasingly concerned about Nvidia’s role in smuggling, MIT Technology Review asked the company if Fleet Intelligence could be used to prevent the practice. It declined to answer directly. Instead, the company sent a statement: “Governments and media have found insignificant diversion of controlled US products—a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of domestic compute China already has.”
The recent fallout at Nvidia involves a number of people and companies alleged to be involved in chip smuggling. Alice Huang, with whom Jensen Huang reportedly had an affair, runs Megaspeed. This is a Singaporean firm now under investigation for smuggling advanced GPUs to China. A US Commerce Department inquiry into the company was reportedly halted after intervention by Nvidia. Megaspeed reportedly bought chips from Supermicro, a company that packages Nvidia’s chips onto servers.
The Chip Security Act as drafted would require a mechanism to track the locations of chips. Options include inspections of facilities, attestations by companies, or ping-based location mechanisms. The ping-based technique, the hardest option to circumvent, would require the GPU to send a signal of its location when it comes online. In September, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology found it would be the most cost-effective option.
Foster said he did not ask Nvidia’s representatives why they were not voluntarily adopting such chip-tracking tools if they could technically do so.
If the requirements of the bill pass as part of the Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act, the new tracking mechanisms would only tell investigators where the chips are. They would not offer a way to disconnect them if it is revealed they have been smuggled. Foster told MIT Technology Review he intends to introduce new, stricter legislation in the new year that would offer a workaround. The new rule would require licenses to operate advanced GPUs. Before a GPU could connect, its valid license would need to be verified.
In the meantime, the controversy at Nvidia, Foster says, has fueled support among his colleagues for the rules in the bill. “There will be a lot of political pressure, in the wake of everything that’s happened, on the companies to actually do a very good job of the geographic validation of where the chip actually is.”
What it means
For customers using Nvidia hardware, the immediate change is limited to the existence of Fleet Intelligence. This tool allows operators to see where their chips are running. It does not currently stop chips from leaving the US. If the Chip Security Act passes, operators will be required to verify chip locations through inspections or software signals. A stricter version of this law, proposed by Foster, would tie the ability to connect a GPU to a valid operating licence, effectively blocking unauthorised hardware from accessing the network.
