Nvidia Told a Lawmaker It Can Track Its Chips — Even as the Industry Called It Impossible

Nvidia has privately told a member of Congress that it could build the chip-tracking safeguards lawmakers want — even as the chip industry has publicly argued that the same measures are unworkable. The gap between the private assurance and the public position is now at the center of a renewed fight over how to keep advanced American AI chips out of China.

According to MIT Technology Review, Representative Bill Foster of Illinois said Nvidia representatives told him during technical discussions that implementing the anti-smuggling measures in the Chip Security Act would be possible. "They never put anything in writing," Foster said, but when the safeguards came up, their reaction was, in his words, "yeah, of course we can do this." The account goes further than anything Nvidia has said publicly, and the company did not respond to requests for comment or confirmation.

A bill, a public objection, and a private yes

Foster, a Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is a cosponsor of the Chip Security Act, which would require geotracking to verify where advanced AI chips are located, in order to prevent smuggling to China. The bill is one of three chip-security measures being considered for inclusion in the Senate's National Defense Authorization Act.

When the act was introduced in May 2025, its sponsors said the technology to carry it out already existed. But in March 2026, the Semiconductor Industry Association — of which Nvidia is a member — formally opposed the bill, writing that its tracking mandates were "new, untested, and potentially infeasible." Foster's account suggests that at least one of the industry's biggest names does not share that view behind closed doors.

There is already evidence that Nvidia can tell where its chips are. In December 2025, the company announced a tool called Fleet Intelligence that lets customers monitor how its advanced chips perform across data center locations. Nvidia confirmed to Reuters that the tool could indicate which country chips were in, though it would not say whether the technology could be used to prevent smuggling.

Why the issue has flared up again

The Chip Security Act is drawing fresh attention after the resignation of Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, which followed reports of an affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. The woman, Alice Huang, runs Megaspeed, a Singaporean firm now under investigation for smuggling advanced GPUs to China, according to reporting cited by MIT Technology Review. A U.S. Commerce Department inquiry into the company was reportedly halted after intervention by Nvidia, and Megaspeed reportedly bought chips from Supermicro, a company that packages Nvidia's chips onto servers.

Foster said the controversy has increased support among his colleagues for the bill's requirements. "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," he told the publication.

What the bill would — and would not — do

As drafted, the Chip Security Act would require a mechanism to track chip locations, whether through facility inspections, company attestations, or ping-based location checks. The ping-based approach, which would have a GPU report its location when it comes online, is the hardest to circumvent, and researchers at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology found in September that it would also be the most cost-effective option.

But tracking alone has a limit: it would tell investigators where chips are, not give them a way to shut down smuggled ones. Foster said he plans to introduce stricter legislation in the new year that would require licenses to operate advanced GPUs, with each chip's license verified before it can connect. If the current bill's requirements pass as part of the defense authorization act, the harder question of enforcement may be the next fight.

Written by the BidAsk Newsroom. Based on reporting from the sources below.