Nvidia security boss pledges 'no backdoors'
According to the feds, Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang set up a company called ALX Solutions in October 2022, just after the Biden administration slapped heavy export controls on high-end GPUs in an attempt to stymie the Chinese AI industry.
The California-based operation is alleged to have shipped the goods through last month, before its operators were nabbed over the weekend, per the Justice Department, which claimed the shipment contained the "most powerful GPU chip on the market."
The feds claim they seized the phones belonging to Geng and Yang which they allege "revealed incriminating communications between the defendants, including communications about shipping export-controlled chips to China through Malaysia to evade US export laws."
The official statement doesn't name the export-license-demanding chips in question, but the affidavit, seen by The Register, does. They allegedly included Nvidia's H100 AI processor and GeForce RTX 4090 GPU (rather than the downrated 4090D), both of which came out in 2022.
Nvidia insists the new arrests demonstrate how people can't get away with smuggling its top-shelf products. But then again, it has every reason to insist the current system is working.
