upvote
If MegaSpeed (or any quantity buyer of GPUs in Asia) held all required licenses and met all U.S. export and KYC regulations, selling product to them was legal.

If a legally authorized customer later breaks the law, that doesn't make the supplier guilty of something they didn't do. It means the regulations and enforcement are ineffective. MegaSpeed has apparently been extensively investigated by both the Commerce and Justice Depts for some time and no charges have been filed so far. If the US Govt suspects MegaSpeed is a problem, they can add them to the blocked entity list at any time with no evidence or justification.

Frankly, I agree that someone in Asia has been diverting GPUs. But the US Govt has all the power here and can block anyone they want. If NVidia was knowingly violating export controls by back-channeling GPUs, that's serious jail time and personal fines up to $1M per card. These things have the same penalties for export violations as cruise missiles - and the same national security investigative powers. If NVidia was under suspicion, spooks have been reading all NVidia's company and personal emails and texts, tapping phones, bugging conference rooms, etc. If NVidia was knowingly subverting U.S. export controls, we'd be seeing arrests and perp walks not anonymous leaks about who Jensen's banging.

reply
>If NVidia was knowingly subverting U.S. export controls, we'd be seeing arrests and perp walks not anonymous leaks about who Jensen's banging.

The public evidence around Megaspeed points to NVidia knowing and the government knowing that NVidia was doing it.

Whether the federal government chooses to arrest/prosecute the CEO of the world’s second-largest company is a different decision which is made at the level of the president. Trump did an interview last week where he said that he threatened an AI CEO with jail time:

"We said, 'Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give them a kiss good night,'" Trump added. "Because tomorrow morning, you're going to jail."

After saying the unnamed executive had "totally changed everything" after the alleged warning

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-jail-le...

If you know the AI CEOs, Amodei is unmarried and Altman is gay.

reply
This whole China ban is meaningless in my opinion because the ban is only on exporting physical GPUs to China. The US is OK with Chinese logging in to machines that are physically located in Singapore. Is there any advantage in sitting close to the GPUs, if not what is the point of this ban?
reply
> The US is OK with Chinese logging in to machines that are physically located in Singapore

They're not OK with it, they're about to pressure Singapore, Malaysia and others to ban this too. Why? Because they're a bunch of losers petrified of open competition.

reply
China can generate an enormous amount of electricity so a GPU is worth more to them on home soil.
reply
Maybe.

But if what they discovered wasn’t usable in a prosecution, pressuring the board with his affairs isn’t unthinkable.

reply