US CHARGES GREG LUI OVER $300M CHIP SMUGGLING TO CHINA

US prosecutors have charged a Californian, Greg Lui, with smuggling more than $300 million worth of servers containing export-controlled Nvidia chips to China, the Department of Justice said. The indictment accuses Lui of using his company, Earthmade Computer, and false paperwork to route servers fitted with Nvidia A100 and H100 processors through Malaysia and Singapore, where no export licence is required, before they reached China. The department announced the arrest on Thursday. If convicted, Lui faces a maximum sentence of 50 years in prison, it said.

The indictment cites a 2024 order for 27 servers worth around $7.6 million, which a co-conspirator allegedly told a Malaysian official Lui had shipped on to China rather than Malaysia. In a separate case, prosecutors allege Lui routed 92 export-controlled servers through Singapore and Malaysia to Hong Kong, before they reached a company in Hangzhou, described as a hub for artificial intelligence development in China. Reports differ on the scheme's timeframe, with one saying it ran from October 2023 to August 2026, and another saying the conduct occurred between 2023 and 2024. The department's statement referred to such chips' AI uses as "Super Intelligence", or "SI".

Bill Essayli, the US attorney for the Central District of California, said protecting national security meant stopping advanced technology reaching adversaries' militaries, and vowed to prosecute those who put security at risk for profit. John Eisenberg, an assistant attorney general for national security, called "SI" the defining technology of the era. The case forms part of wider US export controls restricting China's access to advanced semiconductors such as Nvidia's chips. Officials say the controls aim to slow China's progress in developing artificial intelligence and military technology.