US senators want to suspend Nvidia AI chip export licenses to China and its intermediaries — bipartisan letter to Commerce Dept says that Huang’s claims of no chip diversion ‘were contradicted by reporting available’

U.S. Senators Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have jointly written a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, urging him to take “immediate action” on the diversion of American AI chips to China. According to the Financial Times, the two legislators made the written statement after three Super Micro employees, including one of its co-founders, Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, have been charged with smuggling $2.5 billion worth of Nvidia hardware to China.

“We urge all necessary and appropriate actions, including the immediate pausing, suspension, or other reconsideration of all active export licenses covering advanced Nvidia AI chips and server systems destined for…China as well as intermediaries in south-east Asia, including Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore,” the senators said in their correspondence to Lutnick. They also said they refuted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s claims of no evidence of chip diversion of his company’s most powerful products, saying that “These statements were not simply wrong in hindsight. They were contradicted by reporting available at the time and potentially misled U.S. officials.”

Despite this, an Nvidia spokesperson told Tom’s Hardware, “Strict compliance is a top priority for Nvidia. We continue to work closely with our customers and the government on compliance programs as export regulations have expanded.” Furthermore, the company claims that “Unlawful diversion of controlled U.S. computers to China is a losing proposition across the board — Nvidia does not provide any service or support for such systems, and the enforcement mechanisms are rigorous and effective.”

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Jensen Huang has been lobbying for the approval of the sale of Nvidia’s products to China, arguing that it’s advantageous for the U.S. to have Chinese companies using its technologies. All his effort finally came to fruition in December 2025, after President Donald Trump made a complete U-turn and allowed Chinese tech companies to acquire Nvidia H200 chips. After a few months of uncertainty from Beijing, the company was finally able to confirm an order for the H200 and is restarting the manufacture of these older AI chips.

Still, the lawmakers are concerned about China’s access to the U.S. latest chips, including Nvidia’s Blackwell and upcoming Vera Rubin AI GPUs. In fact, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will reportedly vote on the bill that will force chipmakers to add geo-tracking technology to their high-end gaming and AI GPUs. Although Nvidia is against such measures, it has developed a software tracking solution that will give operators a rough idea of where these Blackwell GPUs are located.

“Amazon can tell you where a package is at any given moment,” Ryan Fedasiuk, a technology security expert from the American Enterprise Institute, told the Financial Times. “There is no reason the most powerful AI hardware on earth should have a less sophisticated chain-of-custody system than a pair of sneakers.”

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