The U.S. Justice Department charged California residents Chuan Geng and Shiwei Yang with conspiring to export advanced Nvidia AI chips to China without the required Commerce Department licences. Prosecutors allege the pair used their company, ALX Solutions, to ship more than 200 Nvidia H100 processors—worth tens of millions of dollars—from October 2022 through July 2025, routing freight through Singapore and Malaysia to conceal the chips’ final destination. Geng, a permanent U.S. resident, was released on a US$250,000 bond, while Yang, who overstayed a visa, remains in custody pending a detention hearing on 12 August. Each faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted. Nvidia responded on a separate front to mounting security questions, publishing a blog post in English and Chinese in which Chief Security Officer David Reber Jr. insisted that “Nvidia GPUs do not and should not have kill switches and backdoors.” The company warned that hard-coded controls or remote-disable features would be “a gift to hackers and hostile actors” that could “fracture trust in U.S. technology.” The indictment and Nvidia’s public statement highlight escalating tension over U.S. efforts to police the flow and operation of high-performance chips amid competition with Beijing. Washington has restricted exports of leading-edge processors since 2022, and lawmakers are weighing the Chip Security Act, which could mandate location-tracking or kill-switch functions. Nvidia, whose sales to China account for roughly one-eighth of revenue, argues that embedding such hardware controls would undermine both cybersecurity and U.S. commercial interests.