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> Supermicro Co-Founder Indicted in $2.5 Billion Nvidia GPU Smuggling Scheme > On Thursday, the Justice Department announced it had indicted 71-year-old co-fou

> Supermicro Co-Founder Indicted in $2.5 Billion Nvidia GPU Smuggling Scheme > On Thursday, the Justice Department announced it had indicted 71-year-old co-founder Wally Liaw, along with a Supermicro sales manager in Taiwan, Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang, and a contractor Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun for conspiring to smuggle the GPUs starting in 2024. https://www.pcmag.com/news/co-founder-of-us-server-maker-indicted-for-smuggling-nvidia-gpus-to-china https://www.pcmag.com/news/co-founder-of-us-server-maker-ind... > Prosecutors allege that Mr Liaw used brokers to order servers containing advanced Nvidia chips on behalf of a “pass-through” entity in South-East Asia; many were assembled in America and shipped to that entity, then repackaged in unmarked boxes and sent on to China. To fool customs inspectors, those involved allegedly created thousands of “dummy” servers to sit in the warehouses where the buyer claimed to store the equipment. https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/26/a-new-case-of-chip-smuggling-shows-the-limits-of-export-controls https://www.economist.com/business/2026/03/26/a-new-case-of-... The good news jail time for a founder is sounding quite possible.

protocolture 7mo ago
Microchip salesman indicted for selling microchips. What a weird country.
- charcircuit 7mo ago
  It's no weirder than drug dealer being indicated for selling a controlled substance.
  - protocolture 7mo ago
    Its closer to "food seller, indicted for selling otherwise legal food to people the government randomly decided are unable to eat"
    - deburo 7mo ago
      It's not at all a similar analogy, and you know it. China is a threat. I assume you personally don't care about it, but it is in our interests that it does not dominate the AI industry.
      - protocolture 7mo ago
        China is a threat, if you live in Taiwan. They lack the ability to project force any further than that. You pin down IR guys on this issue they eventually relent and suggest actually the biggest issue with China is that their claimed zone of control includes a lot of ocean trade routes. But honestly, Xi has been better for international trade than any US admin in the last 15 years, I don't see them doing anything but protecting it. They are like 100 times less threatening than the USA, and that was before president tantrum, who has acted (quite recently) to destabilize global trade.
    - pixl97 7mo ago
      Right, that is how embargo's and other similar restrictions work all over the world. Kind of like "Gun seller, indicted for selling otherwise legal guns to people the government randomly decide are unable to buy guns" Your particular point of view decides if it's random or not.
- kube-system 7mo ago
  White collar criminals almost exclusively break laws in their own line of business... because that's what they do.

protocolture 7mo ago

Microchip salesman indicted for selling microchips. What a weird country.

charcircuit 7mo ago
It's no weirder than drug dealer being indicated for selling a controlled substance.
- protocolture 7mo ago
  Its closer to "food seller, indicted for selling otherwise legal food to people the government randomly decided are unable to eat"
  - deburo 7mo ago
    It's not at all a similar analogy, and you know it. China is a threat. I assume you personally don't care about it, but it is in our interests that it does not dominate the AI industry.
    - protocolture 7mo ago
      China is a threat, if you live in Taiwan. They lack the ability to project force any further than that. You pin down IR guys on this issue they eventually relent and suggest actually the biggest issue with China is that their claimed zone of control includes a lot of ocean trade routes. But honestly, Xi has been better for international trade than any US admin in the last 15 years, I don't see them doing anything but protecting it. They are like 100 times less threatening than the USA, and that was before president tantrum, who has acted (quite recently) to destabilize global trade.
  - pixl97 7mo ago
    Right, that is how embargo's and other similar restrictions work all over the world. Kind of like "Gun seller, indicted for selling otherwise legal guns to people the government randomly decide are unable to buy guns" Your particular point of view decides if it's random or not.
kube-system 7mo ago
White collar criminals almost exclusively break laws in their own line of business... because that's what they do.