Three people have been charged for allegedly helping in smuggling at least $2.5billion-worth of United States AI technology to China. The accused, said to be associated with artificial intelligence server maker, Super Micro Computer, including its cofounder, are facing charges bordering on violation of export laws, according to the US Department of Justice.
Though prosecutors did not name Super Micro in the complaint, referring only to a “US manufacturer,” but the San Jose, California-based company said it was informed by federal prosecutors of the indictment last Thursday. Super Micro Computer noted that itself was not named as a defendant in the case but that it had cooperated with investigators.
The Justice Department said it had charged YihShyan Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Chang, and Ting-Wei Sun in an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday, on allegations of a complex scheme to send US-made servers through Taiwan to other countries in Southeast Asia, where they were swapped into unmarked boxes and sent on to China. The US has had export restrictions on China for advanced AI chips since 2022.
In a release, FBI assistant director-in-charge, James Barnacle said the defendants used fabricated documents, staged bogus equipment to pass audit inventories, and used a pass-through company to conceal their misconduct and true clientele list. US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton said schemes such as this “pose a direct threat to US national security.”
Liaw co-founded Super Micro in 1993 and joined its board of directors in 2023. Chang was a sales manager in the Taiwan office of Super Micro, while Sun was a contractor. Officials allege the three took extensive measures to conceal their activity both from the US makers of the servers and export control officials, even using hair dryers to remove labels and serial numbers from the real machines and placing them on dummy machines left behind after the real machines had been shipped to China.
Officials allege the three took extensive measures to conceal their activity both from the US makers of the servers and export control officials, even using hair dryers to remove labels and serial numbers from the real machines and placing them on dummy machines left behind after the real machines had been shipped to China.
