{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-huizenga-to-lutnick-stronger-export-controls-of-ai-chips-is-needed", "Cotton, Huizenga to Lutnick: Stronger Export Controls of AI Chips is Needed", "2026-03-20", "2026", "2026-03", "Republican", "Senate", "AR", "Tom Cotton", "C001095", "www.cotton.senate.gov", "cotton", "https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases", "scraper", "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE\n\nContact: Patrick McCann (202) 224-2353\n\nMarch 20, 2026\n\nCotton, Huizenga to Lutnick: Stronger Export Controls of AI Chips is Needed\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2014 Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Representative Bill Huizenga (Michigan-04), today sent a letter to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick raising concerns about large-scale advanced AI chip smuggling, in light of the recent indictments of Super Micro Computer employees. The lawmakers, both lead sponsors of the Chip Security Act, asked Secretary Lutnick to begin implementing some of their bill\u2019s anti-diversion provisions to prevent Communist China from stealing our most advanced technology and undermining the Trump administration\u2019s current export control policy.\n\nIn part, the lawmakers wrote:\n\n\u201cExport enforcement is a notoriously challenging problem, and the various concealment methods demonstrated in past cases show the need for more modern, creative solutions. Our Chip Security Act would require location verification to be implemented for export-controlled advanced chips. While no tool is foolproof, new anti-diversion methods would enable American companies to sell their products with greater peace of mind and open new markets.\u201d\n\nFull text of the letter may be found here and below.\n\nMarch 20, 2026\n\nThe Honorable Howard Lutnick\n\nSecretary of Commerce\n\nU.S. Department of Commerce\n\n1401 Constitution Ave NW\n\nWashington, DC 20230\n\nDear Secretary Lutnick:\n\nWe write to you alarmed about yet another case of large-scale chip smuggling. This underscores the need for stronger and more creative approaches to export enforcement.\n\nMultiple investigations, reporting, and testimonies show that there is diversion of advanced chips.\n\nIn one U.S. investigation dubbed \u201cOperation Gatekeeper\u201d, authorities disrupted a smuggling ring that was buying Nvidia chips through straw purchasers and stripping the manufacturer's labels before attempting to illegally ship them to China.\n\nIn another case, four men built a black-market network to route Nvidia chips through Malaysia and Thailand to eventually reach China. The ringleader was arrested days before he was set to become the chief technology officer of a cloud company.\n\nEarly last year, Singapore officials raided more than 20 locations suspected of diversion activity and charged three individuals who were falsifying paperwork to conceal that Nvidia chips, officially destined for Malaysia, were illegally heading to China.\n\nMegaspeed, a Singapore-based spin-off of a Chinese government-owned cloud company, imported over $4.6 billion worth of Nvidia hardware and is now under investigation for potential violations of U.S. export controls.\n\nAccording to a U.S. official, DeepSeek\u2019s latest model was trained on Nvidia Blackwell chips, likely clustered in a data center in an autonomous region of China.\n\nUnder Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security Jeffrey Kessler said, \u201cwe catch significant smuggling and illicit exports, but we\u2019re concerned it\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.\u201d\n\nAssistant Secretary for Export Enforcement David Peters recently testified, \u201cyes, there is chip smuggling, it is going on\u2026it is among our top enforcement priorities.\u201d\n\nMost recently, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment revealing Super Micro Computer employees, including a co-founder, have been charged with smuggling billions of dollars of Nvidia chips to China through an unnamed shell company. The perpetrators even built \u201cdummy\u201d servers, removed labels and stickers from the original servers containing Nvidia chips using hair dryers, and reaffixed them to the dummy servers to fool auditors. Every instance of chip smuggling undermines U.S. export policy and erodes America\u2019s advantage in the race for technological dominance.\n\nExport enforcement is a notoriously challenging problem, and the various concealment methods demonstrated in past cases show the need for more modern, creative solutions. Our Chip Security Act would require location verification to be implemented for export-controlled advanced chips. While no tool is foolproof, new anti-diversion methods would enable American companies to sell their products with greater peace of mind and open new markets.\n\nThe world\u2019s compute infrastructure must be built on American technology, requiring us to export chips at scale, while keeping smuggling efforts at bay. While we work to get the Chip Security Act passed into law, we respectfully request that you begin implementation of some of the provisions in the bill, including requiring technical anti-diversion solutions for advanced chips.\n\nSincerely,\n\n###", 1, "2026-04-04T05:28:40Z", "2026-04-04T05:30:10Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-huizenga-to-lutnick-stronger-export-controls-of-ai-chips-is-needed"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.812942860648036, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}