A California entrepreneur has been arrested and charged with smuggling more than $300 million worth of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware to China, the US Department of Justice announced.
Greg Lui, 38, also known as Yiu Kong Lui, used “false documents and shipments via third countries,” including Malaysia and Singapore, to conduct his trafficking “in clear violation of U.S. export control laws,” he said in a statement Thursday.
The computer servers then shipped back to China contained GPU processors, manufactured in the United States and “commonly used for AI applications”, he further specifies.
According to the indictment, Greg Lui “carried out this scheme knowing that US regulations prohibited the export” to Beijing of such high-end processors “in order to protect national security”.
“Superintelligence is the defining technology of our time,” said Deputy Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg, using the term used by Donald Trump to describe AI.
He assured that his services intended to protect “the American advantage in the chips which power this technology (…) against any illegal diversion” by Washington’s “economic and military adversaries”.
The United States and China are engaged in fierce competition in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
