We discovered an emerging black market for smuggling high-powered GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) into China, including meeting some of the on-the-ground smugglers in the US.
Multiple US administrations have been engaged with China in a technological arms race over AI processing power. The US and China each want to lead in AI development and use AI for national security and military purposes.
The US government has attempted to restrict China from accessing critical AI technologies by using export control laws, regulations which prevent American companies from selling certain AI hardware to customers in China.
The US government’s rules affect all technology companies, but NVIDIA – the largest company in the world by market capitalization – faces the primary burden. NVIDIA is the dominant vendor in the AI GPU space and makes the most powerful AI GPUs in the world. Many of NVIDIA’s AI GPUs are restricted or banned from being sold to Chinese customers; however, laws and regulations cannot stop demand. From China’s perspective, the US government’s export laws are merely obstacles and, from that, emerged a so-called “GPU black market.”
We decided to investigate this GPU black market and technological cold war over processing power. We traveled to Shenzhen, Huizhou, Zhengzhou, Hong Kong, Taipei, and Kaohsiung for three weeks and met with suppliers, fixers, middlemen, users, and innovative repair shops. Our 3.5-hour documentary uncovers how this black market works, why engineers in China want NVIDIA’s banned GPUs, and how NVIDIA lobbies governments to maximize GPU sales. Along the way, we explained the manner in which powerful GPUs are smuggled into China and bypass US export controls. We also realized that the best way to show the black market was to act like one of the locals, so we bought a GPU which was smuggled into China.
Our investigation is divided into multiple sections to trace the smuggling pipelines, starting with customers in Hong Kong. We go through the entire smuggling pipeline and end with an actual smuggler in the United States. We mixed in animations as chapters to help the viewer understand all the steps involved with smuggling GPUs from the United States into China.
Our team is uniquely equipped to create this type of investigative geopolitical content thanks to our connections within the Asia-Pacific region and technical understanding of computing hardware. Over the last 18 years, we have reviewed GPUs and computing hardware while working with hardware vendors around the globe. Our perspective and connections enabled us to expose the GPU black market in a way that had not been done before.
