[mongrelion]

I recommend everyone to watch GamersNexus' documentary on the NVIDIA AI GPU black market. They explain how companies like DeepSeek can get a hold of chips that are otherwise banned by the US government to export to China

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI

[the_pwner224]

I was just selling my RTX 4090 on Ebay recently and got a ton of bids from Chinese accounts. The winner ($2,325) had Australia set as the country on their profile, but a Chinese name on the account, and the order shipping address was to a different Chinese name (to a regular single-family house in Delaware). Most bidders straight up had China as their profile country.

So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turned into a 48/96 GB VRAM frankenstein in a Chinese chop shop. I haven't watched the full 3.5 hour documentary you linked but from the first few minutes, it seems quite interesting. And covers this exact thing.

Edit: Again, I checked the address, it was a house, not a freight forwarder warehouse. And if it was actually going to AU, the forwarder would be on the west coast in CA/WA, not east coast (had another order go to Thailand with a forwarder in SF. And Miami is the big hub for South America). For legit freight forwarding they also wouldn't have different names on the account & shipping address. As the parent comment's YT video describes, these are often just normal Chinese-Americans or international students who do this to make a bit of extra money.

[BigTTYGothGF]

People with Chinese names do sometimes live in Delaware.

[hinkley]

I got a work laptop stolen (in my favorite bag, which they don’t make anymore) and found out from the police that there’s a chain from fences for drug addicts to criminal organizations in the Middle East. They’ve found American hardware there a number of times. Little harder to steal a desktop graphics card in general, but breakins happen.

[Lammy]

> So my 4090 (24 GB) is probably going to get turned into a 48/96 GB VRAM frankenstein in a Chinese chop shop

Cool, though. Where can I buy one? :p

[txdv]

Can't they do it here? or will the authorities go after these kind of upgrades?

[embedding-shape]

Yeah, or just jump unto Alibaba and Ebay from any neighboring country to China and see for yourself how easy it would be to buy a GPU then transport yourself ~500m and now be within China with these GPUs.

[whimsicalism]

I think you are overestimating the ease of getting hopper/blackwell from alibaba or ebay.

[brendoelfrendo]

One of the keys being, of course, that the Chinese government doesn't care. Yeah it might require mules bringing the GPUs into China but once they're in China, no one is breaking any laws. Of course DeepSeek is using these GPUs! It's not illegal for them to do so!

[whatsupdog]

Chinese government recently banned Chinese companies from buying Nvidia chips.

[lenerdenator]

The US government doesn't really care either.

We have someone in the comments section talking about how they encountered a bunch of suspicious bidders on their GPU auction. That's not what happens when people care about being potentially investigated for breaking export rules.

[BeFlatXIII]

Why would the Chinese government care about US export restrictions in the first place?

[hinkley]

Where does nvidia manufacture those chips?

[vel0city]

The Republic of a China, not the People's Republic of China. You might not legally be able to identify the difference in your jurisdiction.