The US Department of Justice announced on Thursday that three people have been charged with conspiring to illegally divert American artificial intelligence technologies to China.
The FBI said that Yih-Shyan Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Chang, and Ting-Wei Sun “allegedly conspired to sell billions of dollars’ worth of servers containing sensitive and controlled graphics processing units to buyers in China, in violation of US export control laws.”
Liaw co-founded the AI-optimized server manufacturer Super Micro Computer Inc in 1993, and joined its board in 2023, according to a 2023 Super Micro press release.
The Justice Department accuses these three individuals of participating in a scheme to divert large quantities of artificial intelligence technologies to customers in China.
The Justice Department’s statement does not mention the name of Super Micro, but it does say that Liaw is the “cofounder, board member, and senior vice president of business development of a publicly traded American manufacturer that designs and builds high-performance servers for artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications, including servers that integrate artificial intelligence graphics processing units (GPUs).”
The DOJ statement describes Chang as a general manager of the Taiwan office of the same American manufacturer as Liaw, while presenting Sun as a third-party broker and “arranger” who worked with Liaw and Chang.
Super Micro did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“Together, the defendants and others conspired to systematically divert servers from the American manufacturer with certain GPUs to China without a license from the US Department of Commerce,” the US Department of Justice stated.
The defendants allegedly fabricated documents, staged fake equipment to pass audit inventories, and used an intermediary company to conceal their misconduct and true customer list, the Justice Department said.
