U.S. Prosecutors Charge Super Micro Computer Executives with Illegal Technology Export

United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Roman Rozhavsky, and Assistant Director in Charge of the New York Field Office of the FBI, James C. Barnacle, Jr., announced the unsealing of an Indictment charging Yih-Shyan "Wally" Liaw, Ruei-Tsang "Steven" Chang, and Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun, for conspiring to divert high-performance computer servers assembled in the United States and integrating sophisticated U.S. artificial intelligence technology to China, in violation of U.S. export controls laws. Liaw, a U.S. citizen, and Sun, a citizen of Taiwan, were arrested today and presented in the Northern District of California. Chang, a citizen of Taiwan, remains a fugitive. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos. Liaw is a co-founder, board member, and Senior Vice President of Business Development of publicly traded U.S.-based manufacturer Super Micro Computer (SMCI), which designs and builds high-performance computer servers for artificial intelligence and cloud computing applications, including servers that integrate artificial intelligence graphics processing units. Chang is a general manager in the U.S. Manufacturer's Taiwan office. Sun is a third-party broker and "fixer" who has worked with Liaw, Chang, and others to divert U.S.-export controlled technology to China. Together, the defendants and others conspired to systematically divert the U.S. Manufacturer's servers with certain GPUs to China without a license to do so from the U.S. Department of Commerce. According to the indictment filed with the court, the U.S. manufacturer's flagship products, namley servers integrating GPUs manufactured by Nvidia (NVDA), are subject to strict U.S. export controls barring their sale to China without a license.