| ▲ | mongrelion 3 days ago |
| 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 |
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| ▲ | the_pwner224 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | BigTTYGothGF 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | People with Chinese names do sometimes live in Delaware. | | |
| ▲ | jhfdbkofdchk 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Do they all live at the same address of the overseas freight forwarder too? I've sold stuff on eBay to someone in Europe who had me ship to the same address in Delaware. I was confused so I googled the address and turned up the freight forwarding service. | | |
| ▲ | secret-noun 3 days ago | parent [-] | | This has happened to me a couple of times with eBay sales. Is it safe to transact with people who use freight forwarders in your experience? Do you lose any protections? Out of fear, in my cases, I cancelled the auctions. On second thought though, I wonder if it's actually the buyer using the service that is more at risk (introduction of 3rd party, more complex delivery, probably impossible to return, etc) | | |
| ▲ | mkl 3 days ago | parent [-] | | What's not safe for you? They pay you the money, then you send the item to the address they ask. You already got the money! Cancelling the sale because the buyer wants to spend a bit less on shipping seems like an awful thing to do. International shipping gets ridiculously expensive, so combining multiple small packages into one shipment makes perfect sense. |
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| ▲ | kube-system 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you are selling in the US, and an account with a primary address overseas buys your item and uses a US shipping address, you are likely shipping to a package forwarder. These services are common because many people and businesses in the US only ship to the US. I have my eBay account set this way, and I still get bids from overseas accounts -- I always Google the shipping address, 100% of the time it has been a package forwarder. | |
| ▲ | square_usual 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And Australia; ~5% of Australia's population is Chinese origin. | |
| ▲ | Tostino 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | With their profile in Australia? | | |
| ▲ | yardstick 3 days ago | parent [-] | | While this is likely what the op was suggesting, I would like to point out that in Australia and NZ, it can be a massive pain to find someone who will ship internationally. Normally this is for things like Amazon US, and other US-based companies. There are services[1][2] that advertise virtual postal addresses in your purchase-country where they’ll box and ship it to you. So yes, a Chinese name based in Australia with a shipping address in the US isn’t immediately a red flag. Lots of Chinese in Australia and NZ, and lots of people here like to use shipping services like this. 1. https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/you-shop 2. https://www.choice.com.au/shopping/online-shopping/buying-on... (Scroll to bottom) | | |
| ▲ | fn-mote 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Chinese name based in Australia with a shipping address in the US isn’t immediately a red flag And a good thing, too, or I would be concerned about posting that I knew it was going somewhere forbidden. |
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| ▲ | tirant 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Sometimes. But the vast proportion live in China. Like 9000 vs 1.4 Billion. |
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| ▲ | hinkley 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 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 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Can't they do it here? or will the authorities go after these kind of upgrades? |
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| ▲ | embedding-shape 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | whimsicalism 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I think you are overestimating the ease of getting hopper/blackwell from alibaba or ebay. | | |
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| ▲ | brendoelfrendo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 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! |
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| ▲ | whatsupdog 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Chinese government recently banned Chinese companies from buying Nvidia chips. | | |
| ▲ | berdario 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yup, the change was in the news in September https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/china-blocks-sal... | | |
| ▲ | hedora 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That’s not a ban of nvidia chips though. It’s for a few of the biggest companies, and is specifically telling them not to buy a made-for-china SKU: > The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) told companies, including ByteDance and Alibaba, this week to end their testing and orders of the RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia’s tailor-made product for the country, according to three people with knowledge of the matter |
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| ▲ | lenerdenator 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | pests 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > suspicious bidders A person with a Chinese name living in Delaware? Gasp. |
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| ▲ | BeFlatXIII 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why would the Chinese government care about US export restrictions in the first place? | |
| ▲ | zapataband2 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | hinkley 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Where does nvidia manufacture those chips? |
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| ▲ | vel0city 3 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
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| ▲ | zapataband2 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| [dead] |
