Hidden beneath AI chips, Chinese-made circuit boards raise national security concerns in U.S

Key points

• In this article AAPL GOOGL TTMI SANM Follow your favorite stocks CREATE FREE ACCOUNT watch now Printed circuit boards sit underneath almost every chip, a necessity in nearly every electronic.
• They make up a quiet but crucial piece of the booming artificial intelligence market, and represent a growing problem for the U.S., because nearly all AI circuit boards, for Nvidia and others, are made in China.
• Circuit boards present all sorts of opportunities for adversaries to sneak through malicious components.
• That vulnerability has created national security concerns so significant that the U.S. Defense Department is requiring most of its purchases to come from the dwindling number of domestic factories.
• "Chips, substrates, PCBs represent multiple avenues of attack for a potential malicious actor," said Mike Cadenazzi, U.S. assistant secretary of war for industrial base policy, in an interview with CNBC.