AsianFin -- U.S. authorities have covertly placed location-tracking devices on select shipments of advanced chips considered at high risk of being illegally diverted to China, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The measures are designed to monitor artificial intelligence (AI) chips potentially being sent to destinations restricted under U.S. export controls and are applied only to shipments currently under investigation, according to Reuters.

The news agency cited unnamed sources “with direct knowledge of the previously unreported law enforcement tactic.” Reuters also noted that using location trackers is a decades-old investigative method employed by U.S. authorities to track products subject to export restrictions, and it has been increasingly used in recent years to combat the illegal diversion of semiconductors.