New 'Stop Stealing Our Chips Act' Offers 30% Payout to Whistleblowers Reporting Illegal AI Tech Exports

Imagine trying to enforce export rules on advanced technology—like those super-fast AI chips—when the shipments are often hidden in plain sight. That’s the problem the Stop Stealing our Chips Act aims to solve by turning corporate insiders into national security partners. This bill establishes a massive new whistleblower program under the Department of Commerce, offering serious financial rewards and ironclad legal protection to anyone who reports illegal exports of sensitive technology to foreign adversaries.

The core of the bill is simple: if your original information leads to the government collecting a fine from a company that violated export controls, you could receive between 10% and 30% of that collected fine. This isn't small change; given the high value of these chips and the severity of the violations, these fines could be huge. To make reporting easy, the Secretary of Commerce must set up a secure online portal within 120 days. You can even report anonymously through a lawyer, though you’ll likely need to reveal your identity later to claim the payout.

The National Security Tip Line

This isn't a program for reporting minor paperwork errors. The bill is focused on stopping violations that compromise national security, particularly those involving advanced chips. Think of a logistics manager, an engineer, or a finance employee who sees a clear pattern of illegal shipments being disguised. Their information is what the government needs. The Secretary has a tight timeline: 60 days to decide if a report is credible and then 180 days to investigate it. If you submit a credible tip, you’ll get updates every 30 days, so you won’t feel like your information just vanished into a bureaucratic black hole.

Your Job Is Safe, Mostly

For many busy people, the biggest barrier to reporting wrongdoing is the fear of getting fired. This bill addresses that head-on with robust anti-retaliation protections. Employers are strictly forbidden from firing, demoting, or harassing you for reporting violations. If they do, you can sue in federal court. If you win, you don't just get your job back; you get double the back pay (plus interest) and the company has to cover all your legal and attorney fees. This is a powerful shield designed to let people report without risking their livelihood.

Who Gets Paid and Who Doesn't

While the protections are broad, the payout rules have some important carve-outs. If you’re a federal employee acting as part of your regular job, you’re disqualified from receiving an award. More importantly for corporate employees, if you are an officer, director, or work in internal audit or compliance—meaning your job is literally to find these violations—you generally won't qualify for the award. However, there are crucial exceptions: you can still get paid if you reasonably believed reporting was necessary to prevent significant financial harm, or if you reported internally first and then waited 120 days before going to the government because the company didn't act. This prevents companies from using their internal compliance teams to silence external reporting without actually fixing the problem.

The Bottom Line for Enforcement

This program is a game-changer for export control enforcement. It creates a powerful financial incentive for people to come forward, backed by serious legal protection against corporate backlash. To fund this whole system, the bill creates the Export Compliance Accountability Fund. Every fine collected because of a whistleblower’s tip goes directly into this fund, ensuring the program pays for itself and can even redirect excess funds to general export enforcement efforts. For companies dealing with sensitive technology, this bill means the risk of getting caught just went way up because their own employees are now incentivized to watch for and report illegal activity.