> or go after nvidia directly for breaking the "spirit" of the law

The legal obligation is to comply with what the law actually says, not what the legislator possibly had in mind when they wrote the law...

You should read the law before making such outrageous statements.

Judges absolutely do look at the intent of lawmakers and rule on that intent.

The "intent of lawmakers" is based on what the law actually says, and when that is not clear because of ambiguous drafting (crucial point) then it is interpreted based on what the legislator must have meant in context.

Here if the law says "don't sell A to China" then you don't sell A to China but obviously you're free to sell B or C if you want to, you can't claim that the "spirit" and what was actually meant was not to sell anything at all...

That's true until judges start to determine ambiguity using weak logic. It won't be the first time.

Can't reply to mytailorisrich so I will write it here..

I am binge watching Last Week Tonight, and around s2e20(?) there is a Supreme Court ruling that interpreted something about medical care that if read literally (it has the word "state") would mean "each State individually" which would allow each state to slap it down, OR by the wider meaning of the word 'state' aka the central Government. So there are authorities in the US that very much interpret laws to capture the meaning.

That's a different type of ambiguity. That's ambiguity in the wording. The bureaucrat in question is saying they'll make the next thing illegal straight away, not that they need to go fix their poor wording.

The sole job of people who get other people's money to do a job can't define what they want, and are being praised for bypassing the written rules they're meant to write. I think this isn't really acceptable.