Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia’s chief executive on Thursday. His exit followed two weeks of reporting that U.S. intelligence had concluded Alice Huang (no relation), a top executive at the Singapore firm Megaspeed, was working for Chinese intelligence. He has since admitted to an affair with her (and another woman who worked in the company). Megaspeed, a major Nvidia customer, was suspected of rerouting high-end chips to China.
The New York Times, which broke the story on Oct. 29, reported:
Roughly a year ago, Mr. Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings, which have not been previously reported, and chose not to do anything with the information. Mr. Trump has been wary of disrupting Nvidia’s chip sales, which are helping to drive the economy and the stock market, and of further complicating the trading relationship with China.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and national security adviser, warned him again in May, during the refueling stop in Alaska where Huang was picked up to accompany the president on his trip to Beijing. Asked on Monday whether he knew about the spy ties at the time, Trump told reporters, “No, I didn’t hear about it then.”
Commerce Department agents had spent months investigating Megaspeed before the DOJ took over the case. But Megaspeed was never added to the Commerce blacklist, even after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over it in the Situation Room.
Congressional scrutiny so far has been directed at Nvidia. Three House Republican chairs have asked Huang for a closed-door briefing on Nvidia’s safeguards against espionage. Any subpoena they issue will expire in January, when Democrats take both chambers. Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Richard Neal have already told Lutnick to preserve his department’s records on Nvidia.
With DOJ under Trump’s control, the idea that Attorney General Todd Blanche would conduct a serious, credible investigation into the administration’s own failings is laughable. So for now, finding out the truth falls to Congress. The new Democratic chairs can subpoena Commerce’s files on the Megaspeed case and Nvidia’s export licenses, along with Nvidia’s own records. They can call Rubio and Lutnick, and their subordinates, to testify about what the president was told and what he did with it. If the administration stonewalls, Congress controls agency budgets and should not shrink from using the power of the purse as a tool to enforce compliance.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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