Nvidia CEO is in Congress’ sights after spy scandal
Semafor · · g1816670
Lawmakers are eyeing stricter export controls that would limit company chip sales to Beijing, as well as investigations.
Nvidia and its embattled CEO can add Washington to their list of huge problems.
Members of Congress in both parties are pushing for strengthened export controls and investigations of company chief Jensen Huang after he admitted an affair with a woman accused by US intelligence of spying for the Chinese government. Beyond the corporate governance questions raised by the furor, lawmakers are incensed by reports that Nvidia may have pushed for access to its chips by dubious Chinese companies.
After Democrats’ resounding victories in the midterm elections — after campaigning on promises to investigate big corporations and CEOs — Huang is in line for especially sharp scrutiny. Huang’s future is up to his board, not Congress, but lawmakers can pass stricter export controls that would limit Nvidia’s chip sales to Beijing and drag the CEO to Capitol Hill for an investigation of the company’s dealings with China.
“Nvidia says it’s going to investigate, but we need a Senate investigation, and I’m going to be chairing” the investigations arm of the Intelligence Committee next year, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
“Whether it’s my subcommittee or another, there needs to be a really penetrating, comprehensive investigation of all the possible compromises of our intelligence that may have occurred, but also the reasons that Donald Trump is so high on the head of Nvidia,” Blumenthal added. “So it is not just an intelligence issue; it’s also a potential corruption issue.”
Stronger export controls, which Nvidia has lobbied to kill, are a likely first consequence. The top House Democrat and future Speaker-in-waiting, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, said Monday that he “strongly supports” the stricter chip export control provisions that the Senate has already advanced in its annual defense policy bill.
“We’re going to work hard to make sure that those provisions make it into the final version,” Jeffries told reporters, adding: “We’re going to need a full briefing specifically as it relates to the Nvidia issue, so we can all get to the bottom of what happened.”
The chief authors of the Senate-passed export controls plan, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., affirmed their proposal in a joint statement that said the Commerce Department also needs to immediately close any export control loopholes.
Huang is poised to face Hill investigations into his knowledge of the woman at the center of the scandal, Alice Huang, as well as his relationships with the White House and Commerce. Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the incoming Foreign Relations Committee chair, said he wants a probe “to determine whether our national security was compromised.”
“We need answers about the relationship between AI billionaires and the Trump administration, who’s making these decisions, and who’s really got their hand on the wheel,” added Coons.
Huang will have some backup from President Donald Trump, who defended him on Monday as “an amazing guy.” Trump said the Nvidia CEO told him during a conversation earlier in the day, when asked, that “he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy.”
The Commerce Department and the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Republican leaders, fresh off bruising losses in the midterms, were quieter following the intelligence briefing they received in the Capitol on Monday.
“We want to be responding in a serious way to anything that threatens America’s national security interests or our values,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters.
Asked how Congress should respond to the Nvidia crisis, House Speaker Mike Johnson told Semafor: “They’re still gathering information on all that.”
The more striking circumspection came from other lawmakers on intelligence committees, who were clearly hesitant to call for immediate action until more details were shared about Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang.
“We don’t know much about anything other than [that] this gentleman had relationships. We don’t know where it went,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told Semafor. “I’m on the intelligence committee, and I’ll leave it at that … until we have a chance to run down more information.”
Another committee member, Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said that he doesn’t expect to get more details from the Trump administration, but that “we’ll work it through Senate Intel. Most certainly we have access to that information, and I think we’ll be able to get it.”
Asked if Huang should testify before Congress, the Senate intelligence panel’s top Democrat, Mark Warner of Virginia, demurred: “Lots of people have expressed concerns …. I want to get more facts before I weigh in.”
Regarding the potential that sensitive information may have been compromised by Huang’s actions, given the advanced chips his company manufactures, Warner told Semafor: “I’m not going to speculate at this point in time ... We need to hear from the FBI, and they weren’t there today.”
Trump also told reporters on Monday that “the FBI is looking into it,” without elaborating further.
An FBI spokesperson declined to comment.