After Jensen Huang is Howard Lutnick the prime target of national security inquiry?
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang resigned Thursday after reports of affairs with a direct report and with Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy, yet the national security questions he leaves behind keep growing amidst escalating congressional investigations.
Key points
- Perhaps not coincidentally, Jensen Huang was originally left off the delegation of business leaders traveling to China with Trump, before being added at the very last possible minute during an Alaska refueling stop.
- That line rings true as Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick falls under rapidly escalating bipartisan scrutiny over his role in the flow of Nvidia chips into China.
- After the change of administration but amidst the ongoing probe, The New York Times reported that in 2025, Nvidia’s general counsel emailed those agents directly, citing permission from Lutnick’s export-control chief, Jeffrey Kessler, with Commerce soon pausing its work on the investigation.
Its conclusion was as stark as can be: China’s Ministry of State Security had recruited her to gather intelligence on Jensen Huang and on America’s AI chips, and she had grown close to the Nvidia CEO.
Additional details
- That sparked many concerns even within the GOP, with respected Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton writing to Lutnick directly, urging Commerce to investigate Megaspeed more carefully.
- government look past so grave a threat to national security for so long, and let these sales go on?
- This spring, the New York Times reports, Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of a highly classified assessment built on electronic surveillance of Alice Huang.
- The memo went to a handful of senior officials before President Trump’s May trip to China, with Axios reporting that Lutnick was among those who received the memo directly.
- Despite these entreaties, Lutnick’s Commerce Department was unmoved, steadfastly refusing to add a single company to the entity list for more than a year.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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