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Nvidia scandal: US Secretary of Commerce Lutnick under pressure over chip exports
US Secretary of Commerce Lutnick is criticized. His ministry is said to have ignored warnings about the company Megaspeed, which was involved in the Nvidia scandal. Cabinet colleague Bessent accused him of neglect
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Nvidia scandal US Secretary of Commerce Lutnick under pressure As of: November 13, 2026 • 8:06 p.m
US Secretary of Commerce Lutnick is criticized. His ministry is said to have ignored warnings about the company Megaspeed, which was involved in the Nvidia scandal. Cabinet colleague Bessent accused him of failings.
In the scandal surrounding the resigned Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and possible illegal chip deliveries to China, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is coming under increasing pressure.
His cabinet colleague, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, criticized Lutnick's Commerce Department for not taking action against the Megaspeed company involved in the Nvidia scandal. Although other US government agencies have been asking the Commerce Department to blacklist Megaspeed "for months," this has not happened, Bessent told CNBC. The Ministry of Commerce is in charge of the blacklist, he emphasized. The blacklist includes companies to which goods are generally not allowed to be delivered.
The US chip company Nvidia is investigating its co-founder and boss Jensen Huang. That's what it's about. more
Megaspeed was founded by suspected Chinese spy Alice Huang, who is said to have had an affair with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang.
US intelligence agencies suspect Alice Huang of being a Chinese spy. China has denied the espionage allegations. Company boss Huang resigned from all his Nvidida positions because of the affair.
According to the US news agency Bloomberg, Megaspeed is said to have illegally delivered high-performance chips from Nvidia to China. Bessent was “frustrated” by the process and pointed out that the Trump administration had banned the delivery of particularly powerful Nvidia semiconductors to China. According to Bloomberg, such chips are now being used in a data center in Shanghai. They therefore reached China via megaspeed. With the export ban, the US government wants to slow down Chinese progress in the development of artificial intelligence.
The boss has resigned - but the investigation into the espionage affair involving Jensen Huang and Nvidia is only just beginning
Nvidia and Jensen Huang had always assured that Nvidia would comply with all bans. Personally, however, Huang was an advocate for chip sales. He argued that this would tie China to US technology - instead of encouraging the development of systems that could compete with Nvidia on the global market.
Despite the export ban, US authorities have repeatedly concluded that some companies were allegedly buying Nvidia technology for their own use but were actually sending it on to China.
Jensen Huang played a key role in shaping Nvidia - as a "likeable tech bro" with good contacts in the Trump administration. more
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has now warned the US government against imposing new export restrictions on semiconductors in the wake of the Nvidia and Megaspeed scandals. China "consistently opposes the abuse of control measures that disrupt the stability of global industrial supply chains and are in no one's interest," said a spokeswoman.
A bipartisan majority is forming in the US Congress for stricter export controls of state-of-the-art AI chips to China. According to House of Representatives Chairman Mike Johnson, export controls on chips to China are a big issue right now. He supports restricting the People's Republic's access. Republicans are seeking to tie new export restrictions on AI chips to the annual defense budget.
According to media reports, Trump knew about Nvidia boss Huang's affair with a suspected Chinese spy. more
According to Republican committee chairman Tim Scott, Lutnick and Jensen Huang will soon testify before the US Senate Banking Committee. “Recent reports raise serious concerns about our national security and the protection of sensitive U.S. technology,” Scott told X.
Lutnick's subpoena puts the minister in a difficult position. According to insiders, senior government officials are discussing in the White House whether the minister should be pressured to resign.
With the departure of Nvidia founder Huang, the company is losing its innovator. more
Meanwhile, a new name has come into play in the question of who should succeed Jensen Huang as Nvidia boss. According to a newspaper report, Nvidia's board of directors has approached the head of the British chip designer Arm, Rene Haas.
The Financial Times, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Haas was one of several candidates for the successor. However, there is no guarantee that he will be offered the position or that he will accept it.
This topic in the program: tagesschau.de | Nvidia: Huang affair could become Trump scandal | 11/12/2026 | 11:41 p.m