Critics say Lutnick failed to cut off diversion of Nvidia chips to China

Résumé détaillé

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is under fire by critics asking whether his ties to Chinese companies friendship with ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang contributed to a lack of…

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is under fire by critics asking whether his ties to Chinese companies and friendship with Nvidia's ousted CEO Jensen Huang contributed to the federal agency's lack of oversight over billions in Nvidia AI chip sales, CBS has learned.

Before President Trump nominated Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, Lutnick was the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, a New York investment bank which held about $1.2 billion in Nvidia stock at the time.

Lutnick developed a warm relationship with Huang, who resigned Thursday as reports of a growing number of affairs caused new uncertainty about the world's dominant AI chipmaker. One of Huang's alleged relationships was with Alice Huang (no relation to Jensen Huang), who is believed by the U.S. to be a Chinese spy. She ran Megaspeed International, a Singapore-based company that became one of Nvidia's biggest customers for AI chips and is suspected of illegally shipping Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to Chinese entities, circumventing a U.S. ban.

As commerce secretary, Lutnick took the helm of an agency responsible for policing exports of sensitive technology to adversaries and global rivals.

One way the Commerce Department keeps this information and technology out of the hands of China and other adversaries is by putting foreign companies and individuals on its Entity List. This restricts their ability to access U.S. technology products, and inclusion on the list means that the department believes there's a risk that the entity is involved in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.

In 2024, under the Biden administration, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security launched an investigation into Nvidia's chip sales to Megaspeed to determine whether they were being redirected to China. But according to The New York Times, the probe was abruptly transferred to the Department of Justice.

The Commerce Department has not added a company to the…

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