House committee chairs ask Nvidia's Huang for a closed-door briefing
Members of Congress now want Nvidia's chief executive in a private room. The question is how well the company shields its information from a foreign government, and what the CEO's contacts with one suspected spy mean for that.
Who is asking, and why
The request comes from three Republican House chairs: John Moolenaar, Brian Mast and Rick Crawford. They lead the committees on China, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence. Their letter says last week's reports "raise significant national security concerns" about China gaining access to US technology and information.
The briefing is meant to cover Nvidia's security protocols against foreign adversary espionage and Jensen Huang's interactions with Alice Huang. The two are not related.
The allegations behind the letter
Alice Huang is an executive at Megaspeed, a data center company in Singapore. Earlier reports say she is a Chinese plant who passes information to Beijing. The Wall Street Journal adds that Chinese authorities recruited her because of her existing relationship with Jensen Huang.
The allegations first appeared in the New York Times last week. They are reportedly sourced from unnamed US intelligence officials.
Megaspeed matters for a second reason. The New York Times reports that it has bought billions' worth of Nvidia chips and keeps buying them. Since 2024, the Commerce Department has accused it of smuggling $2 billion worth of advanced chips to China.
The US has long blocked Nvidia and AMD's most advanced AI accelerators from reaching China and several other countries.
What other governments and Nvidia say
The New York Times also reports that President Trump received a briefing on Megaspeed and Alice Huang a year ago but took no action.
Singapore opened its own probe into Megaspeed, the Wall Street Journal says, and reportedly questioned Alice Huang directly. In its official reply to the paper, Singapore said it does not enforce export controls that other countries impose on their own. It says its probe is aimed at Megaspeed, not at Alice Huang personally or the ties attributed to her. Singapore describes a zero-tolerance stance on commercial fraud and says it has charged four companies and four individuals, who could face up to 20 years in prison.
Taiwan is also watching. The Journal says its authorities are probing her involvement with China and have her under physical surveillance.
Nvidia reposted the comments it gave last week. It says customer meetings are routine for a CEO, and that Huang sees thousands of customer executives a year. Its regional cloud customers, the company says, receive ordinary business information. It says they get no trade secrets and nothing relevant to national security.
Source: Tom's Hardware