US lawmakers are stepping up efforts to curb shipments of advanced artificial intelligence chips to China after revelations of an affair involving Nvidia founder Jensen Huang and a woman suspected of Chinese espionage.
Democrats and Republicans have backed a series of bills that would restrict the sale of sensitive chips overseas and give Congress the power to review and potentially block sales already approved by Donald Trump’s administration.
Huang, who had been pushing to soften export rules, resigned earlier this week after his extramarital relationships were exposed, including with a woman who headed Nvidia’s Singaporean customer Megaspeed.
The US has been investigating for more than a year whether Megaspeed was smuggling chips to China, while Alice Huan, with whom Huang had an affair, is suspected of working for Chinese intelligence.
Nvidia chips are used to train the most advanced AI models at labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic, and supporters argue that restricting their export is vital to preserving America’s technological edge.
Although such initiatives were already moving through Congress, the political furore triggered by the Trump administration’s failure to block the export of Nvidia chips to Megaspeed has given the process additional momentum.
One bill — the Remote Access Security Act — aims to prevent Chinese companies from gaining remote access to chips located overseas via cloud services, even in cases where they are barred from buying the physical chips themselves.
On Friday, three influential Republican lawmakers urged their colleagues to pass without delay a package of bills aimed at restricting exports of AI chips.
- Earlier, US Senate Banking Committee chair Tim Scott asked Jensen Huang and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to testify about the latest developments at Nvidia.