'Answer in front of God and country': GOP turns on Lutnick over chips
www.politico.com

... The blast radius from Nvidia's espionage scandal is now spreading to the Commerce Department, potentially setting up Secretary Howard Lutnick or other agency leaders to be the Trump administration's scapegoats.

Recent reports that the Commerce Department failed to take action on Megaspeed, the Singapore-based firm at the center of the spying and chip-smuggling allegations, have intensified scrutiny of the agency's decisions to allow more foreign chip sales, particularly of Nvidia's advanced artificial intelligence chips. Over the past 24 hours, more than half a dozen Republicans have demanded answers -- and potentially congressional testimony -- from Lutnick and top deputies over whether they put private tech interests above national security.

"The obvious question is why did he choose to sell advanced chips?," Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said in an interview Wednesday. "Secretary Lutnick needs to answer that in front of God and country. If I were he, I'd call a press conference this afternoon and explain what happened and why he agreed to sell em chips, and I would stop doing it."

"I mean, there will be a congressional investigation," Kennedy added. "But I don't think he ought to wait on Congress."

Kennedy and other prominent Republicans are calling for Lutnick to explain the agency's lack of action to block Megaspeed from buying advanced chips, despite U.S. intelligence warnings that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was having an affair with a Megaspeed executive suspected of being a Chinese asset. ...

Top intel Dem unsure if Alice Huang is a Chinese spy or useful idiot' after classified briefing
www.politico.com

... Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the likely incoming chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is unsure whether a business executive who cultivated close ties with Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang is a Chinese spy, based on information he received from U.S. intelligence officials in a classified briefing earlier this week.

In a wide-ranging interview on Wednesday, Himes told POLITICO he left the briefing given by heads of U.S. intelligence agencies to top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees without clarity on whether Alice Huang knowingly cultivated information for the Chinese government on the $4 trillion U.S. chip company, or was a "useful idiot" unaware of China's wider espionage activities.

"What's the relationship with Alice Huang and the Chinese, and what do we know about what influence or information was traded? Because today, at least, I don't know," he said.

He noted that the classified briefing touched on multiple subjects, including the Nvidia CEO's relationship with Huang, who is associated with Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed. ...