Amid Jensen Huang‘s confession that he had an extramarital affair with a woman accused of being a Chinese spy, the Nvidia CEO has resigned from the $5 trillion semiconductor giant. The stock price, which drove 15% of the S&P 500’s growth last year, is now down over 27% over the months. The worst fallout to come is not merely financial. Rather, what elevates this otherwise heinous sex scandal into a national security catastrophe is how it was enabled by none other than Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent President Donald Trump and top Cabinet members a classified memorandum detailing the relationship between the Huangs and the intelligence indicating that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy. The White House directed the Commerce Department to put Alice Huang’s Megaspeed on the entity list of companies that pose national security concerns. Lutnick refused this request in May; he refused a second attempted crackdown order from Trump in August; and on Nov. 5, Lutnick reportedly stonewalled Trump again. And evidently, this wasn’t because Lutnick knew too little. Rather, the Commerce Department spent months last year conducting an investigation into Megaspeed and specifically whether it was illicitly smuggling Nvidia chips into China, only for Lutnick’s direct underling, Jeff Kessler, to invite Nvidia to reach out to Commerce about the case, bringing the department’s inquiry to an effective end.
