Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention (nytimes.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year. The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang. But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia's general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company's representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case. The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler's interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.
It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter's outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang's acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia's role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. [...] The incident raised questions about what Mr. Kessler, who reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, had discussed with Nvidia. It also raised the possibility that those discussions could become their own subject of inquiry. Perhaps inadvertently, some officials said, Mr. Kessler had opened himself to accusations of undue influence and potentially jeopardized his department's work on Megaspeed. The case was quickly transferred to the Justice Department in an effort to avoid any potential compromise of the government's investigation of Megaspeed, these people said. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, according to people familiar with the matter.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company's representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia's general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case. The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler's interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.
It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter's outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang's acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia's role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. [...] The incident raised questions about what Mr. Kessler, who reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, had discussed with Nvidia. It also raised the possibility that those discussions could become their own subject of inquiry. Perhaps inadvertently, some officials said, Mr. Kessler had opened himself to accusations of undue influence and potentially jeopardized his department's work on Megaspeed. The case was quickly transferred to the Justice Department in an effort to avoid any potential compromise of the government's investigation of Megaspeed, these people said. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, according to people familiar with the matter.
Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone like Huang has a retinue of security people who background everyone he comes into contact with, and as he has a security clearance, every foreign individual he interacts with is reported to the appropriate govt. dept.
There is no way this whole interaction wasn't scripted by all participants.
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Re:Spy vs. Spy (Score:5, Funny)
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he has a security clearance, every foreign individual he interacts with is reported to the appropriate govt. dept..
Source?
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DCSA Continuous Vetting
https://www.dcsa.mil/Personnel... [dcsa.mil]
Rules are for the little people (Score:2)
Jensen Huang isn't one of the little people.
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all the more reason to keep a close eye and Trump was briefed about Jensen's extramarital indiscretion a year ago and chose not to act.
#ImagineIfObiden
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and as he has a security clearance
I don't know that he does hold an active security clearance.
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Also, I find no evidence that he has a security clearance.
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They don't wait for background checks before doinking someone
FTFY
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A real case to be made for "If you're a CEO just stick with high-end prostitutes, for the good of the company"
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Does that include the Chinese spy he was boinking?
Trump corruption (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't present it as if this wasn't exactly the outcome they were looking for when they donated millions (possibly more) to the Trump campaign.
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They love the corruption, it's easier than competing. They were aiming at Russian-style oligarchy.
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The funniest part is how incompetent the corruption is.
To be fair, Trump did say, "I was the most transparent, and am, transparent President in history.” :-)
It's not his fault if (some) people interpreted that in a good way.
Google: trump said most transparent [google.com]
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Whaaat? (Score:4, Informative)
violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case
In this Administration, run by, "the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created"?
Donald Trump suggests he is ‘perhaps the most honest human being’ ever created [the-independent.com]
[Trump] continued: "I think I'm the most honest human being, perhaps, that God ever created." Amid laughter and cheers from his supporters, he added: "Perhaps."
I'll wait for news of an untainted case in this administration to be shocked.
Is that headline accurate? (Score:1)
So, which is it? Did Commerce drop the investigation, or did it get handed to the better-equipped department? Because it seems like they're trying to make it sound like things working the way they should is nefarious. I mean, if there
Re:Is that headline accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine it went something like this:
Jensen Huang: Glorious Leader, we spent $1,000,000 on your inauguration. (https://www.opensecrets.org/trump/2025-inauguration-donors) Please make this go away.
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Yet more evidence of why Trump was so nervous about the Dems taking control of the legislative branch.
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We're an effectively insurmountable amount of Senate votes from being able to take any realistic action against him.
Seems to me that he's just sad he lost his rubber stamp committee.
Re: Is that headline accurate? (Score:1)
He can't do everything Vlad wants any more, which could be a problem for him
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While he obviously has a huge hard-on for Vlad, he's also effectively told him to fuck off too. I think the Kompromat hypothesis is pretty debunked by this point.
And realistically, he'd just maneuver without Congress. You didn't see him ask Congress before reducing sanctions on Russia after all.
He's very much an executive of the "assert power, and found out if I have it later in court" school.
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You didn't see him ask Congress before reducing sanctions on Russia after all.
Would you like to try again? The orange goon recently said Russia "has been fine on Ukraine" and "hasn't been doing much" [kyivindependent.com] to the country. This as Russia deliberately targets civilians [theguardian.com].
That doesn't sound like "fuck off".
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Trump has bounced back and forth between ratcheting up lethal aid to Ukraine, and then down. He has bounced back and forth between raising sanctions against Russia, and lowering them. His pretty standard TACO/flipfloppy bullshit.
The clause in question:
he's also effectively told him to fuck off too.
Is a simpl
Re: Is that headline accurate? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you've never had a boss like this -- a lazy narcissist -- you're lucky. But if you have, the pattern is familiar and unmistakable:
* Doesn't understand the issues.
* Doesn't do his homework.
* Believes he's a genius whose "gut" overrules people who do understand and do do their homework.
* Plays his subordinates off against one another.
* Highly susceptible to information from random sources: thing he saw on TV, or heard on the golf course.
* Not particularly fussed about contradicting himself because he doesn't care about being right, but does care about being in charge.
* The more chaotic he can make things, the more in charge he feels.
* Has a cynical view of the people he works for but has a genuine gift for flattery when it suits his purposes.
Once you've seen this up close it's really obvious when you come across it again. You can't *not* listen to a lazy narcissist boss because he absolutely will try the stupid shit he says he will. But you can't count on him either, because he has no commitment to anything other than how he looks and feels *right now*.
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However- none of it warranted a "try again" in response to the indisputable fact I presented: In his wish-washy gerbil behavior, he has, indeed, also told Putin to fuck off (effectively), indicating that he isn't really worried about Putin being pissed off at him, other than the fact that Valhalla for him is eternity fellating the fucker.
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Committees are important things that most of the public doesn't really pay attention to and Democrats get to be in charge of all of them.
House Oversight in particular along with Judiciary has a lot of power to run investigations and subpoena evidence. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was who was able to run the whole Hunter Biden inquiry for years.
Also Democrats unlike Republicans will (hopefully) have an interest in protecting their Congressional sovereignty when it comes to
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The courts have allowed him to distribute allocated money however he sees fit- meaning the power of the purpose is realistically relegated to one power: the power to shut down the Government, which is a quadruple bladed sword, politically speaking.
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I would say that power is only broken because his Republican Congress decided to not defend it, they have been brain busted since McConnell said they would never pass any Obama agenda and just made that their modus operandi so it was right up their alley to just let their Executive shit all over them. The Founders expected and really relied on each branch defending it's own power. It's three equal branches but one is more equal than the others. Congress not enforcing it's authority is something the Cons
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He openly flouted the ICA, and asserted the right to spend the money however he wants- or even not spend it at all, and the consequences were nil. All he needed to do is say that it was a matter of foreign policy, and the Supreme Court fucking agreed with him.
Sure, that's a relatively narrow cutout to the ICA, but I suspect they'd expand it quite liberally if asked.
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Probably will come to a shutdown again, eventually a reconciliation budget will come up, only needs 51 to pass and Trump can veto it and eat another shutdown. In there Congress can be specific about funding and where it goes (loose language is what lets the Executive get away with alot)
With any luck Dems have some balls to actually still use their power and this time make Trump take them to court over it, make the SC rule straight up on the ICA, gives good reason for court expansion post '28 :)
Really thou
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Let's be perfectly clear: the Congress still has the power, they just abdicated it for the last two years.
There is no reason whatsoever that the incoming Congress cannot reassert those powers - they still remain in the Constitution.
Congress gets to Congress, same as it ever was.
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It's not that Congress doesn't have the power of the purse, it's that its ability to enforce it with methodology that actually works (the courts vs. impeachment) has been severely crippled- by court precedent that favored the concept of a unitary executive that Congress cannot constrain from its duties.
i.e., the Power of the Purse is the power to allocate money.
However- only the President has the power to spend that money.
Can Congress really restra
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You might be right, but I'm holding out hope. I think a lot of the Republicans went along in large part because they were scared of his ability and willingness to "primary" them - but now they have evidence that, when he does that, he often ends up shooting himself (and the GOP) in the foot. They might be more willing to stand up now to anny egregiously illegal behavior.
SOME of them, anyway.
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At the start of the Trump era, I did honestly believe there was some (misguided) integrity in the GOP.
I have come to realize i was completely wrong on that account.
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Re:Is that headline accurate? (Score:5, Interesting)
Neither. Commerce didn't drop it, it got taken away and given to DoJ, but not because Commerce couldn't handle the invetigation of where the chips were going. The case goes to DoJ because we're talking about criminal charges of smuggling, corporate fraud, violation of national security statutes. Also because the Commerce investigation was tained by potential political interference. And possibly because it ran afoul of a counterintelligence operations siloed in the DoJ -- although by this point the cat is so out of the bag everyone must assume they've got a FISA wiretap warrant on them.
However, the *effect* may be to slow the progress of the investigation and delay any actions being taken.
The first reason for this is that criminal investigations are slower, the standards of proof higher, and potentially involve a criminal trial. Commerce could simply make an administrative law determination that put Megaspeed on some shit list and come to some kind of agreement with NVIDIA.
The second reason is that putting this into DoJ's hands is putting it into a department that has had staff turnover and loss of institutional knowledge, strife between career personnel and political appointees, and difficulty replacing lost employees. It's also led by lame-duck appointees, facing turnover in the next administration. So if they don't make progress in the next two years, allowing for transition delays, it could be years before anything gets accomplished. By then a lot of people will have left their jobs, memories will get hazy, evidence will go missing, and defensive positions constructed.
So while the investigation hasn't been *killed*; it has been delayed so long that it's effectively in suspended animation. It's not possible for Commerce to sanction anyone because the investigation is out of their hands.
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The case goes to DoJ because [normal, good reasons]
Perhaps, or that's the place to send it if you want to sweep it under the rug.
The way it looks now, where the CCP spy is the executive from the company that was smuggling the chips, and the complete lack of interest in blaming anybody... it's looking like they're just sweeping to me. Time will tell, we'll see where the chips fall.
Smuggling ? (Score:2)
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How do they make a 3 hour video about that? Don't they edit anything?
Following subtext (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly Mr. Kessler had advised Mr. Huang that Megaspeed had paid the appropriate bribe and they were cleared to receive product. After inquiring with Commerce about the awkward investigation of sanctioned sales the problem went away for a time, until an internal audit tripped on the fact that it was legally prohibited and the sanction illegitimate. So they tossed it over the fence to DoJ for the cover-up and investigation of the whistleblower since that's their primary line of work these days. DoJ was busy shredding Epstein files, persecuting liberals and clearing murderous feds, so they didn't do a proper job of the coverup before the pesky press found the hanky panky. Now they have to throw Mr Kessler under the bus for reporting to Mr. Huang that the grease was in, and sorry about the dirty linens.
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Why is this moderated "Funny" rather than "Informative". Or maybe Slashdot needs a "Historical" mod?
I know that Slashdot can't fix anything these decades, but I wish the Funny tab would show any post that has received at least one Funny mod point... "Dream on", said the old fool.