Nvidia Scandal Puts Export Control Agency and Its Chief Under Congressional Scrutiny

Jeffrey Kessler, the under secretary of commerce who has run the Bureau of Industry and Security since early 2025, weighed asking the then Nvidia chief executive to speak at the event in Washington on January 10 and boasted that he could get him to attend, according to those people. Huang eventually dropped out of contention. A BIS spokesperson said no speakers have been invited and planning is continuing. The conference has a "Golden Age" theme, echoing a phrase Trump often uses.

The episode matters because BIS writes and enforces the rules that decide which AI processors can reach China, and Congress now wants to know whether it did enough to stop Nvidia chips getting there. The agency licenses the H200 sales to China that Trump allowed in late 2025, with the US government taking a 25% cut of the revenue. House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Brian Mast has asked Kessler to appear before his committee on December 3, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been asked to testify to the Senate Banking Committee on December 10.

At the centre of the inquiry is Megaspeed, the Nvidia customer once led by Alice Huang, the businesswoman US officials suspect of spying for China and with whom Huang had an affair. Commerce investigated Megaspeed for possible export control violations; the company denies wrongdoing. Nvidia intervened in a 2025 BIS inquiry into the firm, and in late summer 2025 Nvidia general counsel Tim Teter called Kessler to ask whether BIS was involved in Alice Huang's detention in Singapore, according to Bloomberg. BIS was not involved in the detention. Nvidia says Teter did not know about the affair at the time. Afterwards, BIS staff were reportedly restricted in investigating Nvidia, with requests to the company routed through Kessler. Alice Huang is now in China.

Critics also point to a gap in the rules. In May 2025 BIS said it would not enforce a rule issued in the final days of the Biden administration that restricted access to advanced chips for China and other adversaries. It promised a replacement but has not issued one, which some see as a loophole for Chinese-headquartered companies operating abroad.

People familiar with the agency described mismanagement and poor transparency under Kessler, with staff cut off from counterparts in other agencies and industry, a strained relationship between Kessler and Lutnick, including one account of Lutnick shouting at Kessler in front of staff, and the loss of experienced career officials that has created bottlenecks. BIS said those characterisations reflected normal control of information in a national security setting, that Kessler and Lutnick have a strong working relationship, and that the shouting account was "baseless gossip." The Commerce Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The pressure on Commerce has also come from inside the administration: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday that several agencies had wanted Megaspeed added to the entity list for months. Kessler's December 3 appearance, if he agrees to it, would be the first public test of the agency's account.