Warren and Coons Ask Trump Officials to Preserve Nvidia China Export Records

Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Coons of Delaware sent the letter on Wednesday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio, and White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. The Wall Street Journal first reported its contents. The senators asked for written confirmation by November 17 that preservation directives had been issued, and for a congressional briefing on the national security risks involved, according to Fox Business.

The letter went out the same day Nvidia's board accepted Jensen Huang's resignation, after Huang acknowledged a relationship with a woman reports have described as a suspected Chinese intelligence operative. It moves the political fallout beyond the company itself and towards the officials responsible for enforcing US export controls. The senators wrote that the affair "raises significant concerns about the federal government's ability to effectively enforce our export controls," according to Reuters, and asked whether "prudent defensive counter-intelligence action was taken or national security recommendations were overruled."

The records they want kept include communications between Nvidia executives and senior administration officials, files from investigations into chip smuggling, and records of decisions to weaken or suspend export controls, Fox Business reported. The senators wrote that "reports suggest that officials within the government" were aware of concerns about Nvidia and Megaspeed.

Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data centre company, has reportedly bought more than $4.8 billion of advanced Nvidia chips since June 2024 and is reportedly under Justice Department investigation over whether it diverted them to China in breach of US export rules. Alice Huang, an executive linked to Megaspeed, is the woman at the centre of the allegations; she is not related to Jensen Huang. Reports have alleged that his relationship with her helped at least $7.5 billion of Nvidia chip shipments reach China, Reuters said.

On Thursday, The Information reported that Singapore has barred Alice Huang from re-entering the country after authorities concluded she gave inaccurate information during their investigation into Megaspeed.

The pressure on the administration has also come from inside it. Axios reported this week, citing people familiar with the matter, that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pressed Lutnick at a Situation Room meeting on why Megaspeed had not been added to the Commerce Department's entity list. Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in a post on X that Rubio had warned President Trump about Huang's relationship, "but Trump brushed it off," and that Rubio and Lutnick continued to approve licences for H200 chip sales to China.

Fox Business said it had asked the White House, the State, Commerce and Justice departments, Nvidia and Megaspeed for comment; no responses were reported. Preservation requests of this kind usually come before formal document demands, and the November 17 deadline is the next marker for whether the administration will cooperate. Nvidia reports quarterly results under interim chief executive Colette Kress next week.