WASHINGTON—Lawmakers are making a bipartisan push to tighten chip export controls and heighten congressional oversight after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.
The woman at the center of the affair is Alice Huang, who was a Chinese television reporter before she went into finance and became an executive at CITIC Securities, a state-backed Chinese investment bank.
In March 2023, she became a controlling shareholder of Singapore-based Megaspeed, a self-described “core business partner” for Nvidia’s cloud computing business, and held an eight-month tenure at the company’s Indonesian subsidiary.
The scandal has set off alarms on Capitol Hill, with three committees—the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, as well as the House committees on foreign affairs and intelligence—asking Jensen Huang to appear for a joint closed-door briefing.
“We need to get to the bottom of this,” House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) told The Epoch Times.
The prospect that the head of the world’s largest company is a target for Chinese intelligence is troubling on many levels, said Moolenaar.
“There are questions as to what information were they seeking, what kind of privilege information that they have access to, what was the message that they were promoting in terms of influencing our national security policy,” he said, adding that his goal is to really understand what happened and what damage occurred as a result.
Members from multiple other committees have also signaled action.
“Congress has a real oversight role, and we should look very hard,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) recently told The Epoch Times.
The United States in January greenlighted exports of Nvidia’s second-most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chip, the H200, on a conditional basis. However, despite restrictions, advanced semiconductors have continued flowing to China via third countries, insiders told The Epoch Times earlier this year.
At the China Forum hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) expressed frustration with the sale’s approval.
“Ignoring obvious espionage threats around this technology is highly irresponsible. Allowing the CCP to strengthen its military and surveillance apparatus in exchange for short-term commercial concessions is foolish,” she said.
Moolenaar said what happened calls for stricter chip regulations to make sure the United States isn’t enhancing China’s AI capabilities “exponentially.”
He highlighted a number of bills aimed at closing the loophole, eliminating smuggling, and protecting high-end chips, calling for the measures to be included in the U.S. annual military spending bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has said he supports such provisions.
Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), from the Senate Banking Committee, has called on Jensen Huang to step down from his post, citing the “tremendous” potential for extortion.
Moolenaar said he shares Cramer’s concerns.
“The Chinese Communist Party will leverage any vulnerabilities,” he said, adding that the sooner Jensen Huang “comes clean” and shares needed information to diagnose the issue, the less leverage Beijing could apply.
Jensen Huang had been highly critical of U.S. chip export controls, describing them as a failure that hindered U.S. business interests and encouraged Chinese domestic competition.
Moolenaar disagreed with the reasoning.
“The idea that somehow us selling more of our material to them is going to reduce the incentive to develop their own, I think, is fantasy,” he said.
He noted that AI is a top priority in China’s latest five-year plan, marking a key front for Chinese communist leaders to overtake the United States and dominate the field.
“Their goal is to be the dominant military as well as the dominant economy,” Moolenaar said. The revelations about the Nvidia CEO’s affair, Moolenaar said, also cast an entirely different light on who he’s advocating for and the degree of credibility behind his arguments.
Honey traps are a well-worn tactic in China’s influence toolkit.
In October 2025, the State Department fired a diplomat over his romantic relationship with a woman allegedly tied to the CCP.
“This was a tried and true method that exploits people’s vulnerabilities, and clearly they exploited one here,” Moolenaar said.
He noted that the Commerce Department hasn’t updated its entity list for over a year, allowing Megaspeed to continue buying chips from Nvidia.
“There needs to be accountability for results in this area,” he said.
The Chinese foreign ministry has described the spy accusations as “purely unsubstantiated.”
Moolenaar said it’s unsurprising.
“The Chinese Communist Party does not acknowledge truth in many respects,” he said.
And in communist countries, be it the Soviet Union or communist China, there’s no debate, “simply the Party line that is given.”
What America stands for is why it needs to win the technology race, he said.
“It’s important that we have peace through strength.”
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