Journalist Garrison Lovely, author of ‘Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us — and How to Stop It,’ wrote Tuesday about Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company linked to a suspected Chinese spy accused of smuggling advanced AI chips to China during her affair with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
Lovely wrote on X: “Wow, the Commerce Dept still hasn’t banned the company tied to the suspected Chinese spy from buying advanced AI chips. Before this was a news story, I guess there’s some argument for not tipping anyone off by blocking the company, but not doing it now?”
U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) responded to Lovely: “No amount of money donated to the White House ballroom is worth the US losing its competitive edge to China. @howardlutnick why is Commerce asleep at the wheel?”
NOTE: The New York Times reported today that “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last week over his handling of a Singaporean company at the heart of revelations about Chinese spying on Nvidia, demanding to know why the United States had not already banned sales of advanced A.I. chips to the firm.”
No amount of money donated to the White House ballroom is worth the US losing its competitive edge to China. @howardlutnick why is Commerce asleep at the wheel?
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) November 11, 2026
[NOTE: The Commerce Department denied that Bessent confronted Lutnick, according to Axios.]
AI influencer Stella Biderman, an AI researcher and the Executive Director of EleutherAI, also replied to Lovely: “There was a lengthy prior of time where export restrictions on chips weren’t being enforced at all because DOGE fired the people who were supposed to be monitoring that, so nobody did it.”
In 2025, DOGE cuts eliminated approximately 73 employees at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which also affected personnel within the U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI), which evaluates the security and safety guidelines of advanced AI models.
As Fortune reported in February 2025, AISI, which was established during the Biden administration, “works with most of the country’s big AI companies to develop its guidelines and standards. OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Apple, and Meta all signed up to help around a year ago, though Musk’s AI-focused businesses—xAI and Tesla—did not.”
Brad Carson, president of the nonprofit Americans for Responsible Innovation, told Fortune, “Cutting costs at the agency responsible for maintaining American AI leadership is a gift to China and will only hurt the U.S. in the long run.”