緊急回:ジェンスンとスパイ――Megaspeed問題とNvidia輸出規制の穴

EMERGENCY POD: Jensen and His Spy

ChinaTalk38分
緊急回:ジェンスンとスパイ――Megaspeed問題とNvidia輸出規制の穴

緊急回:ジェンスンとスパイ――Megaspeed問題とNvidia輸出規制の穴

ChinaTalk

0:0038:23

要約

ChinaTalkの緊急回。CFRのChris McGuire氏が、NvidiaのJensen Huang氏と中国側スパイとされる人物の関係が報じられた件を、輸出規制の観点から論じる。2025年5月に商務省がバイデン政権の第三国向け大量注文のライセンス規則を執行停止したまま代替策を出さず、Megaspeedへの出荷が可能になったと指摘する。議会の法案(MATCH、RASA、OVERWATCH)の見通しや、商務省に残る抜け穴も議論される。最後はハニートラップの歴史談義で締める。

この回のポイント

  • ●McGuire氏は、問題の核心は不倫ではなく相手が中国のスパイである点だと述べる。Huang氏は大統領と政策を話し、チップ設計や誰がどれだけ計算資源を持つかを把握し、供給の配分も左右するため、情報価値が高いという。
  • ●2025年5月、トランプ政権はバイデン政権の「信頼されない企業への大量AIチップ注文は要ライセンス」とする規則を執行せず、代替も作らなかったとされる。McGuire氏はHuang氏の要請によるものだと述べる。
  • ●今年のAIチップ輸入の2位・4位・5位はシンガポール、マレーシア、タイで、合計800億ドル。McGuire氏はその多くが中国向けではないかと見る。
  • ●商務省はMegaspeedが中国のスパイに運営されているとの情報を持ちながら、48億ドル相当のチップ出荷を止めなかった。防御的ブリーフィングを行わなかったのは意図的な選択だったはずだとの見方が示される。
  • ●商務省の調査の件でKessler次官がNvidiaと話したとNYTが報じたと紹介され、司法省が調査を引き継いだ経緯も語られる。Cantor Fitzgeraldの保有株との利益相反も問題視される。
  • ●MATCHやOVERWATCHなどの法案は後押しされるが、密輸対策やリモートアクセス、米国内での中国企業の購入といった抜け穴は商務省自身が塞ぐ必要があると主張する。

章立て

  1. 番組の導入と経緯

    タイトル案の冗談から始まり、トランプ政権の対中姿勢と、Jensen Huang氏がどう政策に影響したかが語られる。

  2. 2025年5月の規則不執行

    McGuire氏が、バイデン政権の第三国向け規則が執行されず、東南アジア経由の抜け穴が生まれた経緯を説明する。

  3. なぜスパイが問題なのか

    Nvidiaの戦略的重要性、Huang氏が持つ情報と配分権限のため、スパイとの関係が安全保障上のリスクになると論じる。

  4. 防御的ブリーフィングと商務省の沈黙

    警告が行われなかった理由の推測と、48億ドルの出荷を止めなかった商務省への疑問が議論される。

  5. 汚職か無能か、利益相反

    Cantor Fitzgeraldの保有株、Kessler次官の沈黙、Megaspeedが今もNvidiaのパートナー表示にあることなどを論じる。

  6. 議会の対応と残る抜け穴

    MATCH、RASA、OVERWATCHの見通しと、商務省が取るべき追加措置、NYT報道が語られる。

  7. ハニートラップの歴史

    ヤエルの逸話、冷戦期のRomeo、ソ連・ロシアの潜入工作など、歴史上のハニートラップを雑談形式で紹介する。

解説記事

ChinaTalkの緊急エピソードで、Council on Foreign Relations(CFR)上級研究員のChris McGuire氏が、NvidiaのJensen Huang CEOと、中国側スパイとされる人物との関係をめぐる報道を、米国の半導体輸出規制の問題として読み解いた。元NSC幹部としての立場から、スキャンダルの背後にある政策の穴を指摘している。

問題は不倫ではなく「スパイ」

McGuire氏はまず、不倫そのものは誰も気にしておらず、問題は相手が中国のスパイだという点だと述べる。理由として、Nvidiaが戦略的に極めて重要な企業であること、Huang氏が大統領と直接やり取りし、AI政策や輸出管理について話していることを挙げた。

さらにHuang氏はチップ設計の詳細を知り、誰がどれだけのAIチップを持つかについて、米政府以上に把握しているとされる。需要が供給を大きく上回るため、誰にいつ供給するかを決める調停役でもある。つまりHuang氏に近づけば、計算資源へのアクセスも得やすくなる。Megaspeedがそれを利用したかは分からないとしつつ、中国側にとって魅力的な経路だと語った。

2025年5月の規則不執行が生んだ抜け穴

議論の中心は、H200を中国に売るかどうかよりも、第三国経由の流出を防ぐ規則だ。McGuire氏によれば、バイデン政権は「信頼されない企業へのAIチップの大量注文は、世界の大半の国で輸出ライセンスを要する」と定めた。トランプ政権は2025年5月にこれを執行しないと決め、代替を出すとしながら出さなかった。規則は今も法令上は残っており、執行されていれば今回の状況は防げたはずだという。同氏はこの判断がHuang氏の要請によるものだと述べている。

結果として規制の線引きは曖昧になり、東南アジア経由で中国がチップを得る隙が生じたと説明される。今年のAIチップ輸入国の2位、4位、5位はシンガポール、マレーシア、タイで、合計800億ドルに達する。すべてが中国向けとは限らないが、多くは中国向けだと見ている。ホストの一人は、これを米国から敵対国への史上最大級の技術移転と表現した。

商務省への疑問と利益相反の指摘

McGuire氏が最も不可解だとするのは、商務省がMegaspeedが中国のスパイに運営されているとの情報を持ちながら、48億ドル相当のチップ出荷を止めなかった点だ。Huang氏への防御的ブリーフィングが行われなかったことは、忘れたのではなく意図的な選択だったはずで、情報源保護や別件の捜査などの理由もありうるが、断定はできないと慎重に語る。

さらにNYTの報道として、Kessler次官が商務省の調査についてNvidiaと話したことが紹介された。FBIが捜査中の企業の主要取引先CEOと捜査内容を話すようなものだと同氏は批判する。その後、調査は司法省に引き継がれたという。

ホスト側は、Lutnick商務長官の関係するCantor Fitzgeraldの公開提出書類で、Nvidia株が第3位のエクスポージャーだと指摘した。一方で、これが汚職なのか無能なのか、単なる決断の欠如なのかは分からないとも述べている。Kessler次官が公の場でほとんど発言せず、政策の説明がないことが疑念を強めるという。MegaspeedがNvidiaのサイトで公式クラウドパートナーのまま掲載されていることにも驚きが示された。

議会と、商務省にしか塞げない穴

議会では、OVERWATCH(中国向けBlackwellを禁止)、MATCH(DUVなど製造装置の規制で同盟国を揃える)、RASAといった法案が焦点になる。McGuire氏は、共和党の委員長らがNvidiaに書簡を送り、民主党も監督を予告するなど超党派の関心が高まっており、法案成立の可能性は上がったとみる。NDAAに付ける方法もあるが、単独で早期に通せば強いメッセージになるとも述べた。

ただし、これらの法案では密輸対策やリモートアクセスの問題は包括的に解決しない。商務省自身が、大規模注文への世界的なライセンス要件、東南アジア向け全注文の許可制、リモートアクセスの制限、米国内での中国企業によるチップ購入の禁止を実施する必要があると主張する。実際、Megaspeedのチップの多くは、エンティティリスト掲載企業Insperの米国子会社経由で入手された可能性があるという。商務省は議会の圧力にも抵抗しているように見えるとし、近い将来に解決するとは言い切れないと悲観的だ。

業界への示唆とハニートラップ談義

McGuire氏は、Huang氏が優れた経営者であることは認めつつ、自社製品が国家安全保障上重要になった現実にNvidiaが追いついていないと指摘する。銀行業界が制裁遵守を内部統制として定着させたように、テック業界も安全保障を真剣に扱うべきだという。OpenAIをめぐるサウジのスパイ疑惑も例に挙げ、民間のAI企業が各国の標的になると述べた。

終盤は、ハニートラップの歴史談義だ。旧約聖書のヤエル、冷戦期の男性版ハニートラップ「Romeo」、ソ連やロシアの長期潜入工作などが話題となり、番組らしい余興で締めくくられた。

まとめ

本件は個人のスキャンダルにとどまらず、規制が「存在するが執行されない」状態の危うさを示している。日本の読者にとっては、AIチップの流通が東南アジアを含む第三国経由で管理されている点と、米国の輸出管理が政治的判断に左右されうる点が注目される。今後、議会の法案や商務省の追加措置が実際に動くかが焦点となる。なお、ここでの主張の多くはMcGuire氏らの見解であり、スパイ疑惑や調査の詳細は番組内では確認されていない。

文字起こし(英語・自動生成)

I think we should workshop some titles for this episode. I got Lust Compliance by Ang Lee, The Spy Who Leased Me, Hopper Blackwell Rubin Spy, Crouching Tiger Hidden Asset. What are we going with here? I like The Spy Who Leased Me. Okay. Maybe that's just I'm a little biased on the James Bond front. Emergency Podcast Le Affair Jensen. Here we are, Monday, November 9th, 107. We've gone from close relationship to romantic relationship to, oh, by the way, I got the feds off the hunt of my girlfriend's company that's smuggling chips? Question mark? I'm old enough to remember January of 2025 when this administration came in talking a big game when it came to China. I remember Lutnik during a hearing or an interview saying something like, look, they're disrespecting us by trying to steal our chips and we're not going to stand for it.

And then, you know, you have the first few months of the administration where, you know, it seems like the policy which you were involved in from the Biden administration, by and large, was going to continue. The idea being chips are important and China shouldn't be able to get whatever chips they want. And then all of a sudden, Jensen Huang comes into the picture. So why don't you pick it up from there, Chris? Chris McGuire, I'm a senior fellow for China and Emerging Technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations, former NSC deputy senior director for technology and national security. Yeah, so Jensen has repeatedly lobbied the government to loosen export controls. And almost more importantly, there's been so much focus on loosening export controls on ships to China. But actually, where I think that he's had even more impact is preventing the enforcement of controls that are on third countries that China is using to get access to chips. There's a lot of debate about H-200s and should we send chips to China? Obviously, I think no. But the more consequential decisions that actually happened were in May 2025, because in May 2025, the Trump administration decided not to enforce the Biden administration rules that would have actually prevented exports to Megaspeed.

The Biden administration said, we are going to say any large quantities of AI chip orders to not trusted companies in most countries in the world are going to require an export. Trump administration said, we're not going to enforce that. They also said we're going to replace it, and then they never did. So the regulations that are currently still on the books actually would have prevented this situation. But the Trump administration made the decision then, at the request of Jensen, to not enforce that. And since then, you've seen this gradual kind of whittling down of export control policy, blurring of the lines. It's not just a clear definitive, you know, the U.S. will not export and allow China to access the most advanced chips. It's, well, certain ones they can, certain ones they can't. There's loopholes there. They're enforcing this. They're not enforcing that. It's created this hodgepodge situation where it's, first of all, not even super clear what export control policies even are at this point. You can't understand it when you go look at the regulations. And second of all, it's created massive gaps that China is exploiting to gain access to chips, particularly via Southeast Asia. And that seems like it was what was happening with Megaspeed.

And then on top of this, obviously, now you're seeing that there was kind of inappropriate relationships between the leadership of Megaspeed and the leadership of Media. And there's all sorts of other stories that are, you know, adding on top of this. But really the core issue here is that the restrictions that were designed to prevent Chinese circumvention of controls and designed to prevent companies like Megaspeed from existing are not being enforced. And that's why we're in the situation that we're in today. So what happens next? I mean, Congress is absolutely going to sink their teeth into – well, let's not – that's too fast. Yeah. So, you know, for all the NVIDIA bulls on Twitter, why is it bad that Jensen Huang slept with a Chinese spy? Yeah, and to be clear, the problem is that she's a Chinese spy. There's separate stories about infidelity. I don't think anyone really cares about here. The fact is NVIDIA is an extremely strategically important company.

They make one of the most important products in the world, which is why they're regulated by the U.S. government. And also, Jensen Huang has personal relationships with the President of the United States. He has personal communications with the President of the United States and talks with him about policy, about AI policy, about chip policy, export control policy. And this is all extremely valuable information to the Chinese. And it's information that we really have to protect. Communication with the President, obviously, you have to protect. But not only that, obviously, he has all sorts of access into NVIDIA and insight into NVIDIA. He knows the details of their chip design information. That's really, really important. He knows who has what compute. NVIDIA actually knows more about who has how many AI chips than anyone else in the world, far more than the U.S. government knows. That is super important. And also, NVIDIA is kind of the decider of who gets the compute. Because there's so much more demand than there is supply, Jensen is the one who's kind of the arbiter of, like, who's going to get things when. So access to Jensen means that you have access to more compute.

Was that exploited by Megaspeed in order to get compute access? I don't know, maybe, but that would certainly be an avenue if I was a Chinese that I'd want to pursue in order to get as many of the most advanced chips as possible, especially given they can't just normally buy them. I feel bad for the wife. I feel bad for the kids. I'm not sure I feel bad for all the NVIDIA employees who must have been involved in, like, you know, facilitating this. I mean, look, he is a scheduled enough person that, you know, you can't, like, carry on affairs without your people knowing. Do I feel bad for President Trump? Not at all. I mean, my impression there is it was like a boys' club Epstein, like, this will be our little secret thing that people – the reason why he didn't necessarily give him the briefing. I mean, maybe you can have some generous reading that they're like, you know, up on him and up on her. And it's like part of a broader investigation. But like doesn't really smell like it to me. On the defensive briefing question, I don't know the answer and none of us do.

What I would say is in these types of situations, the fact that there was not a defensive briefing given is a choice and one that probably was considered. Exactly what the reasons for that, I don't know. But, like, there's frequently, you know, decisions that would be made on that front by the people running this of whether or not, like you said, is there a separate investigation into the U.S. person? Maybe it's just to preserve sources and methods because they don't want to get rid of the access that they have on the foreign person. Maybe it's something altogether entirely. I don't know. Sources and methods, though, Chris? I mean, like, people stop having affairs all the time. You don't necessarily – your first thought isn't necessarily, oh, the government told the guy I'm sleeping with that I'm a spy. I mean, you could, like, finesse that a little bit, I would hope. Potentially. I don't know. It depends on what other information that they're getting from Megaspeed, right? Like, you know, this wasn't just probably useful from the Jensen front.

I mean, this is obviously an entity that the U.S. government is tracking. So I don't know. there's a bunch of reasons and I don't think there's any, you know, we can't really speculate as to why they didn't. But what I would say is the fact that they didn't get a defensive reasoning is probably a choice and not just a, you know, that this, the people just forgot to do this. I don't think that's the case. I don't know. Where does this all go from here? I, this is, there's going to be a lot of, you know, difficult questions. I think, you know, inside NVIDIA and they're going to have to do their own internal investigation. And, and, you know, I think people can generally leave that to them. But the big question, I think, for Congress and for the administration is how could the Commerce Department have known about this, have known that Megaspeed is being run by Chinese spies and not done anything to stop the export of chips to them? $4.8 billion worth of chips. And they were sitting on information that said they're being run by Chinese spies and those spies are actively trying to penetrate NVIDIA at the highest levels. It's baffling to me how they could have sat on that and done nothing,

and I think that warrants questions in the administration, congressional oversight. There are obvious steps that the Congress should take right now to mitigate that, but why did they sit on this for a year and not do anything? I don't know. Jordan, do you have any ideas for what a reasonable explanation is for that? I just would like to know, but I can't even come up with one. You know, there's there's going to be a lot of democratic activity around corruption. And it's interesting, right? Because there's like there's like corruption, which is gross, like the finance stuff. And then there's corruption, which like harms the national interest or like sways, like actual, like grand strategic things that matter, which is, you know, more like all the UAE money. And Jensen you know is look he giving money but he not giving money into the pockets of Donald Trump Like he giving money to the ballroom and you know to the presidential library which look Grant is legal right

This is different than, like, paying someone's son-in-law for a pardon. But, you know, if you are a Democratic staffer and you want to do a do a corruption one, which like, you know, has a bit of a two for one in and not just exposing this administration for being like gross, but also being like negligent in their duties towards, you know, preserving American national power and strategic interests. I would really think about sinking my teeth into this. It's just – it is baffling. I mean, we've done so many shows about this over the years, and we were talking yesterday how just, like, it doesn't really add up. There's just confusing stuff which is going on, and it's like, look, if you really want to do the playbook of, like, we're just selling all the chips into China because we think that's the right thing to do, then do that playbook and sell all the chips into China. But if you're not, then like this like half measure, oh, we're going to say we're not going to enforce the rule, but it's still on the website sort of.

And then there's like he puts a footnote out maybe and we're just in this like completely. I mean, it's it's maybe it's not a corruption. Maybe it's incompetence. Maybe it's like the inability to make a decision on like something that really deserves a decision. It's a pretty big strategic thing, which, like, you have a lot of autonomy on as the executive branch to, like, make the call to go or no go when it comes to AI chip controls. And the fact that, you know, we have all of this and NVIDIA being able to basically, like, reverse decisions which were seemingly made on command because this guy who's sleeping with a Chinese spy calls up the president. This is a juicy one, man. Makes me want to get a law degree. And we're also talking about kind of motives here. I mean, I don't know what it is, but this also highlights the importance of having clear disclosures about where people's money is and also being confident that people are not finding other ways to get paid, because obviously there's a lot of talk about Ludnick and Kendra Fitzgerald and ties there.

And if you look at Kendra Fitzgerald's public SEC filings, their third biggest exposure is to NVIDIA stock. And also it's their third biggest unhedged exposure behind the S&P 500 and Amazon. And their two bigger exposures in total are AMD and Marvell. So, you know, Candor Fitzgerald is very heavily indexed on semiconductor stock and AMD. And obviously semiconductor stock is right to be very bullish on it. It's doing very well. But it's a very bad look that in the context of adopting policies that are obviously so preferential to an individual company that Candor Fitzgerald's business holds a ton of that stock. I think this is one of many things that I think they're at the top. This wasn't Latinx, but Wichhoff gave the quote at some point in the past two years, like, oh yeah, I'm not conflicted. My kids now run my business. Right. I mean, I think that actually the... Yeah.

There's not much more to be said. There's not. There's not. Obviously, just like we need to have stronger standards on these things. Right now, this year alone, the number two, four and five importers of AI chips are Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. And collectively, they've imported 80 billion dollars worth of AI chips just this year. And that's not all necessarily for China, but I'll bet you a lot of it is. This is this is a consequence of the policy lapses. And I think collectively, you're probably seeing that this has resulted in not just these insane scandals regarding, you know, the biggest or second biggest right now company in the world, but also the largest technology transfer in history between the United States and any of its adversaries of controlled goods. This is this is an insane scandal. And why was this allowed to happen? And I think that we don't have any answers. I mean, the fact is, Undersecretary Kessler has basically given zero public remarks in his entire time as BIS Undersecretary. I think other than his testimony to Congress, he hasn't said anything.

Why? Why are we doing this? What is the policy? Someone explain it. Secretary Lutnik, please explain it and explain the details here. I would love to hear that. But I think also in the absence of that, if there's not a good reason, the suspicion about the really, you know, malfeasant reasons are only going to grow. And that's problematic for integrity of the institutions and export controls. I hope it's wrong, but the suspicions are only going to go up. They could explain it or they could just go away. Yeah, right? You know, it's been two years. Is it going to be more fun the next two years, guys? Are you, like, looking forward to this? And this is the whole dynamic with the, you know, with the investigations is it's way more fun to investigate people who still have the jobs than in the past. So, like, you know, insofar as they don't want their lives to turn into poster children for Chinese espionage and corruption, like devious times to head back to private practice or Cameron Fitzgerald or what have you.

I don't know. Free career advice from China Talk over here. Or just change the policy. Right. Fix the policy error that resulted in this. Like, like, like that's actually the most important thing that needs to happen, regardless of who does it. Like, and that would actually make like some of the noise go away because you could at least say we fixed it like that. But right now, right now, Megaspeed is buying chips today. Still, it is still listed on NVIDIA's website as an official cloud partner. That's shocking to me. Like, I don't understand how they could have not taken that down still. It's funny because the Chinese companies are more used to this. right it's like when someone writes an article about like you know them like spying on uyghurs or something usually within the next few hours it's down but nvidia i don't know they're just not used to like being caught up in giant national security scandals so they don't quite have the delete function up on uh on all the like contracts yeah yeah i mean what's the force majeure in your in your in your um uh gpu allocation contract for your ceo with some spy

I, you know, so many things about this are baffling. I don't know. It's really, but this whole situation never added up, right? Like, it never really added up why, you know, all the explanations of selling chips to China also, when, like, you have U.S. companies that are all, you know, clamoring to get chips. You have Elon Musk, Andy Jassy, who are all saying we can't get enough chips, we want more chips. and then meanwhile you also have NVIDIA just like adamant that we have to sell more chips to China. I mean I still don't really understand why. I mean there's possible explanation that this is all just you know captured but I don't really think so but like it's still like this whole situation has always been so confusing and the data that NVIDIA has been putting out there about like the Chinese threat has always been kind of overinflated and not actually you know consistent with what we're seeing in terms of, like, Huawei's actual chip production capabilities. And, like, when you look at the numbers and the data on all these things,

it just tells such a different story than what NVIDIA was telling. And now to have it come to light that, you know, there was direct relationships between their CEO and a spy, I mean, look, it's impossible to say exactly why, but, like, I think this does massively hurt their credibility on export control policy and on China policy going forward. And the bottom line is, like, you know, The company will deal with the company's business, but we really just have to see the policy changes that we need. And we know what those policy changes are. In fact, some of them are already on the books. This isn't an impossible problem. It's just something that requires, like, a modicum of political will. And a lot of people in the administration actually already want to do this. You know, commerce has been, you know, singularly obstinate on it. And we'll see how long that lasts. But I hope that the kind of pressure remains bipartisan and ramps up. I always had this, like, idea in the back of my mind that China would be interested in popping the U.S. bubble at some point.

I thought it would be, like, a rare Earth control, like maybe the interconnects or packaging or something. I did not have it on my bingo card. A spy gets caught, and then, you know, and then everyone gets worried that NVIDIA doesn't end up coughing up in the future. Um, let's turn to be clear. Like, no one wants that. Right. Like, I think and Jensen Jensen has done an incredible job with NVIDIA, like turning them into the company that they are making the best product in the world that, you know, better than anybody else. Like this doesn't take away any of that. But at the same time, the reason the products are controlled are because they're so good that they actually have significant national security applications. And it just doesn seem like the company has kind of caught up to the reality of what they making and like is kind of behaving important So look like cheating on your spouse not great not a crime advocating for your business lobbying the white house you know totally within the bounds of what reasonable

same thing with like wanting to sell your stuff to china sure advocate for yourself if you want to the the sort of the whole piece of this which i think like kind of you know uh uh never never quite clicked to me is look this guy um was the gaming ceo who made gaming chips for like 30 years and then all of a sudden what he was making goes from like a thing that lets me play tribes 2 to um a remember tribe scale shout out tribes 2 to a to like a grand to like a a technology of strategic importance. And the weird part is throughout all of it, he kind of kept making the argument that, like, on the one hand, these chips are so important that every single industry and company in the world means them, and they're going to revolutionize society, but at the same time, they're not going to revolutionize militaries, and they're not going to be important for the global balance of power. And it was just a weird thing that,

like, on the... But it kind of makes sense if you still have this sort of you know, demeanor and mindset that you're just a kind of technology guy and what you're doing doesn't interact with nascent states on a real level. And I think doing something as sloppy as having affairs with people who are your Chinese clients and, you know, have connections to foreign intelligence communities is just sort of indicative of him never really internalizing just how important his chips are to the global balance. Absolutely. And look, I think that there is a broader recognition in the tech industry that needs to happen on this, where I think, you know, you saw, you know, banks, I think, went through this evolution a long time ago. And, you know, now your sanctions policy is taking very seriously. There's a lot of internal controls that are taken to really make sure that they do as much as possible to comply.

And I think generally also recognize the importance of like the U.S. financial system in the general strategic political geostrategic environment. The tech community is not there. And and they're obviously the government has recognized the importance. Well, they want to have it both ways. Exactly. Right. That's what it is. Yeah. And you're seeing this. And look, other in other nation states are actively pursuing them. Don't just look at NVIDIA. Look at the OpenAI situation with the Saudis recently, where the Saudis very clearly were or looks like DOJ is alleging that the Saudi government was involved in some kind of plot to spy on OpenAI. And I'm not surprised. Of course, they would do that. This is a strategically super important technology. It's just being made in the private sector. But the other governments are going to try to acquire that technology and they're going to go to the private sector. And the private sector, it has to up their game. Like, they have to, you know, take the national security policy seriously in the lobbying. They have to have kind of internal security, cybersecurity, physical security measures, and also just general kind of compliance and oversight and governance has to be better.

Like, the fact that we need to have such, you know, the fact that the U.S. government has to constantly be, like, closing every single loophole every single time because NVIDIA will constantly, like, squeeze out any way they can sell something to China, they'll do it. And then we'll have to, like, do a regulation that prevents that rather than just coming to an understanding of, like, we don't want you selling to China. And if you could just have that, it would just make the whole environment so much easier. But that's not the course that they pursued. And it's created this, like, adversarial regulatory environment. And then when you see this on top of that, that's where a lot of, like, the kind of hostilities coming from in Washington and frustration. It doesn't have to be that way. We can have a cooperative relationship on these things, but it just requires companies to, like, really understand where the U.S. government is coming from and act accordingly. And this just shows that, like, we're not close to that. Fallout. Let's talk about Congress, Match Act, RASA, Overwatch. What do these revelations do for the prospects of these bills in the lame duck session?

Yeah, so I think undoubtedly this spotlights them and probably makes it more likely. I think, you know, you have these are already bipartisan bills. We're already seeing bipartisan, you know, concern about this issue. You had Republican chairs of the Intelligence Foreign Relations and China Committee all send letters to NVIDIA. You've also seen Democrats talking about how they're going to conduct oversight. Senator Warren is incoming banking chair. Senator Coons is incoming SFRC chair. So, you know, there's a bipartisan message that's being sent on this. The bills are bipartisan. So hopefully those those go. I think, you know, the NDAA is is currently being negotiated and finalized. If the NDAA passes, I imagine those will be attached to it. There's obviously there's also some open questions right now about the kind of status of the NDAA, just given the elections and especially Democratic concerns vis-a-vis Iran, the Defense Department, all sorts of unrelated things.

But I think, you know, what would really send a strong message is if Congress just put these aside and just push them now, right? Just push them in a separate – we don't have to wait for the NDAA. Like, these can just go separately. They can go to be unanimous consent or an individual bill or something in the Senate and the House and just push them because these are bipartisan measures that have the support of leadership in the vast majority of the House, especially at a time when we're seeing, you know, such concern about, you know, how these things are being handled. Like, it would send a really strong message. I don't know if that will happen, but I do think those bills will become law. It's just a question of when. But to the point that you made, though, they addressed some of the problem and not all of it. You know, Overwatch, I think, makes clear no blackwells to China. Match will cut off DUV, which is very important, and, you know, force the administration to move generally on SME controls. But you don't really have anything that's really going to comprehensively get at the counter smuggling problem, at the remote access problem, and at some of the other loopholes. So you really, really need the Commerce Department to take those actions themselves.

They need to impose license requirements for large-scale AI chip orders globally and for all orders on Southeast Asia. They need to impose restrictions on remote access. They need to ban Chinese companies from buying chips in the United States. It's the only place in the world where Chinese companies are legally allowed to buy chips is inside the United States of America. And actually, most of the chips that Megaspeed got, they seem like they got from this company of Vires that is a subsidiary of Insper. It's the U.S. subsidiary of Insper, and Insper is on the entity list. But this is insane. Like you have the subsidiary of an entity listed company is legally buying chips inside the United States. So, like, we need commerce to just tighten all this up and just make clear, like, our policy is the president's policy. The president's policy is no blackwells to China. We're going to make that clear across the board and make sure that there's no blackwell access for China anywhere. And right now it's just so porous. So I hope we see that. But I think realistically, like, the track record is extremely poor.

And it seems like there is something that is preventing commerce from taking these actions. Because if all it took was logic, commerce would have done this a long time ago. And if all it took was, like, push from others in the government, I actually think commerce would have done this a long time ago. They are isolated and adamant in their position against this. And, you know, hopefully congressional pressure and oversight adds to that and forces action. But I don't know if it's going to happen in the near term because, like, this behavior, I think, is kind of strange. I just still don't understand how they could have – commerce leadership got information that said Megaspeed is run by Chinese spies, and they did not block chip access to them. Get him addicted, Chris. Get him addicted. I can't possibly say in good faith, like, yeah, I think we're going to solve this problem in the near future, because it seems like there's, like, a systemic issue inside the commerce. I really want someone to explain to me, like give me some answer that makes some sense.

You know, Kessler, if you if you want to come on China Talk, we can make we can make we will make some room for you in our schedule. Just just saying. Tell anyone, tell anyone why. And then on top of this, let's say one other thing. The New York Times had a report today that said that that on Secretary Kessler talked with NVIDIA. about Commerce's ongoing investigation into Megaspeed, which is crazy, right? Like, that is like, if the FBI was running an investigation into a company and FBI leadership talked about that investigation with the CEO of that company's main business partner, like, obviously that would be super, super wrong, right? But, like, that's exactly what happened here. And then not only that, but NVIDIA had the gall to say that Megaspeed has definitively been proven to not have any diversion, and all the investigations concluded that. No the commerce investigation actually got shut down because DOJ took it over because they said like you can be trusted with this because you talking with their competitor companies So like everything that happening here is so wrong and so not how we handle policy or legal enforcement issues and just has crossed so so many red lines

there are many sketchy Trump administration things that have happened, which you can kind of understand if like you don't care about the law or you want it or you want your kids to make some money on the side or or you're just like kind of into, you know, Putin or dictators or whatever. But this one, it's just yeah, it's just it's just landed in a really odd, mysterious place. yeah alright anything else are we ready for my historical honey traps segment I love it let's do it I did watch Notorious last night wow it was excellent Cary Grant is always good always good so first off everyone gives Delilah credit being the OG Bond girl you know getting samson secrets out of him but i want to give a little air time to jail uh judges

418 and he said to her stand at the door of my tent and if any man comes and asks you is anyone here just say no but jail the wife of heber took a tent peg and took a hammer in her hand and and went softly to him and drove the peg into his temple till he till it went down into the ground as he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died. I mean, look, Delilah, she got her 1,100 shekels, but she didn't literally put a peg into someone's brain. Like, shout out to her. True, true, true, true killer. True innovator in the biblical honeypot game. I read this book called Honey Trap from 2021. It's like anyone who writes the history of honeypots, It's like the interest is like a little too prurient. It's not like super top-notch historian writing, but I will say it did make for a fun read over the past. I like the inclusion of your list.

You have Casino Royale, which featured a male honey trap. So this is not a... They're called Romeo's. Oh, okay. Sorry. I didn't know the term. Yeah. Yeah. So this was actually a big thing in the Cold War in particular, is like the idea is you get someone to start sleeping with the secretary and then, you know, kind of like get your secrets, get your secrets that way. There's some really awful like gay compromise that happened. There's one story in the 50s in the UK where they like drugged and raped a naval attache of the Soviets and then like use the photos to convince him to hand over secrets for like a decade. Not ideal. I did like that there was one person who the CIA found was compromised, but they didn't want to have him be disgruntled and they weren't really ready to throw him in jail because it wasn't clear he'd given any secrets. So they just gave him a job at the Hoover Institution in the 1950s.

For whatever reason, this is not, like, an American thing. I mean, the Israelis have done this in the past. In 1986, there was a Mossad agent who, like, got someone to fall in love with them, then drugged them and, like, smuggled them back from Italy to Israel to face justice. I found kind of impressive. But I don't know. Should we have this playbook, Chris? I would hope that generally we are, you know, availing ourselves of all the opportunities we have to collect critical intelligence. But I think that there are understandably some personal boundaries that we respect for our intelligence operatives. And that, you know, I would bet that I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know the truth. I don't know the truth. I don't know to what degree this is like encouraged or discouraged. but like certainly when you look at like you know media and history look like the Americans right like the Americans like tons of the whole like half the plot is about honey traps but obviously

you know on their side not ours yeah so I mean the the the the Soviet um uh use of this tactic actually comes back from czarist Russia so the Okrana like was very into um uh kind of like long-term undercover stuff. I mean, they were the ones who wrote The Elders of Zion, right, in order to, like, discredit the Jewish Bolsheviks within the bourgeois. There actually is an excellent book written about the history of the sort of Soviet kind of, like, deep undercover program, which lasted, like, until the present day. I mean, even Putin does this recently. They found people in Virginia, you know, 10 years ago or whatever, yeah. This book is called The Illegals by Sean Walker. It came out in 2025. Another rather prurient one. Apparently, both in Poland and France, there were brothels who expressly had the Nazi officers sleep with the prostitutes who had STDs.

You know, to just, like, undermine the war machine. Feels like decent revenge. Yeah. Really, all gloves are off in that conflict. You think Total War is a joke? Yeah, really, Total War, yeah. All right. Mr. Wong, this is a defensive briefing. You were on last spring. This will be quick. It's just one sentence. Don't put the Chinese top. Yes! Go for the Chinese pie. Dancing! Go for the Chinese pie. Dancing! Go for the Chinese pie. I bet you. Go for the Chinese pie. Dancing! Go for the Chinese pie. Dancing! Now if she runs a cloud. No! Now if she thinks you fly. Don't do it!

March Omega Speed, agents building up a trail. An NVIDIA's lawyer hit them with an email. And Kessler gave a green light, so let's have a chat They just said respectfully, we don't do that DOJ said pause it, so they put delay What's my mother work on ice while the chips fell away It's a team that ain't added a name in a year Longest drought since 08, oh dear Yo, for the Chinese 5, Kessler day Yo, for the Chinese 5, Kessler day Kessler just resigned, resigned Letting it, just resigned, resigned The boy, where you at? No reason to believe. Bay Zing, where you at? Ground and speculation. Mr. Trump, where you at? He's an honorable guy. Alice, where you at? Strong man high. On the hill, it's a holiday. Thank you, Jesse. Christmas came early. Hip, hip hooray. Alice with them both. Match tag. Make the allies match. Dutch and Japanese tools to hold them back. Remote set.

Say it loud. No more renting. Out the clouds, tiny the heart, obeyed you, say who's wearing it now, say his name. Don't fuck a giant, he's flying. Jensen, don't fuck a giant, he's flying. Jensen, not if he runs the clouds. Jensen, not if he thinks you fly. This concludes your mandatory counterintelligence awareness training. Now you can go watch the movie, Look from Flying by Andy. Jensen now starring in the fire, who leads me? Tinker, Taylor, Blackwell, fire Know your customer Jensen, but not like Adam and Eve, please Yeah, go for the Chinese fire Jensen, hey Go for the Chinese fire Jensen, hey Look at your rhythm Jensen, hey Look at it, just rhythm Rhythm Jensen, hey Jensen, hey Go for the Chinese fire Jensen, hey Not if she runs the cloud

Not if she thinks you'll fly Dancing! The fact that that was made using NVIDIA chips is the ultimate irony of all of this. It's just so great that the technology in question is actually being used. That's why America's great, you know? That speaks to the greatness of America here. So, yeah, thank you. Although that chart it had in there of, like, you know, Malaysia, Megaspeed, $2 billion, spy. That's all you really need to know. Dale right there. Why does anyone show that chart to the Commerce Department?

番組の概要欄(原文)

To make sense of it we have Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and Emerging Technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former NSC Deputy Senior Director for Technology and National Security. We discuss… The May 2025 decision that made Megaspeed possible — Commerce stopped enforcing the Biden-era license rule for big chip orders to third countries, never replaced it, and $80 billion in AI chips went to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand this year alone Why the spy matters more than the affair — Jensen talks chip policy with the president, knows who has what compute, and decides who gets it next The defensive briefing nobody gave — why not warning Jensen was a choice rather than an oversight, and how Commerce sat on the intelligence while $4.8 billion in chips shipped Corruption or incompetence — Cantor Fitzgerald's Nvidia position, an under secretary who never explains the policy, and a Commerce investigation discussed with the target's main business partner What the lame duck can fix — MATCH, RASA, and OVERWATCH, plus the smuggling and remote-access loopholes only Commerce can close A brief history of honey traps — Jael's tent peg, Cold War Romeos, and the compromised officer who got parked at the Hoover Institution Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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ChinaTalk(Jordan Schneider)
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EMERGENCY POD: Jensen and His Spy
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