Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress are moving to fast-track new restrictions on advanced AI chip exports to China, after a scandal involving an alleged Chinese spy forced out Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday there was growing consensus in Congress on limiting chip exports to China after the scandal forced out Huang, who has pushed to preserve access to the Chinese market and has close ties with President Donald Trump. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries also backs tighter controls, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Semafor that there’s a “high probability” that Congress imposes more restrictions on chip exports to China
Thune added: “I understand people have affairs but if you’re going to do it, try not to have an affair with a Chinese spy.”
Huang resigned last week after admitting to an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed whom U.S. officials suspect of working for Chinese intelligence. Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer, is under investigation over suspicions that it helped China obtain advanced AI chips restricted under U.S. export controls.
The bills on the table
Lawmakers want to attach the measures to the National Defense Authorization Act, the must-pass annual defense bill, so they can become law before the end of the year. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer wants all of the main bills passed. They are:
- The AI Overwatch Act, sponsored by Republican Sen. Jim Banks and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, would treat chip sales more like foreign arms sales. It would give Congress oversight of how the Commerce Department approves licenses to sell chips to a “country of concern,” including China.
- The Chip Security Act would require companies to track the location of advanced AI processors to prevent smuggling. It passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously.
- The MATCH Act would pressure U.S. allies to restrict sales and maintenance of advanced chipmaking equipment destined for China.
- The Remote Access Security Act would give the Commerce Department tools to stop Chinese firms from renting overseas data centers to access Nvidia chips.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee advanced the first three bills earlier this year, and they are now in the Senate’s NDAA management package. None has passed a full floor vote.
Huang’s lobbying under scrutiny
The scandal has hit Nvidia’s influence in Washington hard. Huang spent years lobbying against chip export curbs, and in December 2025 Trump allowed Nvidia to sell its H200 chips to approved customers in China, with 25% of the sales going to the U.S. government. A similar measure, the GAIN AI Act, was dropped from last year’s defense bill, a decision Huang called wise.
Nvidia is considered the biggest opponent of both the Chip Security and AI Overwatch acts, according to one former congressional staffer who had direct contact with the company over several months. OpenAI, meanwhile, has told congressional offices it supports the Chip Security, MATCH and AI Overwatch acts, Punchbowl News reported
Warren and Banks said Huang’s confirmed relationship with a suspected Chinese spy made their concerns “even more urgent.”
House China Committee Chairman John Moolenaar said after Huang’s resignation: “Nvidia must now change its corporate practices and appoint leadership that makes national security its top priority. In Congress we must act quickly to pass bipartisan export control legislation in the year-end national defense bill.”
Moolenaar, together with Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast and Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford, has asked Huang to appear for a closed-door briefing on his ties to Alice Huang and Nvidia’s safeguards against espionage. Moolenaar has said Huang will likely be subpoenaed if he does not agree.
The White House and Beijing
The Trump administration has backed parts of the effort. The White House added provisions to the AI Overwatch Act targeting Chinese access to U.S. chips through overseas data centers, and officials gave technical feedback on the MATCH Act. But Trump has publicly defended Huang, and with Trump due to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in China next week, U.S. officials said he does not plan to confront Xi over the Nvidia affair.
Beijing has pushed back. China “has consistently opposed the abuse of export control measures, which disrupts the stability of global industrial and supply chains and serves no party’s interests,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Friday. China has denied that Alice Huang is a spy, and accused the U.S. of “fabricating so-called spy narratives and using them as a pretext for imposing a technological blockade”.
Chinese companies are already bracing. Chinese AI stocks tumbled Friday, and Reuters reported that Chinese firms are trying to rent Nvidia-powered computing capacity outside China, worried that Washington will tighten restrictions on remote access.
