Bessent blames Commerce for Megaspeed inaction

Bessent deflects to Commerce

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it wasn't his department's job to crack down on Megaspeed. He told CNBC on Friday that Commerce has the authority and reporters should ask them why they haven't acted.

“Commerce has the pen. You all will have to ask them about their internal processes.”

Bessent confronted Lutnick

According to Axios, Bessent confronted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the Situation Room about why the Commerce Department had not added Megaspeed to the entity list, a trade blacklist that Lutnick's department controls.

The Megaspeed scandal

Megaspeed, a Singapore-based cloud company and Nvidia partner, faces scrutiny over whether its data centers helped Chinese customers access advanced Nvidia chips despite US export restrictions. Alice Huang was a top executive there.

Huang and the Nvidia CEO

The New York Times reported that US officials suspected Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence asset.The Times also reported that Alice Huang had an affair with then-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

Bessent pushes accountability

Bessent said his department had been pushing for months for action against Megaspeed. He said the real story is whether Nvidia knew its client and whether the company made a robust effort to prevent chip…

“Was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure there was no leakage, and they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies?”