Jeffries pushes tighter China chip restrictions amid Nvidia CEO scandal

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) backed an effort Monday to pass new restrictions on China’s access to advanced AI chips through an annual defense bill amid a scandal over Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.

Jeffries, who could become Speaker in the next Congress, said he “strongly supports” chip restrictions in the Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

“We’re going to work hard to make sure that those provisions make it into the final version,” he told reporters at the Capitol on Monday.

The Senate version of the NDAA currently includes three chip export bills — the Artificial Intelligence Oversight of Verified Exports and Restrictions on Weaponizable Advanced Technology to Covered High-Risk Actors Act, the Multilateral Alignment of Technology Controls on Hardware Act and the Chip Security Act.

The bills would allow Congress to block advanced AI chip exports to U.S. foreign adversaries, bar the sale of essential chipmaking tools to countries of concern and require restricted AI chips to have a “location verification mechanism” to ensure they aren’t improperly diverted.

They are gaining new momentum after the Nvidia CEO disclosed over the weekend that he had an affair with a woman who U.S. officials concluded was a Chinese intelligence asset.

The company’s chips are central to the AI boom, powering the technology’s development. As some of the most advanced products on the market, they have often been the focus of U.S. export controls.

Nvidia’s board of directors said Sunday it was launching an investigation, with a focus on the U.S. national and economic security implications of the incident.

Jeffries and several other lawmakers met Monday in the Capitol for a classified briefing with several top administration officials, including Jay Clayton, the director of national intelligence, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

While the conversation was primarily focused on Iran, the topic of Nvidia came up, Jeffries noted, saying it’s clear there are “real concerns that need to be addressed.”

“What is clear, and the Nvidia issue did come up, [is] that we’re going to need a full briefing specifically as it relates to the Nvidia issue so we can all get to the bottom of what has happened and what the implications are in terms of America’s national security,” he added.