Rep. Himes says Democrats are worried as Trump, Lutnick are "buddy buddies" with Jensen Huang

[0:00] We're joined now by the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, [0:03] Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, who joins us from Greenwich. [0:07] Good morning, Congressman. You just heard the secretary ask for $50 billion in funding for [0:12] upgrades. There are 16 working days left in the House. Are you going to consider that funding [0:18] request? Yeah, well, Margaret, I mean, look, [0:23] you had the right question. This is not a Congress money problem. You pointed out that [0:28] there was $50 billion sent in the Biden administration and $12.5 billion appropriated [0:32] that has not been obligated. For the American people watching, obligated is a fancy DC word for [0:37] spent, right? So this is not immediately a spending problem. It is a prioritization problem. And it's [0:43] payback, by the way, for, you remember when Elon Musk was standing on a stage spinning his chainsaw [0:50] around, cutting government willy-nilly? Well, part of that chainsaw got 1,300 employees of the FAA [0:57] to resign or to retire. They fired 400 probationary employees. These are the technical specialists and [1:03] the maintenance people. So what you're seeing here, apart from a lack of prioritization of [1:08] improving our FAA system, what you're seeing is the wages of what Elon Musk did, where he just gutted [1:16] an entity that affected millions of Americans last Friday. So you're a no on the 50 billion? [1:23] Well, no, I'm not a no. Look, if they, I'm not on the transportation committee, but if they came [1:28] and said, my first question would be, well, what about that other 12 and a half million that's [1:31] sitting in your bank account right now? How about if you spend that before we put more money in that [1:37] bank account? Understood. I want to ask you about what is happening with this arms race with China [1:44] and chips. You were one of the rest of the gang of the eight who were briefed this past week on what [1:51] is going on with NVIDIA, that chip maker. CBS has reported U.S. intelligence agencies believe [1:56] Alice Huang, the Megaspeed CEO who was linked to Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, was indeed an asset of [2:03] China's Ministry of State Security. However, when President Trump was asked about the scandal, [2:08] he put it this way. The big thing is, was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined [2:15] yet. But if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different. [2:22] How certain is U.S. intelligence that she was an asset of Chinese intelligence? And is that the [2:29] central issue? Margaret, I don't, I don't even know how to respond to the president's statement. [2:37] Remember, it was March when, March or April, when the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, circulated a memo [2:43] to all of the senior people, including presumably the White House, saying, we have concerns that this [2:49] woman is a spy. It is now November. And the president of the United States had no interest [2:55] in understanding whether in this most essential technology, the technology which could end [3:00] millions of jobs or cure cancer and or create, you know, a real tool for terrorists. And, you know, [3:05] I mean, the fact that the president in November is saying, we don't know if she's a spy, [3:09] that, that actually sort of perfectly illustrates my concern. Now, here's what I can tell you based [3:14] on what I know. I don't think that we know. I don't think that we know. And when we say spy, [3:19] spy is a pretty imprecise term, right? It's possible based on what I know, that Alice Wong [3:24] had no idea that she was maybe being monitored or, or, or working for the Chinese. That's possible. [3:32] We don't know the answer to that question. It's also possible on the other end of the spectrum [3:35] that she was a fully paid up, you know, intelligence asset and actually communicating. [3:40] But the point of all of this is how is it possible that we don't know this around the single most [3:45] important technology of our lifetime? So as you might imagine, Margaret, I'm going to spend a lot [3:49] of time getting to the bottom of this. And I'm happy to report that actually, as you've observed, [3:54] Republicans in Congress are interested too. They are indeed. You referenced there a memo. [4:00] CNN reported Marco Rubio as national security advisor and secretary of state drafted this [4:05] based on CIA intelligence, and then briefed the president. It also drew on intercepted [4:12] communications between Alice Wong and Jensen Wong. Has that memo been shared with the Gang of Eight? [4:23] That memo has not been shared. And again, the only information that has come our way, [4:28] and I'm speaking, I think on behalf of the whole Congress here, because I was with the Gang of Eight [4:32] last week, the only information that has come our way was sort of a glancing, not on the agenda [4:38] discussion in that meeting. So we have a lot of work to do. But I mean, the fundamental question [4:44] is, number one, has the FBI, and I don't know the answer to this question. The FBI, as you know, [4:49] is the entity that does this counterintelligence work, figuring out what Alice Wong is and what she [4:53] sent to the Chinese, if anything, right? We don't know that. We don't know if they launched an investigation. [4:57] We're worried about it, right? Because the president is buddy buddies, and apparently Howard [5:02] Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who has responsibility for keeping chips that could [5:06] help build, you know, Chinese AI out of China. You know, these guys are palling around. Jensen [5:11] Huang is, you know, writing $25 million checks for the ballroom. We got to get to the bottom of this, [5:16] and we haven't even begun to get the facts we need here. Two law enforcement sources told CBS that DOJ's [5:23] national security division is investigating Megaspeed. That's the Singapore company that Alice [5:29] Huang was CEO of. She's since left that position, as I understand it. And they're looking at that. But it [5:36] sounds like you are also saying Jensen Huang needs to be looked at with more scrutiny here, and whether [5:43] he was indeed a target. If he was a target of Chinese intelligence, why wouldn't the United States tell him [5:51] that? Well, let's take that piece by piece. Megaspeed is an entity that sort of didn't exist [5:58] 10 years ago in any meaningful way. And now they appear, and I want to say appear, to be doing [6:04] possibly two things. Number one, they may be a way of getting these chips to China. You know, [6:11] NVIDIA can sell them to Megaspeed. Megaspeed gives them to China. Or, more interestingly, [6:16] and we know that this goes on, China wants to train its models. So it doesn't even buy the chips, [6:21] but it just uses Megaspeed's data centers, right? So China is training up their frontier models [6:26] simply online, if you will, right? So that's the question around Megaspeed. The question around [6:32] Alice Huang is, was she a winning agent of the Chinese government, or was she just sort of being [6:37] monitored? And then the really important question is, what information, and this is where Mr. Huang, [6:44] Jensen Huang comes in, what information made its way from the CEO, Jensen, to her, to the Chinese? [6:50] What influence was exerted, right? I mean, if you look at the behavior of the Commerce Department [6:54] in particular, it looked like somebody was standing up for NVIDIA. Why? Was that influence on the part [7:00] of Jensen Huang? $25 million in money handed over for a ballroom sounds like a pretty good way to build [7:07] influence, to me at least. Has Secretary Lutnick, whose Commerce Department would be in charge of [7:13] overseeing some of this, did he respond to your request to meet with the Intelligence Committee? [7:17] Well, that request just went out Friday of last week. So, you know, he will respond. And as you [7:26] probably know, there's also been a bipartisan request for him to appear in the banking committee [7:31] in the Senate. But again, if you read the reporting here, it looks like he has been the barrier [7:36] inside the government to stopping the flow of these NVIDIA chips to China. And the question is, [7:44] why? Well, sort of to that point, I want to ask you about what the Treasury Secretary... If I could [7:50] ask you to put your financial services hat on for a moment here and bridge both worlds. The Treasury [7:54] Secretary was on Fox this morning, and he floated that more NVIDIA executives should be removed. He [8:01] said there's a culture of noncompliance that might need to be looked at. And whether they boosted [8:07] potentially illicit sales of chips, which sort of suggests it's part of a larger smuggling operation [8:13] that you may have just touched on there. And he cited reporting that only 1% of the computer chips [8:18] imported to Singapore stayed there, even though NVIDIA said Singapore accounted for 20% of their [8:24] sales. Now, if a bank were entangled in those kind of activities, there would be very strong action [8:31] taken. What action needs to be taken here in terms of answering all these questions the Treasury [8:37] Secretary just laid out? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, let's be super clear here, right? NVIDIA makes chips. [8:46] They get wealthy when they sell chips. So, of course, they have an incentive to sell these chips to the [8:50] Chinese. That's nothing new. Lots of companies would love to sell everything to the Chinese. [8:55] It's the government's job. It is the Commerce Secretary's job and the President's job to stop that [9:01] from happening through things like the entity list, which, you know, prohibit American companies [9:05] from doing business with anybody on that entity list. Lo and behold, Megaspeed was not on that [9:10] entity list. Actually, the Treasury Secretary has been saying that. But yes, what you're talking about [9:14] were banks facilitating a smuggling operation? I don't know what the Treasury Secretary was talking [9:19] about. But yes, it should not just be Jensen Huang. It needs to be his people who apparently were doing [9:24] exactly everything that they were told to do. It needs to be the Commerce Secretary who was not doing [9:30] apparently, according to the Treasury Secretary, enough. And yes, if banks were facilitating this [9:35] stuff, they, too, you know, need to be called to account. [9:39] Because the Treasury Secretary was very clear that enforcement comes to Commerce and that Commerce [9:44] was not taking the action there. We have to leave it there. Congressman, thank you for your time this morning.