Warren Criticizes NVIDIA CEO’s Closed-Door Meeting on Capitol Hill; Presses Administration not to Greenlight Sale of H200 AI Chips to China
Warren and Kim to Secretary Lutnick: “We urge you to stop ignoring the input of bipartisan members of Congress and your own experts in order to cut deals that trade away America’s national security.”
Washington, D.C. – United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee (BHUA), released the following statement:
“NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has spent the past year lobbying the President to greenlight the sale of advanced AI chips to China, which could turbocharge China’s military and undercut American technological leadership. He’s now sneaking in to meet with Senate Republicans behind closed doors as he kills the bipartisan GAIN AI Act and tries to muzzle states from passing laws that protect children, renters, and working families from getting exploited by AI technologies. Mr. Huang should be brought in to testify publicly and under oath – not pushing his agenda in secret meetings.”
The Ranking Member and Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the BHUA Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance, also sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raising concerns over recent reports that the Trump Administration might allow the export of NVIDIA’s powerful H200 AI chips to China. A bipartisan group of lawmakers previously raised objections to Commerce resuming exports of NVIDIA’s less powerful H20 chips to China.
“The Department of Commerce should not greenlight the sale of chips that the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice warns are being sought by the PRC to develop AI for ‘military modernization efforts and in connection with the design and testing of weapons of mass destruction and deployment of advanced AI surveillance tools…’ Allowing NVIDIA to export the H200, an even more advanced chip, risks powering the PRC’s surveillance, censorship, and military applications. It will supercharge PRC firms, at the expense of American startups, businesses, workers, and national security,” the Senators wrote.
They criticized Commerce for its lack of transparency in making national security decisions: “The American public deserves to know that decisions with profound national-security and economic consequences are by a deliberate, fact-based process, rather than at donor dinners at Mar-a-Lago or in closed-door meetings with President Xi Jinping. This is especially true given NVIDIA’s persistent effort to leverage its market power and political influence to bend public policy to fit its own private interests.”
“We should not allow Big Tech firms like NVIDIA to sell sensitive technology to governments that do not share our values and open ourselves to the risk that these technologies will be used against American service members, workers, and our long-term economic and national security. If we fail to enforce export controls consistently and seriously, and fail to ensure that American startups and other businesses have access to advanced chips, we risk giving away our technological edge. We urge you to act quickly to protect U.S. economic and national security by limiting the sale of NVIDIA’s advanced AI chips to the PRC,” the Senators concluded.
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