After Nvidia scandal, Congress pushes to tighten export controls on advanced chips to China; Senate majority leader says likelihood is very high

After the Nvidia scandal, bipartisan leaders in the U.S. Congress are pushing to tighten export controls on advanced chips to China, and the measures could be legislated before the end of the year; Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the likelihood of Congress adding restrictions is very high. The Senate version of the NDAA has incorporated three bills: the Chip Security Act, which prevents smuggling of advanced AI chips by, among other means, verifying chip location after shipment; the MATCH Act, which closes loopholes in allied chipmaking equipment and export rules; and the AI Overwatch Act, which would treat chip sales like foreign military sales and subject Commerce Department approvals to congressional oversight, but the two chambers have not yet agreed to write them into the final version. The scandal refers to the exposure of an extramarital affair between former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and a person alleged to be a Chinese spy; Nvidia also sold $4 billion in chips to Singapore-based company Megaspeed, which is suspected of transferring technology to China and is under Justice Department investigation. Anthropic has publicly supported the three bills, OpenAI's stance has warmed, and tech industry groups are lobbying against them; Democrats plan to add a provision terminating the war with Iran, which could jeopardize the bill's passage.