The Alliance Leads Coalition Urging Secretary Lutnick to Immediately Address National Security Risks Posed by Nvidia’s Special Treatment
AI and tech accountability groups call for independent review and tougher export control enforcement
WASHINGTON, D.C.— Today The Alliance for Secure AI, Tech Oversight Project, Legal Advocates for Safe Science and Technology, Humans in Control, and Humans First wrote to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, calling on the Department of Commerce—the agency charged with enforcing our export control policy—to end a pattern of deference to chip maker Nvidia that has undermined U.S. national security.
“America’s export controls only work if the Commerce Department does its job and treats every company equally,” said Riki Parikh, Policy Director for The Alliance. “It is clear that the Commerce Department gave Nvidia a level of deference no other company receives while billions of dollars in restricted chips reached China. Secretary Lutnick should explain why and how this significant national security risk happened, and Congress must pass the chip security bills in the NDAA to ensure it can’t happen again.”
The letter addresses reporting that a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed, a Singapore-based buyer of at least $4.8 billion in Nvidia-powered AI equipment, was stalled after Nvidia’s general counsel contacted the Department’s top export control official. Enforcement staff was then reportedly required to route all Nvidia-related requests through that official, a step reportedly applied to no other company. The coalition calls on Secretary Lutnick to:
- Refer the Department’s handling of the Megaspeed investigation to the Commerce Inspector General
- End special handling of Nvidia matters and recuse officials who have had direct contact with the company
- Disclose all contacts between Nvidia and Department officials regarding the Megaspeed inquiry
- Close the remote-access loophole that lets Chinese firms rent computing power from data centers abroad
- Immediately cut off Megaspeed and its affiliates from advanced Nvidia AI chips and add the companies to the Commerce Department’s Entity List.
- Suspend and review active licenses for advanced Nvidia chips to intermediaries in Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore
- Brief the Senate Banking and House Foreign Affairs Committees on all licenses approved since March 2026
- Support the AI OVERWATCH Act, Remote Access Security Act, Chip Security Act, and MATCH Act in the National Defense Authorization Act
The full letter is available here.
The Alliance for Secure AI works to protect humanity in the age of advanced AI. The organization builds bipartisan support for enforceable safeguards that ensure AI is developed and deployed under meaningful human control and with clear accountability. Learn more at secureainow.org.
