EMERGENCY POD: Jensen and His Spy

To make sense of it we have Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and Emerging Technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former NSC Deputy Senior Director for Technology and National Security.

We discuss…

• The May 2025 decision that made Megaspeed possible — Commerce stopped enforcing the Biden-era license rule for big chip orders to third countries, never replaced it, and $80 billion in AI chips went to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand this year alone
• Why the spy matters more than the affair — Jensen talks chip policy with the president, knows who has what compute, and decides who gets it next
• The defensive briefing nobody gave — why not warning Jensen was a choice rather than an oversight, and how Commerce sat on the intelligence while $4.8 billion in chips shipped
• Corruption or incompetence — Cantor Fitzgerald's Nvidia position, an under secretary who never explains the policy, and a Commerce investigation discussed with the target's main business partner
• What the lame duck can fix — MATCH, RASA, and OVERWATCH, plus the smuggling and remote-access loopholes only Commerce can close
• A brief history of honey traps — Jael's tent peg, Cold War Romeos, and the compromised officer who got parked at the Hoover Institution

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