The administration is trying to find who leaked this to the NY Times originally, which was a form of leaking classified information. Its obvious the recent market correct was kicked off by insider trading like this.

Oddly enough there are two main suspects, Rubio and Bessent or their teams. Bessent has more of a motivation to leak the story so the export controls would have to be enforced. If it turns out to have been traced back to the Treasury dept, the Treasury Secretary days in office are almost up.

Also, why would he be so motivated to leak it? Lower Treasury yields...

> Rubio and Bessent or their teams.

Just widening the suspect list a bit, per WSJ reporting, the two opposing factions are:

China AI Hawks: State (Rubio), Defense (Hegseth), Treasury (Bessent) Depts

vs

China AI Trade Pragmatists: Commerce Dept (Lutnick), White House trading desks, advisors and AI industry.

Jensen was the wildcard who'd been effective in reaching Trump and swaying him at the last minute multiple times. Back in May Rubio attempted to neuter Jensen's influence by briefing Trump on the intelligence that Jensen was banging a suspected Chinese asset, but Trump shrugged it off and kept Jensen involved.

The timing of the leak of this old info to publicly damage Jensen was likely the U.S. / China summit coming up in Shenzen on the 18th and 19th. That's where the current B200 chip export waiver extension will be either re-negotiated or not negotiated (the waiver expires in January). The Hawks want to let the waiver expire and are unwilling to negotiate it no matter what's offered. The Pragmatists want to offer a B200 waiver extension in exchange for high-value goals like rare earths, Iran and/or trade concessions. This has been an escalating battle inside the administration for well over a year. Also: this isn't a clear red / blue issue. There are congress members of both parties on each side. Leaking the Alice story to the media to take Jensen out was crossing a pretty big line. Ultimately, I think the root cause was Trump's constant waffling leaving a major foreign policy issue unresolved for over a year causing the factions to continue arguing and escalating. Lutnick was on the losing side and, per the WSJ yesterday, now "fighting to keep his job" because the Commerce Dept has been refusing to add Megaspeed to the blocked Entities List for over a year (which they could do at any time with no justification required). That means the U.S. government allowed NVidia to keep selling cards to Megaspeed and Megaspeed affiliates on purpose.

I'm having flashbacks to my friend trying to describe the Syndicate game to me in the 90s

One idea for Bessent is that he wants lower 10 year treasury yields and deflating AI bubble can help flow money back into treasuries. For example popping AI bubble will make investment into AI seem much more risky so debt market may park cash in treasuries, also crashing equities can make equity investors also seek safer havens such as treasuries which will lower the 10 year.

it was in the NYT over a year ago (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/technology/nvidia-chips-c...)

the subtlety is that this was knowledge to the US Admin a year ago. reasonably, nvidia adopts the posture that it will sell as many chips as possible to all comers. if the USG blacklisted a company, they would stop immediately

now it emerges that factions within the gov either through malice or negligence or any other reason did not sanction the chinese shell company a full year after it was in the NYT. easy to blame on WH but just as much capitol hill boomer incoherence

jensen is collateral damage of a power struggle between other factions. thats why it was such a surprise for him and the only person really standing up for him is david sacks. tide went out on the midterms