Tuesday, November 10, 2026
Monday, November 09, 2026
Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention
Commerce Dept. Chip Inquiry Was Halted After Nvidia Intervention
“The Commerce Department’s investigation into Megaspeed, suspected of smuggling Nvidia chips into China, halted and transferred to the Justice Department after Nvidia’s general counsel contacted officials. Nvidia is investigating CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with Megaspeed’s executive, allegedly a Chinese spy.
AI Generated
An investigation into Megaspeed, a Singapore company that was buying advanced Nvidia A.I. chips, was transferred to the Justice Department after a top Nvidia executive reached out to Commerce Department officials.
By Ana Swanson and Devlin Barrett
Ana Swanson covers trade and the Commerce Department and Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department. They reported from Washington
Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.
It is not clear what led to Mr. Teter’s outreach to the department, but the recent revelations about Mr. Huang’s acknowledged affair with a Megaspeed executive have only intensified scrutiny of Nvidia’s role in influencing policy on chip sales to China. The New York Times reported last month that the U.S. government had concluded that Huang Le, or Alice Huang, a top executive at the firm, was a spy working on behalf of the Chinese government.
On Sunday, Nvidia said it was opening an investigation into Mr. Huang, after he acknowledged to the company’s board that he had been intimate with Ms. Huang. The pair, who are not related, had been photographed together on multiple occasions, including at a bar and a restaurant in Taiwan alongside other tech executives.
The incident raised questions about what Mr. Kessler, who reports directly to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, had discussed with Nvidia. It also raised the possibility that those discussions could become their own subject of inquiry.
Perhaps inadvertently, some officials said, Mr. Kessler had opened himself to accusations of undue influence and potentially jeopardized his department’s work on Megaspeed.
The case was quickly transferred to the Justice Department in an effort to avoid any potential compromise of the government’s investigation of Megaspeed, these people said. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal inquiry into Megaspeed, according to people familiar with the matter.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the agency does not comment on continuing investigations. A Commerce Department spokesman said that department had been aggressively enforcing its rules and had conducted this and other actions strictly by the book.
John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, said the company consults with officials “to answer their questions, provide information we have gathered from the field, request their guidance and instructions and ask whether they have any follow-ups.”
The company works “to help government and our partners halt any would-be smugglers while serving the critical market of lawful customers that help America win worldwide,” he added.
A representative for Megaspeed said the company was conducting an internal investigation into allegations of chip diversion and had repeatedly offered to cooperate with the U.S. government but that those offers had gone unanswered.
The United States began investigating Megaspeed and Ms. Huang in 2024, after the company started importing billions of dollars’ worth of advanced Nvidia A.I. equipment into Malaysia. Megaspeed had been planning and constructing data centers around Southeast Asia to serve Chinese clients, including Alibaba, the Chinese tech giant. While that behavior is legal, U.S. officials were concerned that some of the Nvidia chips the company had bought were illegally routed into China.
The United States has imposed restrictions on which technologies could be sold to China through export controls, which ban certain chips from being sold there and require U.S. companies to get licenses to sell others. Nvidia has opposed those controls and argued for selling its products more freely.
Sign up for the On Politics newsletter. It's a pivotal moment for American politics. Join us for 2026 and beyond.
In August 2025, officials at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security who were pursuing the case received an email from Mr. Teter, the general counsel of Nvidia, people familiar with the incident said. In a message to the agents, Mr. Teter said that Mr. Kessler had given him permission to reach out about the case.
A Commerce Department official said that Nvidia had contacted the employees directly to request a meeting with one of them. When the employees declined the meeting, Mr. Teter responded to the employees by saying he was unsure what the issue was because Mr. Kessler had said Nvidia could communicate with the bureau’s employees.
The employees forwarded the email chain to Mr. Kessler. Hours later, Mr. Kessler responded, saying they should continue to handle the case strictly by the book, the official said.
Mr. Kessler did not order his employees to divulge information to Nvidia, and he did not weigh in with the agents on what meetings to take or what information to divulge, that official said.
Mr. Kessler did not respond to requests for comment.
As an under secretary, Mr. Kessler would typically be walled off from the finer details of such an investigation given that he might be called on to serve as a neutral arbiter in the case. Mr. Kessler’s interactions with Nvidia could also be subject to legal discovery or a subpoena if the department were to pursue future legal action against Megaspeed, officials said.
It is not clear if other factors contributed to the decision to suspend the Commerce Department’s work. That decision also coincided with the collection of U.S. intelligence that would conclude that Ms. Huang had spied for the Chinese government. Mr. Trump was briefed in October 2025 that Ms. Huang had a relationship with Mr. Huang and was presumed to be a spy, but the president chose not to do anything with that intelligence.
The Justice and Commerce Departments often pursue export control cases in tandem, but the Justice Department can take the lead in cases involving criminality and intelligence. The Justice Department can pursue criminal penalties that often require a higher burden of proof, while the Commerce Department levies civil penalties including fines.
But officials described the way the case was handed off from the Commerce Department as unusual and concerning.
Several officials, who requested anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive issue, questioned why the Commerce Department was discussing the case with Nvidia, a party that had not been ruled out as a subject of the investigation.
After the email from Mr. Teter, Commerce officials convened meetings to discuss the incident and rapidly disclosed it to partner law enforcement agencies. The Justice Department requested that the Commerce Department pause its work on the investigation, and Commerce complied, one person familiar with the case said.
The outcome was a source of frustration to agents investigating Megaspeed, who had spent months building a case. It may also have prevented the Commerce Department from taking quicker action to stop technology shipments to Megaspeed.
Government officials inside and outside the Commerce Department already had concerns about the Trump administration’s deference to Nvidia, a driving force behind America’s A.I. growth and the U.S. stock market. Mr. Huang has been an influential voice on export control policy with both Mr. Trump and Mr. Lutnick, the secretary in charge of the Commerce Department, which controls American technology exports.
The Trump administration, including the Justice Department, has also taken the view that the federal government should avoid making regulatory or enforcement decisions that limit American companies’ ability to dominate the artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia’s chips are a major driver of that industry.
Since Mr. Trump’s return to office, Mr. Kessler and other leaders at the department had mandated that any investigations into Nvidia and other outreach to the company first receive their approval. Mr. Kessler, who reports directly to Mr. Lutnick, has also maintained tight control over the licenses granted by the department, many of which involve Nvidia technology, as well as the department’s communications with the company.
While other agencies have proposed placing Megaspeed on the entity list, a trade blacklist overseen by the Commerce Department, though the department has not moved forward with the action. The department has not added a company to the entity list in over a year, the longest stretch without such a listing in 18 years.
Ana Swanson covers trade and international economics for The Times and is based in Washington. She has been a journalist for more than a decade“
Sunday, November 08, 2026
Saturday, November 07, 2026
Friday, November 06, 2026
I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares
I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable this year — here’s how the iPhone Duo compares
"Apple’s first foldable matches its Android rivals in a few key areas, but it falls short in others.
When I first read Allison and Nilay’s Verge review of the iPhone Duo, I was immediately struck by one of their complaints: that the cover display is too small. That’s not how the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 feels, I thought. Had they got it wrong?
After a week and a half using the Duo, I know exactly what they mean — and it’s not the screen’s fault at all. Apps that feel comfortable on Samsung’s short foldable and the similarly sized Xiaomi 18 Fold are often cramped and compact on the Duo’s cover screen, robbed of screen space by a right-hand rail that most apps don’t make use of anyway.
That’s just one of the ways that Apple’s first foldable feels fundamentally different from the Android alternatives. I’ve reviewed almost every Android foldable that was released this year, from Samsung and Google to Honor and Oppo, and I’ve been surprised to realize that the Duo holds its own against them all on hardware, but is let down by iOS itself. For now at least, Android is slicker for folding phones — though I don’t know how long that will last.
Size, shape, and build quality
The iPhone Duo feels great. Mostly. Its curved frame and Ceramic Shield back have that ineffable Apple feeling, a sense of polish that helps justify the $2,000 price tag. The hinge in particular is satisfyingly smooth, closing and opening with a comforting magnetic click. Compared with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Xiaomi 18 Fold, the Duo just feels better.
But part of that is down to the Duo’s big drawback: its weight. At first it feels encouraging, the reassuring heft of all that glass and metal. Then I started using the phone, and I realized it’s just plain heavy. It weighs more than all of its rivals — even ones with larger screens — and any attempt to use the Duo one-handed makes that obvious quickly. It’s a little thicker than some other foldables, too, though in practice that bothers me far less.
The squat shape won’t be for everyone. The Duo is even shorter and wider than the Z Fold 8, though almost identical in dimensions to Xiaomi’s 18 Fold. I’m a fan of this design, which is both cute and comfortable when folded shut and gives you a natural choice of portrait or landscape orientations when open. The major downsides are that the short cover screen makes some apps awkward to use, and it’s wide when you need to stretch across to the other side — a problem worsened by some of Apple’s software choices. More on that later.
And while the Duo’s IP68 rating is an obvious advantage over much of the competition (only Google and Honor can match it), we’ve not seen many recent Android foldables struggle with hinge and display damage quite like the Duo. It’s still not clear how widespread Duo screen failures really are — they don’t seem to be as ubiquitous as Samsung’s first-generation failures back in 2019 — but non-impact damage like this is almost unheard of in modern Android foldables. It’s a reminder that the Duo is still a first-gen product while some Android rivals are into their eighth iteration.
The screen is the Duo’s smartest hardware trick, and easily my favorite thing about the phone compared with other foldable phones. No rival offers anything like the “nano-texture” (read: matte) finish on the inner screen, which is easy on the eyes in more ways than one.
Crucially, it also helps mask the phone’s crease, which isn’t quite invisible but is well-hidden. The Duo’s crease is somewhere in the middle of the Android pack: subtler than Google’s and Honor’s, more obvious than Samsung’s. Oppo’s near-invisible creaseremains the best, but not by much. The Duo’s matte screen means it’s harder than most to see (though visible from an angle), but it’s still easy enough to feel, and a couple of friends have immediately remarked on it when trying the phone. Still, I don’t want to over-egg it: The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is probably the only one out of this year’s foldables with a crease I’d say is a problem. The Duo’s crease is easy to ignore.
I’d actually say the Duo’s under-display camera is more of an annoyance. It’s not only inside an extra-pixelated circle of screen, but that’s the only patch without the matte coating, which makes it a little more distracting. I can mostly tune it out, but not entirely. I’d probably prefer a regular selfie camera tucked right into the corner, as on the Xiaomi 18 Fold and a few others, but I suspect opinions will differ here.
Finally, the Duo benefits from stylus support, letting you use a USB-C Apple Pencil on the central screen. This isn’t unique — Samsung used to offer the same, and both of Honor’s and Oppo’s latest foldables work with their styli — but plenty of the current Android crop don’t offer the option. I don’t have an Apple Pencil, so I haven’t been able to test it myself, but my colleague Allison is clearly a fan.
The iPhone Duo’s cameras, like those on most foldables, are fairly basic, with a pair of 48-megapixel rear lenses, one main and one ultrawide. It’s a setup comparable to the Z Fold 8, and both phones’ cameras are good, but not great. Most other Android foldables (including Samsung’s Z Fold 8 Ultra) instead offer triple rear cameras, netting you a big boost in photographic flexibility. They often use larger sensors than either Apple or Samsung, so their main cameras are better, too. Still, Vivo is the only manufacturer getting close to slab flagship quality in its foldable cameras, and its hardware lags behind in a few other respects that would prevent it from being my foldable recommendation overall.
As for selfies, the front-screen camera is pretty basic, but you can take better shots using the rear cameras by opening the phone up and flipping it round. That under-display camera is worse than a regular selfie camera, but good enough so long as you only use it for video calls.
As for battery, Nilay and Allison had different experiences in our Duo review. I’ve mostly found the battery long-lasting, easily running a full day of mixed use. It’s got a higher capacity than either of Samsung’s foldables, so that’s no real surprise. It still pales in comparison to the two-day battery of Honor’s Magic V6, but once you’re past lasting a day, I think you get diminishing returns anyway.
Software support and multitasking
So far, the Duo looks like a competitive foldable, albeit a little middle-of-the-pack. It beats its rivals in some hardware areas, falls behind in others, and has one truly unique selling point in the matte foldable display.
Unusually for Apple, the software is what lets it down.
The biggest problem isn’t Apple’s own software, but everyone else’s: Most apps still aren’t optimized for the Duo. In the best case, that means apps that don’t make full use of the Duo’s new right-hand rail, showing an empty black bar instead of app controls. Worse are the ones that don’t even scale to the larger screen — apps like Bluesky or Duolingo can use the whole display on other foldables, but appear in thin strips with huge black bars on the Duo.
This will improve with time. I’ve seen Google Maps, Google Translate, and Instagram update in the last few days alone, and no doubt more will follow. Some are already better on the Duo: Slack uses a helpful desktop-style two-column layout, while on Android foldables you just get the mobile UI but bigger. But for now at least, most apps run better on my Android foldables than on my Duo.
OS-level improvements are harder to predict. At first I loved the idea of Apple moving key controls to the right-hand edge, but it takes up so much space that it leaves the Duo’s cover screen feeling smaller than it needs to: You get all the awkward stretching of a wide phone without the expansive screen space. Samsung and Xiaomi’s wide foldables may be about the same size, but in use they feel much bigger. I wonder how many software developers will follow Google’s lead in app optimization — it essentially ignored the right rail entirely while updating Google Maps, instead just spreading the map to the edge of the screen. It feels bigger and better than most other Duo apps as a result.
And this is partly the Android user in me, but the lack of a persistent back-swipe gesture seems to grate more on the Duo than on other iPhones. Sometimes, moving backward in an app requires a button in the right rail, sometimes one in the top-left corner, sometimes a swipe from the left-hand edge of the screen. It’s annoyingly inconsistent, and more often than not requires stretching across the phone’s width, whether it’s open or closed. Being able to swipe back from either side of the screen gives Android foldables a huge advantage in one-handed use.
As for multitasking, the Duo is well behind the competition. You can run two apps at once in split-screen, but only in landscape mode, and each must take up exactly half the display. Compare this to Oppo, which allows you to fluidly move between multiple split-screen apps and floating windows; or Xiaomi, which allows up to six apps to run side by side in split-screen, and Apple’s implementation feels downright basic. These are the extreme end of Android, and probably overkill for most (they certainly are for me), but I’d take them over Apple’s half-hearted multitasking any day.
Apple hasn’t waded into the foldable market and fixed all its flaws. If anything, “crackgate” is proof that it’s still playing catch-up with the Android alternatives, which have a few years of fine-tuning behind them. Many are still lighter, and thinner, and have subtler creases than the Duo, or bigger batteries and better cameras. In broad strokes, though, this hardware is up to scratch — and, crucially, on par with its most direct worldwide rival, the Galaxy Z Fold 8.
For now, though, Android has the software edge. Google has worked hard to make its OS adaptable to various screen sizes so most apps take full advantage of the bigger inner screen while individual OEMs have designed ambitious multitasking tools. That isn’t yet true for iOS, and some of Apple’s own software tweaks in the OS make things more awkward still. It’s those that I’m worried about long term. The best thing about foldables is their flexibility — something Apple itself often lacks. If the Duo is going to catch up to Android, Apple might have to adapt.
Photography by Dominic Preston / The Verge"
Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Review: The Single-Task Gadget of Our Times
Amazon Kindle Colorsoft Review: The Single-Task Gadget of Our Times
“The $290 Kindle Colorsoft adds color and a story recap feature to a single-task device amid rising e-reader demand. Battery life drops to eight weeks, but color enhances reading despite higher cost and muted comics.
E-book reader sales are soaring as consumers seek technology offering respite from social media and artificial intelligence hype. It’s even better in color.
Brian X. Chen is The Times’s lead consumer technology writer and the author of Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.
Like all Kindles released in the last 18 years, Amazon’s new $290 Kindle does just one thing well: read digital books. This one, called Colorsoft, also shows color.
It may not sound like terribly exciting technology. But I couldn’t resist trying one.
That’s because e-book readers are suddenly trending. Amid the hype surrounding artificial intelligence and discourse about smartphone addiction, e-readers are flying off the shelves. Last year, sales of Kindles were the highest in over a decade. People seem to be looking for a respite from the noisy chatbots and brain-rotting social media memes polluting the web.
The popularity of the Kindle is also part of a quiet resurgence happening with our personal tech. Lots of consumers, especially young people who grew up with smartphones, are turning to minimalist tech like wired earbuds, retro music players and “dumbphones” without traditional screens. A lack of features has become a feature in itself, and the Kindle is a rare example of an old-school technology that continues to be upgraded with modern features.
I tested the Kindle Colorsoft for about a week and found it to be a worthwhile upgrade from a black-and-white e-reader. There are downsides to adding color — the battery life is shorter, for one. But the addition of color enhances the reading experience, especially for comics and books that include photography.
The Colorsoft also includes a tiny bit of A.I. software that provides story recaps, but it’s thoughtfully designed and simple to ignore if you want to stay focused on reading.
Here’s what you need to know.
Pros and Cons
Amazon’s Kindles and the vast majority of e-book readers on the market have relied on E ink technology that showed text in grayscale. Amazon introduced color to its e-reader in 2024 with the first Colorsoft. This year’s Colorsoft is slightly thinner and lighter than the original, which is a win for commuters.
Battery life is a noticeable drawback. Amazon estimates the Colorsoft will last eight weeks compared with 12 weeks on its $200 black-and-white e-reader, the Kindle Paperwhite. That’s still plenty of juice, but because my reading sessions tend to be a few hours a day, I needed to plug in the Colorsoft after about five days; with past Kindles I’d typically recharge every two weeks.
Reading text on a Colorsoft is easier on the eyes than with a bright touch-screen tablet such as an iPad. Text looks clearer — this e-reader shows text at about double the resolution than Kindles from many years ago. There’s also the option to adjust the color temperature of the screen based on the time of day, like a warmer, orange hue for late-night reading.
I have done most of my reading on a black-and-white Kindle for years, and I didn’t realize what a difference color would make. All e-books previously purchased on Amazon can be transferred to the Colorsoft and shown in color whenever applicable. I feel like I have more of a personal connection with my library of e-books now that the covers are shown in their intended colors. For a cookbook I regularly consult for bread recipes, it was helpful to see a color photograph of the crust to determine whether I had underbaked a loaf.
When it comes to reading media with more vibrant colors, such as comic books, don’t expect the Colorsoft to be on a par with an iPad mini. The Colorsoft’s screen has a slight blue tinge, and its color range is limited. As a result, comics in color look more muted and less vibrant than on an iPad, but it beats reading them on a black-and-white Kindle. If your want to read a lot of comics, an iPad may be a better fit, though a tablet may lure you toward social media distractions.
With the internet now flooded with A.I. slop, the Kindle benefits from including the bare minimum of A.I. applied in a useful way. If you have to put a book down and return to it days or weeks later, you can press a button labeled “Story So Far” to get a spoiler-free refresher on what has happened up to the point where you left off. As a sleep-deprived parent of a fussy toddler, I found myself using that tool quite often.
Bottom Line
The biggest drawback of the Colorsoft is the price. At $290 — a $40 increase from last year’s Colorsoft — this device is expensive for just reading books. The version I tested, the Kindle Colorsoft Signature Edition, comes in an aluminum case and costs $320. But with a global memory shortage driving up the cost of most consumer electronics, paying a hefty price for nice tech is becoming a new normal.
Prices might come back down eventually, but until then, we can at least appreciate that a single-tasker like the Kindle not only continues to exist but keeps getting better.
Brian X. Chen is the lead consumer technology writer for The Times. He reviews products and writes Tech Fix, a column about the social implications of the tech we use.“
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)