Transcript: Rep. Jim Himes on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," Nov. 15, 2026

November 15, 2026 / 12:40 PM EST / CBS News

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The following is the transcript of the interview with Rep. Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Nov. 15, 2026.

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MARGARET BRENNAN: We're joined now by the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Connecticut Congressman Jim Himes, who joins us from Greenwich. Good morning, Congressman. You just heard the secretary ask for $50 billion in funding for upgrades. There are 16 working days left in the House. Are you going to consider that funding request?

REP. JIM HIMES: Yeah. Well, Margaret. I mean, look, you- you- you had the right question. This is not a Congress money problem. You pointed out that there was $50 billion sent in the Biden administration and 12 and a half billion appropriated that has not been obligated. For the American people watching, obligated is a fancy D.C. word for spent, right? So this is not immediately a spending problem. It is a prioritization problem, and it's payback, by the way, for you remember when Elon Musk was standing on a stage spinning his chainsaw around, cutting government willy-nilly. Well, part of that chainsaw got 1,300 employees of the FAA to resign or to retire. They fired 400 probationary employees. These are the technical specialists and the maintenance people. So what you're seeing here, apart from a lack of prioritization of improving our- our- our FAA system, what you're seeing is the wages of what Elon Musk did, where he just gutted an entity that- that affected millions of Americans last Friday.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you're a no on the 50 billion?

REP. HIMES: Well, no, I'm not a no. Look, if- if- if- if they- I'm not on the transportation committee. But if they came and said- my first question would be, well, what about that other 12 and a half million that's sitting in your bank account right now? How about if you spend that before we- we put more money in that bank account?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Understood. I want to ask you about what is happening with this arms race with China and chips. You were one of the rest of the Gang of Eight who were briefed this past week on what is going on with Nvidia, that chip maker. CBS has reported U.S. intelligence agencies believe Alice Huang, the Megaspeed CEO who was linked to Jensen Huang of Nvidia, was indeed an asset of China's Ministry of State Security. However, when President Trump was asked about the scandal, he put it this way:

[START SOUND ON TAPE]

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The big thing is: was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined yet. But if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different.

[END SOUND ON TAPE]

MARGARET BRENNAN: So, how certain is U.S. intelligence that she was an asset of Chinese intelligence, and is that the central issue?

REP. HIMES: Margaret, I don't- I don't even know how to respond to the president's statement. Remember, it was March when- March or April when the Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated a memo to all of the senior people, including presumably the White House, saying we have concerns that this woman is a spy. It is now November, and the President of the United States had no interest in understanding whether, in this most essential technology, the technology which could end millions of jobs or cure cancer, and/or create, you know, a real tool for terrorists and, you know, I mean, the fact that the president in November is saying we don't know if she's a spy that- that actually sort of perfectly illustrates my concern. Now, here's what I can tell you based on what I know. I don't think that we know. I don't think that we know. And when we say spy, spy is a pretty imprecise term, right? It's possible, based on what I know, that Alice Huang had no idea that she was maybe being monitored or- or- or working for the Chinese. That's possible. We don't know the answer to that question. It's also possible on the other end of the spectrum that she was a fully paid up, you know, intelligence asset and actually communicating. But the point of all of this is, how is it possible that we don't know this around the single most important technology of our lifetime? So, as you might imagine, Margaret, I'm going to spend a lot of time getting to the bottom of this, and I'm happy to report that actually, as you've observed, Republicans in Congress are interested too.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They are indeed. You referenced there a memo CNN reported Marco Rubio, as national security adviser and secretary of state, drafted this based on CIA intelligence, and then briefed the president. It also drew on intercepted communications between Alice Huang and Jensen Huang. Has that memo been shared with the Gang of Eight?

REP. HIMES: That memo has not been shared, and again, the only information that has come our way, and I'm speaking, I think, on behalf of the whole Congress here, because I was with the Gang of Eight last week. The only information that has come our way was sort of a glancing, not on the agenda discussion in that meeting. So we have a lot of work to do. But I mean, the fundamental question is: number one, has the FBI, and I don't know the answer to this question, the FBI, as you know, is the entity that does this counterintelligence work, figuring out what Alice Huang is and what she sent to the Chinese, if anything, right? We don't know that. We don't know if they launched an investigation. We're worried about it, right? Because the president, his buddy buddies, and apparently Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, who has responsibility for keeping chips that could help build you know Chinese AI out of China. You know these guys are palling around. Jensen Huang is, you know, writing $25 million checks for the ballroom. We got to get to the bottom of this, and we haven't even begun to get the facts we need here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Two law enforcement sources told CBS that DOJ's National Security Division is investigating Megaspeed. That's the Singapore company that Alice Huang was CEO of. She's since left that position, as I understand it, and they're looking at that. But it sounds like you are also saying Jensen Huang needs to be looked at with more scrutiny here, and whether he was indeed a target. If- if he was a target of Chinese intelligence, why wouldn't the United States tell him that?

REP. HIMES: Well, let's take that piece by piece. Megaspeed is an entity that sort of didn't exist 10 years ago in any meaningful way, and now they appear, and I want to say appear, to be doing possibly two things. Number one, they may be a way of getting these chips to China. You know, Nvidia could sell them to Megaspeed, Megaspeed gives them to China. Or more interestingly, and we know that this goes on, China wants to train its models so it doesn't even buy the chips, but it just uses Megaspeed's data centers, right? So China is, you know, training up their frontier models simply online, if you will, right? So that's the question around Megaspeed. The question around Alice Huang is what, you know, was she a witting agent of the Chinese government, or was she just sort of being monitored? And then the really important question is what information, and- and this is where you know Mr. Huang, Jensen Huang comes in. What information made its way from the CEO, Jensen, to her, to the Chinese? What influence was exerted, right? I mean, if you look at the behavior of the Commerce Department in particular, it looked like somebody was standing up for Nvidia. Why? Was that influence on the part of Jensen Huang, $25 million in money handed over for a ballroom sounds like a pretty good way to build influence to me, at least.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Has Secretary Lutnick, whose Commerce Department would be in charge of overseeing some of this, did he respond to your request to meet with the Intelligence Committee?

REP. HIMES: Well, that- that request just went out Friday of last week, so you know he- he will respond. And as you probably know, there's also been a bipartisan request for him to appear in the Banking Committee in the Senate. But again, if you read the reporting here, it looks like he has been the barrier inside the government to stopping the flow of these Nvidia chips to China, and the question is, why?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, sort of to that point, I want to ask you about what the treasury secretary, if I could ask you to put your financial services hat on for a moment here and bridge both worlds. The treasury secretary was on Fox this morning, and he floated that more Nvidia executives should be removed. He said there's a culture of non-compliance that might need to be looked at, and whether they boosted potentially illicit sales of chips. He- which sort of suggests as part of a larger smuggling operation that you may have just touched on there. And he cited reporting that only 1% of the computer chips imported to Singapore stayed there, even though Nvidia said Singapore accounted for 20% of their sales. Now, if a bank were entangled in those kind of activities, there would be very strong action taken. What action needs to be taken here in terms of answering all these questions the treasury secretary just laid out?

REP. HIMES: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, let's be super clear here, right? Nvidia makes chips. They get wealthy when they sell chips. So of course they have an incentive to sell these chips to the Chinese. That's nothing new. Lots of companies would love to sell everything to the Chinese. It's the government's job, it is the commerce secretary's job, and the president's job to stop that from happening through things like the entity list, which you know prohibit American companies from doing business with anybody on that entity list. Lo and behold, Megaspeed was not on that entity list. Actually, the treasury secretary has been saying that. But yes, what you're talking about, were banks facilitating a smuggling operation. I don't know what the treasury secretary was talking about, but yes, it should not just be Jensen Huang. It needs to be his people who apparently were doing exactly everything that he- that- that they were told to do. It needs to be the commerce secretary who was not doing apparently, according to the treasury secretary, enough. And yes, if banks were facilitating this stuff, they too, you know, need to be called to account.

MARGARET BRENNAN: The treasury secretary was very clear that enforcement comes to commerce, and that commerce was not taking the action there. We have to leave it there, Congressman. Thank you for your time this morning. We'll be right back.