> Lutnick Pushed to Weaken Chip Rules That Overlap With His Family Business
Buried well below the fold and below two ads, 20pt, 400 weight:
> These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate. Other investment banks have similar partnerships, and there is no evidence that Cantor’s investments influenced Mr. Lutnick’s deliberations.
Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent. The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
I'm sure if you dig just a little, you'll find he's taken positions that benefit the clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies as well. Because, despite those firms being competitors of Cantor, the Commerce Secretary will often take positions that benefit US commerce. And all of those firms who benefit and a larger than a lemonade stand will be clients of some financial services company/ies.
I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
Remember when politicians used to put assets in blind trusts and divest investments that could create even the perception of conflicts of interest?
It’s not the NYT’s standards that have fallen, it’s the American populace’s. “The oligarch billionaire probably only benefitted to the tune of tens of millions” is damning.
That is literally from Cantor’s website.
Now we have a President making billions while in office and others in his administration like Lutnick here making bank too.
I wonder how long until this post gets flagged off of HN since the usual lackeys will rage flag this and we have no way to vouch for it back like we do with comments
It's fair in my mind to complain that you have to read a bunch of fluff (arguably to drive ad impressions) to find the actual news part. I expect that from HuffPo for sure, less so from NYT.
The inverted pyramid is a well documented technique for getting to the point quickly, and if you search it you'll find tons of articles by big name schools and institutions explaining it. Here's one. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/journali...
> Overlap? These interests are barely even tangent.
> I feel like NYT's standards used to be higher than that...
You can see there's nothing in their comment that highlights frustration with an ability (or lack of) to find the information they clicked to read about.
There is then further commentary on how relevant or not relevant the fact is. But the first half of the complaint is literally about the organization and formatting.
But you know, cherry pick what you dont want to hear.
Is it corruption when a Commerce recommendation benefits a Cantor client and, I guess, incompetent corruption when it instead benefits clients of Piper Sandler, Stifel, and Jefferies? Or it all Commerce working to further the goals of the country?
If Commerce helps 1000 companies, it's not a problem if Cantor has 5% of the overall market as clients and 4-6% of the companies helped are Cantor clients.
There may very well be corruption here; this article doesn't arrive in the neighborhood of convincing me (I consider myself neither red nor blue, but mostly disgusted with the outcome of the two party system that we seem stuck with.)
> But the overlapping relationships are the latest indication of the potential conflicts that exist given Mr. Lutnick’s role in shaping rules around U.S. technology exports. And they demonstrate how the U.S. ban on selling chips directly to China has led to an explosion of data centers in Southeast Asia aimed at Chinese customers. It is now up to Mr. Lutnick to decide whether to tighten the rules in ways that would cut off this avenue.
The article concludes with:
> Still, Cantor Fitzgerald continued to help arrange billions of dollars of financing for industries ranging from data centers to cryptocurrency that depend on a steady supply of computing from Nvidia.
> That includes Bitdeer, which is building out the Malaysian data center it expects to generate $1.7 billion in revenue over five years, according to a company statement.
> That data center will likely serve Tencent, a Chinese internet giant that would be able to gain access to Nvidia’s most advanced A.I. servers, according to a person with knowledge of the arrangement. Bitdeer is part of Nvidia’s partner network, a program for companies that work closely with the chipmaker.
> Bitdeer hosts a Chinese language website that lets customers rent A.I. chips and gain access to Chinese open source A.I. models through data centers in Malaysia, Canada and elsewhere. The Johor facility is one of five data centers the company plans to open in Malaysia in the coming years, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
> Cantor holds a stake in Bitdeer through its investment in Tether, the crypto company. It is far from the only American financial heavyweight investing in overseas data centers. Bain Capital, Citadel and Blackstone have all poured money into A.I. computing clusters across the region.
> Cantor also previously provided financial services to Gorilla Technology, which is building data centers in Thailand and Indonesia, and has a contract to provide A.I. computing to Freyr AI, a Singaporean data center firm that corporate filings and job ads indicate has ties to China.
> Cantor has worked with other Nvidia partners globally, including IREN, an Australian cloud computing company, and Lancium, a Texas data center developer.
> A Commerce Department spokeswoman said that Mr. Lutnick makes policy decisions based on the best interests of the United States. He does not discuss department matters with his sons, nor do they discuss Cantor Fitzgerald business with him, she added.
> Cantor Fitzgerald declined to comment. Bitdeer did not reply to a request for comment.
> Mr. Lutnick, as of October 2025, transferred his remaining ownership stake in Cantor to his family. Before that, he had been given what the White House had called a “limited waiver” that allowed him to participate in certain decisions that could have “a direct and predictable effect on Cantor Fitzgerald,” exempting him from a federal criminal law that would otherwise have required him to entirely recuse himself from these discussions.
> Even after Mr. Lutnick finished transferring his ownership stake to his sons late last year, he still had to abide by an ethics rule prohibiting federal employees from using their public office for their private gain or the gain of friends and relatives.
> The Times reported last year that Mr. Lutnick was promoting data center projects that worked with his family firms. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and two dozen other Democratic lawmakers called for an investigation.
It is apparent there is a conflict of interest but the NYT was unable to find an explicit causal connection. The headline is objectively correct and in most administrations of the past, overlapping interests like this would constitute a scandal and would call for further investigation.
Imagine all the laywers in any administration, then imagine all the clients that their firms had ever represented.
So an even larger attack surface for corruption in Mr. Lutnick's Cabinet role.
> The Commerce Secretary has a background and experience in financial services; that sounds like a good thing compared to some of the other current adminstration qualifications.
"Financial services" and commerce, writ large, are not the same thing.
The NYT may well be chasing clicks through its creative use of typography. But the defense of a genuinely offensive and quite possibly corrupt individual like Howard Lutnick isn't a hill I'd prefer to die on.
Lutnick is a TRAITOR, he manipulated the system to benefit his company, at the expense of the National Security of the US, by investing in this Malaysian data center which in effect, allowed the Chinese military a source to run their code on Blackwells, and if he's not arrested for treason and a stop put to it, all the next generations of advanced Nvidia GPUs.
Remember it was the American people that have been choosing the (cheaper) offshore manufactured products over the American made ones for decades. There are many products still made in America but in general people buy the cheaper ones made from abroad. And they buy more products - TVs, clothes, Barbie dolls because of it.
Who exactly should be prosecuted?
Clinton March 8th, 2000, Johns Hopkins SAIS
On manufacturing, after saying American companies would for the first time sell and distribute American-made products inside China, he adds that they could do it “without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China.”
On democracy, after noting that China is agreeing to more than buying American goods, he says “it is agreeing to import one of democracy’s most cherished values, economic freedom.”
That would have cut off a source of cheap production.
"Economically, this agreement is the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets—with a fifth of the world’s population, potentially the biggest markets in the world—to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways," said Clinton. In a speech in 2000, Clinton reiterated his hopes:
For the first time, our companies will be able to sell and distribute products in China made by workers here in America without being forced to relocate manufacturing to China, sell through the Chinese government, or transfer valuable technology—for the first time. We’ll be able to export products without exporting jobs."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States%E2%80%93China_Re...
It's .. yes ... worse. Before what you had was an unjust, exploitative, but relatively stable system of rules by which international capitalism operated and in which specific individuals were not allowed to dominate because there was a balancing act of corporate interests, sector by sector, corporation by corporation. If you (not you or I, but corporate entities etc) played by the rules, you might get a chance at the bat.
What's replaced it is outright graft. "Success" is determined by proximity to specific individuals. Success and growth of the overall system is no longer a goal. It's outright "might makes right" politics and what makes it far worse than what came before is not only is it unjust (just like before) for the little guys like you and me.. it is now inherently unstable and prone to collapse.
It's absolutely short termist and interested only in certain families and individuals and maybe sectors.
The people that should be prosecuted are the actual individuals involved.
Also, as a Canadian I'll just say... FUCK Lutnick in particular. Him and Bessent and the whole cabal have made explicit economic war against former "allies" in the name of their own enrichment. It is glorious that they have now have knives out for each other.
Remember it was the American people who have been choosing to use the (cheaper) gas with lead over the gas with out lead....
This take smacks of the 'learn to code' vibes that journalists were throwing around at blue collar workers only to cry about it being harassment when it was thrown at them.
Remember, the people who started buying cheap items from China were the same people who's jobs were being shipped to China. Kind of hard for you to afford the more expensive items when you don't have a job or you have switched from a good paying job to a low wage one.
In an alternate universe, keeping manufacturing industries and jobs onshore would likely have come at the expense of American dominance and high salaries in tech, and higher cost consumer goods - probably not a huge deal to most people
So trickle down, but it only helps a small number of people in a handful of coastal cities? And imports people into the US to then take work from citizens?
And even that is no longer really happening (except for the importing people to take work from citizens), and hasn't for a few years now (not sure if you've seen the tech job market at the moment). Yes, there was a brief period of time that a few technologists were making 6 figures starting..
Ban iPhone imports for 6 months and see if it only helps a "small number of people in a handful of coastal cities"
If Apple truly has become a critical part of the nation's infrastructure and is "too big to fail", then why hasn't it been nationalized yet? The nation's safety depends on it!
Cupertino was +44 for Harris in 2024
https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/sov/2024-general/ssov/pres-...
Like in 2026, we don't really need to worry about domestic industries and production lines getting shipping to China. That has basically run its course, and while it would be great to work on rebuilding our industries, nobody really has a plan for doing that beyond hopium. The active attack we do need to worry about is further destruction of what still remains of the decentralized US economy, in favor of rolling up ever more activity into megacorps (through high prices on energy and raw goods, open political favoritism, continued regulatory capture, etc).
Agreed. They need to go as well.
> What we do need to worry about is further destruction of what still remains of the decentralized US economy, in favor of rolling up ever more activity into megacorps (through high prices on energy and raw goods, open political favoritism, continued regulatory capture, etc).
Sure, but we also need to do our own infrastructure buildup, offshoring hasn't run it's course, we still have places all over the country with no real economic prospects. There has to be something for that alongside bringing the megacorps to heel.
Unwinding it all takes. at best, another 2 years.
I get it, these people are pretty terrible, but some reflection and soul-searching is needed. Why is such a large group so gullible/dumb/desperate and how has society/traditional republicans/democrats failed them? How did it come to this?
If other countries go back to trusting anything the U.S. says in just 2 years, I’d be gobsmacked.
I would like to note, the clown is a convicted felon, and a convicted sex offender. Something known at the time of the second elections, by the millions who voted for him.
Most people vote for whom they are told whether by their social circle or the media they consume.
The abnormal people are those who do independent research and weigh the consequences with objective measure. This is called conscientiousness and all research on this suggests it’s highly negatively correlated to intelligence at about -0.27.
For why America (and others) are entertaining authoritarian leaders, the best explaination I've heard is The Tyranny of Merit. Neoliberal economics failed from its own successes. It made excuses and workarounds instead of understanding what it did to the un-credentialed working class and passed on building an economy that works for all people. This lead to hubris, corruption, and control by a smaller and smaller elite as power and wealth has concentrated.
He betrayed his coalition. Never do that.
There is a reasonable debate to be had around the level of limits. But I think it’s clear there need to be some. The idea that China won’t develop a local supplier if we sell to them is a ship that sailed a decade ago. And we’re still unclear on the AI’s future development curve—if it looks like what some proponents believe, it would make sense to preserve every advantage we have.
https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2026-...
Rethinking Export Controls as a Tool in Modern Technology Competition, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Why not just give them everything that gets invented?
That said, easing restrictions happened earlier this year and was announced publicly and suddenly now everyone has become a China hawk.
If you want my personal opinion, Jensen might be right here.
This could be approved operations to get Chinese companies to run their models in controlled data centers. The only hole in this theory is that the NYT would not print this if it were the case.
The disgust for the personality in other comments here is justified. But the broader picture is that Wexner, Lutnick and Epstein have always been deep state adjacent. In the early days Bears Stearns handle slush funds and laundering, then Cantor & Fitzgerald, now Bitcoing/Tether.
If you just focus on the personality there'll be another Lutnick soon.
Lutnick is surely on a different level, being part of the government and a core member of the Epstein ring.
>These dealings are just a tiny portion of Cantor’s business, which stretches from investment banking and trading to real estate. Other investment banks have similar partnerships, and there is no evidence that Cantor’s investments influenced Mr. Lutnick’s deliberations.
I hope we can move past this with the next admin, and continue to give the upper hand to businesses that want to succeed fairly in the USA.
That make you happy?
That's precisely what a party of controlled opposition would do.
But, do you honestly think Trumps administration didn't materially contribute to making those conditions worse themselves? They basically made the hole so deep it will make it difficult to crawl out of in the first place.
I agree it made conditions worse. I never denied that.
But I'm also looking at the entire chain of events which led to it. "Lesser of two evils" "voting" literally got us to this point. How could it possibly get us out of it?
"Voting" in scare quotes because as the uniparty link explains, in addition to Dems proving they can't run fair primaries etc, democracy is illusory when corrupted by capital interests.
Ignoring the violent revolution option for obvious reasons, the logical thing to do would be to carefully design and build a new party from the ground up so that it can't succumb to the same levels of corruption that Dems and Repubs have, to disrupt the good cop / bad cop hypnosis that everyone is trapped in.
But I also don't look down on those who are aware of the above and elect to not vote as a result.
Not voting is itself a vote, in this climate.
Good grief, how are Bernie bros still grinding this axe ten years on
Good grief, how corrupt/delusional enablers are still denying facts ten years on.
Also, even post-Bernie, why do you think voters were entirely denied a primary the most recent time around?
The best Dems could do was install a proven unpopular pick and act surprised when she lost.
A vote is earned and not given, regardless of how loudly the “vote blue no matter who” argues (shouts?) otherwise every election cycle.
The counterveiling force has to be an organized working class that uses unions, political parties, and democratic force to take back at least some control of the state and market and force its use for social means. And this is a constant battle. If we start to lose, which has happened progressively since the 70s, Trumpist oligarchy is the result. Or worse.
Its why I can have some respect for the Dark Enlightenment guys. At least they take their idea of libertarianism to its natural conclusion.
I do think that Ayn Randian "objectivism" with its "altruism is a moral defect" is only one bad LSD trip away from just realizing what they really mean is just fully "might makes right", fetishizing power for power's sake, and embracing an explicit fascist ethos as a result.
Ideologically so concerned with identifying repression as a product of "collectivism" (and seeing "collectivism" everywhere) that they've obscured where the real violence lays & the OG violence that led to the establishment of enclosure and property rights in the first instance. Marc Andreesen's weird manifesto some years ago was fully on this path.
In that world view, "liberty" basically comes to mean: "I take your stuff." (and here's some slight of hand on how I've made it ok to do that, and why it's bad if it's the guvmint' that does that instead)
"Ethics violations" is as far as it goes. We would need a radical overhaul of the legal system, but how can you do that when the patients run the asylum?
The statute of limitations gives the next administration a year to indict her.
This admin is full of corruption, but acting as if one side is against corruption is laughable.
Clinton Foundation? Burisma?
every appointment is doing some sort of grift
How much market manipulation in every tweet threatening to double or delay tarrifs, launch or delay attacks on Iran?
Does MAGA want to somehow forget this term started with a multibillion dollar Trump shitcoin rugpull?
It's fucking disgusting how naked the corruption has been from the criminal Trump family and admin.
All countries can be corrupt. What a lot of African countries unfortunately lack is the strong institutions that make establishing corruption regimes more difficult. There are plenty of examples of corruption in about any country you’d care to study; no people is better than the others.
The USA used to boast about "bringing democracy and freedom", while in reality it was never more than a single election away from being ruled by an unchecked God-Emperor dictator - and that could have been done with only 21% of the population voting for him!
Turns out concepts like the Trias Politica only work when the powers are truly independent, who would have thought...
That doesn't, in itself, require corruption. But Trump clearly signaled that corruption would be overlooked so long as it was convenient for his admin (very similar to the Putin-oligarch model).
When you had Lutnick and Bessent and Anthropic and OpenAI explicitly making arguments in the other direction... And e.g. Anthropic's obscene IPO and their success potentially undermined by Chinese (or other, EU etc) open models... Huang's defense of open weights starts to look like outright "disloyalty" in a way the Trump regime has punished heavily in the past.
And given the shift in power after the midterms they may have wanted to execute on this now before they lose control of congress.
So, given climate change: absolutely antithetical to the broader interests of the population and explicitly short-termist.
In reality they were trying to protect American capital, and trying to expand its global imperialist influence through violence. If American investments were at risk due to democracies electing left-wing leaders, they would happily stage a coup to put an investor-friendly religious extremist dictator in place - which of course couldn't possibly backfire...
Meanwhile they're making business and political moves trans-nationally behind the scenes to support their own wealth and power.
Notably those linkages they're making have nothing to do with the "classic" G7 neo-liberal trading alliances and consensus and everything to do mostly with petroleum extraction and real estate, and the entities they control.
It's all just "might makes right" shit.
So, nary a speedbump to China renting all the Blackwell compute they want, but of course at rental prices. What I see is standard American rent-seeking but scaled to nation-state levels. Scummy, but again them's the _rules_.
Huang and the nVidia board were the ones who (knowingly? allegedly?) allowed their products to actually be smuggled into mainland China via China-controlled asian datacenters. That's a line being crossed - maybe criminal, let's see what happens.
The Lutnick focus in the article is just politics and Epstein obsession. I'm not saying the obsession isn't warranted, and the admin just seems to beg the scrutiny with their choices and appointments.
It's the damnedest thing how they keep everyone talking about Epstein, and in Lutnick's case 9/11 well beyond the normal shelf life of regular news stories. I wonder what the plan is there?
And they can use anti China narratives against him, even if he was born in Taiwan and lived in America for most of his adult life. Racism is at the core of Trump's ideology along with corruption.
Most of America has questionable morals nowadays.
Everyone wants to be rich!
Being a builder is positive-sum and we should be happy when people who build new and helpful things profit from it.