Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Friday, 13 November, that four parts of the administration wanted Nvidia customer Megaspeed on the Commerce Department’s Entity List: “Treasury, War, USTR and State, they were in favor of putting Megaspeed on the entity list for months.” The decision is not Treasury’s, Bessent said in the CNBC interview: “Commerce, BIS, has the pen. And you will have to ask them about their internal processes.”
The list Bessent described has not grown in more than a year. The Federal Register shows no Bureau of Industry and Security rule adding any entity to the Entity List since 9 October 2025, 400 days before 13 November by our count, and the three Entity List rules published since then only removed an entity or addresses. Megaspeed has no entry in the eCFR copy of the list current to 10 November.
Business Pill · GPUs Explained
An evergreen Business Engineer explainer on why AI runs on GPUs, the export-controlled chips at the centre of the Entity List question. It teaches the general idea only and does not discuss the interview.
The key insight: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC that Treasury, War, the US Trade Representative and State favoured putting Megaspeed on the Entity List for months but that Commerce “has the pen”; the Federal Register shows no entity added to that list in 400 days, by our count.
CNBC’s anchors asked about reported tension between Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick over why Megaspeed had not been placed on the Entity List, and whether Treasury could have acted. Bessent began: “Well, I can tell you there was coordination.” The Treasury Secretary then named Treasury, War, the US Trade Representative and State as the departments in favour.
Asked whether Bessent was frustrated by potential delays and by how export controls have been enforced, the Treasury Secretary answered: “I am frustrated when President Trump made it very clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s.” “And so any leakage is very frustrating, because it hurts our great companies in the AI race, gives the Chinese an advantage.”
Asked whether Treasury could act on its own through the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Bessent said “the OFAC has no control over the things like this in terms of exports. This is a BIS decision, and perhaps the FTC could put something on their restrictive list.” Reuters, in its report on the interview, rendered FTC as the Federal Trade Commission.
On the reported Situation Room exchange, Bessent said “we don’t repeat conversations in the Situation Room.” Pressed on whether Commerce should act now, the reply was: “I’m not going to say if I were Secretary of Commerce.” Speaking as Treasury Secretary, Bessent added that “Treasury and my deputy has been pushing for this for months at the deputies level.”
Bureau of Industry and Security Entity List rules in the Federal Register since the last rule adding entities, published 9 October 2025. The three later rules removed an entity or addresses. The 400-day count to 13 November 2026 is ours; Megaspeed has no entry in the eCFR copy of the list current to 10 November 2026.
In a second clip CNBC published from the same interview, Bessent was asked whether higher-level chips had reached China through Megaspeed: “I think that there is a lot of leakage in the system, and we are constantly working to close that down.” Bessent also said: “The real story here should be, did Nvidia know their client? And was there a robust effort at Nvidia to make sure that there was no leakage and that they were selling to what were obviously pass-through shell companies?”
Bessent added: “And I think it’s important that anyone at the company there be held accountable for that.”
What Commerce and the White House Have Said
A Commerce Department spokeswoman told CNBC on Wednesday that Bessent and Lutnick had “no such conversation” in the Situation Room, CNBC reported. Axios said on Friday that the Commerce Department did not immediately respond to its request for comment on Bessent’s remarks, and CNN said it had reached out to the department.
The White House issued a statement on Thursday, before Bessent’s comments, saying President Trump “maintains complete confidence in the secretary”, CNN reported. CNN also reported, citing people familiar with the conversations, that some of the president’s advisers have begun discussing whether Lutnick should be dismissed, and that sources said it was unclear what the president might do.
We searched the Federal Register for Bureau of Industry and Security documents on the Entity List. The last rule adding entities was published on 9 October 2025. Since then, a 12 November 2025 rule removed one entity and six aliases, and two rules on 24 August 2026 removed one entity and two addresses. On 9 November 2026, the bureau extended the suspension of its rule extending end-user controls to affiliates of listed entities through 10 January 2027.
By our count, 13 November is day 400 without an addition. When Axios first reported the Situation Room exchange, we counted 398 days with no entity added.
What We Know About Megaspeed
Megaspeed is a Singapore-based company that builds AI data centres across Southeast Asia; the Wall Street Journal reported on 8 November that it was spun off from a Chinese company in 2023, and Bloomberg described it in December 2025 as the single largest Southeast Asian buyer of Nvidia chips. The Journal reported that US agencies have been investigating the company for more than a year.
Megaspeed has denied wrongdoing and calls itself “a compliant and legitimate company” in a statement on its website; our explainer on Megaspeed has the record.
Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said on 12 November that Megaspeed remains under police investigation together with six other individuals, as set out in our piece on the Singapore probe. Nvidia’s chief executive resigned on Thursday, CNBC reported; our report on the market reaction traces how investors priced the week.
The Structural Read
As we read it, the interview moves a dispute that Axios and CNN had described through unnamed sources into an on-the-record statement by a Cabinet secretary. Bessent named four departments in favour, said the decision belongs to the Bureau of Industry and Security, and said Treasury’s own sanctions office has no control over exports. That leaves one agency able to act, on a list that, by our count of Federal Register rules, has only lost names since 9 October 2025.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, CNBC Squawk Box, 13 November 2026
“Commerce, BIS, has the pen. And you will have to ask them about their internal processes.”
Three Implications
FOR COMMERCE Lutnick has agreed to appear voluntarily before the Senate Banking Committee, NBC News reported; the committee had asked for testimony on 10 December.
FOR MEGASPEED The company has denied wrongdoing, and Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said on 12 November that its police investigation is ongoing.
FOR NVIDIA’S CHINA SALES Bessent said President Trump made it clear that China should not receive any Nvidia chips above H100s.
The framework says of Layer 9, Governance, which covers export controls between nation-states: “The supercycle has a ceiling now, and the ceiling is political.”
As we read it, the CNBC interview shows where that ceiling sits for one Nvidia customer: in a listing decision that, on Bessent’s account, four departments supported and one bureau holds. The framework predates the interview and does not discuss Megaspeed.
Who Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC’s Squawk Box on 13 November 2026 favoured putting Megaspeed on the Entity List, and who decides, from our transcript of CNBC’s video. Megaspeed has no entry in the eCFR copy of the list current to 10 November 2026.
What Is Not Established
Bessent did not say that Megaspeed broke any rule, and no US agency has published a finding against the company in the material we read. Bessent did not say why Commerce has not acted. In the reports we read, Commerce had not answered Bessent’s remarks on the record by Friday afternoon. We could not confirm which agency Bessent meant by FTC, or which list. Bessent did not name the companies described as pass-through shell companies or say who at Nvidia should be held accountable, and no finding against Nvidia has been published in the material we read. Our transcripts cover the two segments CNBC published, of 3 minutes 29 seconds and 58 seconds, not the full interview.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on CNBC that Treasury, War, the US Trade Representative and State favoured putting Megaspeed on the Entity List for months, and that the decision rests with Commerce, which “has the pen”. Megaspeed is not on the list, and the Federal Register shows 400 days, by our count, since the Bureau of Industry and Security last added any entity to that list.
A note on sourcing. We downloaded the two Squawk Box segments CNBC published (3 minutes 29 seconds and 58 seconds) from CNBC’s own video pages and transcribed them ourselves; every Bessent quotation here comes from that transcript and matches CNBC’s and Reuters’ printed quotes where they overlap. We first saw a shorter cut of the interview relayed in a post on X and used it only as a lead. The Commerce Department’s and White House’s positions come from CNBC, Axios and CNN as attributed.
The Entity List record is from our search of the Federal Register and the eCFR on 13 November; the 400-day count is ours. Facts about Megaspeed come from the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Megaspeed’s own statement and Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs, as reported in our earlier pieces. We did not contact Treasury, Commerce or Megaspeed.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
