It would not surprisse me if a presidential pardon was already lined up for Huang (and has been arranged for a while), and that him getting the GPU chips to China was done for this administration as a bagaining chip for some back-room deal with Xi/China.

After all, the administration has shown its willingness to ignore its own sanctions on Russia by taking in Russian oil when they are trying to lower gas prices to win an election. No doubt they would also ignore any embargos on advanced AI chips to China if they thought they could get away with some kind of "deal", or just plain old off-the-books graft.

This is exactly what Democrats will be investigating starting in January, and why the administration suggested that investigating them is somehow "criminal". So the administration is now painting the investigation of corruption and criminality as "criminal". These are dark times.