Given a matrix $X \in \mathbb{R}^{m \times n},$ then the **spectral** norm is defined by $$\left \| X\right\| := \max\limits_{i \in \{1, \dots, \min\{m,n\}\} }\sigma_i (X)$$ whereas the **nuclear** norm is defined by $$\left \| X \right \|_* := \sum\limits_{i=1}^ {\min\{m,n\}} \sigma_i (X)$$ It is a well-known fact that [the dual norm of the spectral norm is the nuclear norm][1]. This implies that $$\|M\| = \sup_{\|X\|_*\leq 1} \langle M, X \rangle$$ where the inner product is defined by $\langle A, B \rangle := \mathop{\textrm{Tr}}(A^TB)$. Given a matrix $M \in \mathbb{R}^{n \times n},$ how to find a matrix $X^*$ such that the following holds? $$ X^* \in \arg\sup_{\|X\|_*\leq 1} \langle M, X \rangle$$ [1]: https://math.stackexchange.com/q/1158798