~~ recommended by newestbeginning ~~
 |
On Sunday, Jensen Huang, the cofounder and chief executive of Nvidia, admitted to his company’s board that he had been intimate with a business executive who U.S. intelligence officials had determined was working for Chinese intelligence.¹
The man running the most important chip company in the artificial intelligence race, a man who flew to Beijing on Air Force One and sat at the head table with Xi Jinping at the White House, carried on a secret relationship with a woman American spy agencies concluded was feeding information straight to Beijing.
I came across this extremely serious and disturbing story Sunday night through the reporting of Tripp Mickle, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Julian E. Barnes and Ana Swanson of The New York Times, and they deserve full credit for dragging it into the daylight. I’m using this post as my own opportunity to take this conversation down a slightly different path that focuses on AI safety, national security and Trump’s complete indifference to putting America’s best national security interest over what will probably turn out to be relationships and business deals designed to make him more money.
To get started, I want to quickly walk you through the facts first. After that, I want to talk about your safety, because the AI industry convinced Donald Trump that it would do just fine monitoring itself on security and safety, and this scandal shows you exactly what that promise is worth.
What Jensen Huang Told His Company
The relationship became a U.S. government concern after surveillance revealed that the woman was feeding information directly to Beijing. That alarmed officials for an obvious reason. Jensen Huang is one of the most important figures in the AI revolution and an influential ally of Trump.
In a message to the company, Huang apologized. “I was unfaithful to my wife,” he said. “My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.”
Now let me be clear. This post isn’t about someone having an affair. There are too many other important things to talk about than infidelity. No, it’s about Huang being compromised by a Chinese spy and placing America’s national security at risk. It’s also about Trump not giving a damn.
Think I’m exaggerating? Keep reading.
First let’s start with Nvidia’s board of directors. It said it had “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised,” and it promised that “the board’s inquiry will examine all available information.”
Let me jump in right here.
How many people in your business or company have been sleeping with Chinese spies? It’s not normal. Everyone, and I mean everyone should be concerned.
But no biggie. The board added that Huang “fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it,” and it said it has confidence in him and his leadership team. A committee of independent board members will run the investigation. What the board says it does not know, it now plans to find out.
Here is the part that should make you sit up. Despite all of this Jensen Huang will keep running Nvidia during the investigation. A company representative told reporters, “Jensen is committed to continuing to lead Nvidia as C.E.O. without interruption.”
So let’s summarize. The man who was compromised by a Chinese spy and who is under investigation, stays in charge of the company whose board is investigating him. In a courtroom, we would call that a conflict of interest, and any judge in America would spot it from the back row of the gallery.
The Chip Buyer From Singapore
Public scrutiny started last month, when The New York Times reported that American intelligence agencies had found Jensen Huang had grown close to a Chinese citizen and chip buyer who U.S. officials concluded was gathering intelligence for Beijing. That woman goes by Alice Huang, and she also goes by Huang Le. She’s a top executive at Megaspeed, a data center company based in Singapore that grew into one of Nvidia’s biggest customers in Southeast Asia.
Megaspeed’s sister company in Malaysia bought at least $4.8 billion worth of advanced AI equipment built with Nvidia chips and technology between June 2024 and February 2026. Those chips are the engines of artificial intelligence, and the United States restricts which of them go to China because whoever controls the most advanced chips controls the future of AI, from the paychecks in your town to the weapons systems on the battlefield.
The Commerce Department has investigated Megaspeed since late 2024 over whether it was helping China get around American export limits, and this year the case moved to the Justice Department. You know, the same DOJ that prosecutes people who post seashells on Instagram and Olympic athletes who put their hand in the Lincoln Memorial Reflection pond.
In any case, when a U.S. official visited a Megaspeed data center in Malaysia, the official found Nvidia equipment still packed in its boxes. Data centers plug their machines in and run them, so a room full of sealed boxes looks like a temporary storage unit, and it raised the suspicion that the hardware was headed somewhere else. It’s pretty obvious that this kind of conduct gives Chinese firms a back door to restricted American AI technology without importing a single chip.
Follow the money and it gets worse. Alice Huang belongs to a network of companies and investors clustered around Shanghai and Zhejiang province. That network has a financial link to the Chinese military establishment through an investment in a cybersecurity subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group, a state company and one of China’s largest makers of military technology.
The New York Times reported last year that the Commerce Department was investigating whether Megaspeed was helping China get restricted AI chips. Megaspeed and its affiliates kept buying Nvidia products this year, often through middlemen, and Nvidia still lists Megaspeed as a cloud partner. That company, the one with the boxes still taped shut in Malaysia, Nvidia kept on its partner list. Trump was told about all of the details and did nothing.
Inside Beijing’s Operation
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that China’s top civilian spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, recruited Alice Huang to gather information on Jensen Huang. Collecting secrets was only the first goal. The Ministry also wanted to use the relationship to sway Nvidia’s executive decisions and push the company toward looser export rules so its most restricted, most advanced AI chips could reach the Chinese market.
American agencies placed Alice Huang under close electronic surveillance, and during that monitoring, investigators intercepted a series of communications between her and an American citizen who turned out to be Jensen Huang. Those intercepts became the basis of a highly classified memo describing an intimate relationship between the head of America’s most important chip company and a woman Beijing’s spy agency had recruited to gather information on him and to steer the decisions he makes at Nvidia. Spies have run this play forever.
Air Force One, Then the Head Table
Last spring, Trump flew to Beijing for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Jensen Huang was part of the trip along with other big tech names like Tesla’s Elon Musk.
The timing tells you everything. Shortly before that trip, a highly classified memo describing the relationship between Jensen Huang and Alice Huang circulated among a small group of senior administration officials, and Trump, who had been briefed on her months earlier. It must not have raised concerns because in the end, the most important chip executive in America rode to Beijing on Air Force One with a classified spy memo trailing behind him.
A few months later, Chinese President Xi came to Washington for a high stakes summit with Trump, and Jensen Huang sat down with the Chinese leader again. On September 24, 2026, Huang and his wife, Lori, attended the lavish White House state dinner Trump hosted for Xi. Huang shared the head table with the two presidents, their wives, Elon Musk, AMD’s Lisa Su and Apple’s Tim Cook. Sam Altman of OpenAI, Sundar Pichai of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and other American tech leaders attended too.
Trump Knew
As mentioned above, before the spring trip, Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a highly classified memo, built on electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, warning senior administration officials about her intimate relationship with Jensen Huang. The Commerce Department had been investigating Megaspeed since late 2024 over whether it helped China get around export bans. Trump got the briefings. He chose not to act.
At the time Trump was first briefed, officials did not believe Jensen Huang knew what Alice Huang was doing, and the government has never given Huang a defensive briefing, the warning counterintelligence officials sometimes give a person a foreign spy service is targeting. Nobody warned Huang. About a year ago, Trump was told the intelligence community was electronically surveilling Alice Huang, and on Sunday he said he has no regrets about doing nothing.
This Sunday evening, Trump defended Huang to reporters. Asked whether he would bring Huang on his upcoming trip to Asia, where he is expected to meet Xi again, Trump said he did not know and then said he would take him. “I haven’t heard he’s done anything wrong,” Trump said. “He dealt with somebody,” he added, before brushing it off with “so does everybody else.” He admitted he had not spoken to Huang about the situation. He called Huang “an honorable guy” and said Huang had “done an amazing job for our country.” When asked if Huang should stay on as Nvidia’s chief executive, Trump said, “I think so. Oh yes, sure.”
Zero concerns.
Really?
Everybody else does not run the company that builds the chips American AI runs on, and everybody else does not sit at the head table of a White House state dinner beside the leader of the same country those spy agencies were warning about. When the president hears a suspected Chinese spy got close to America’s top chip boss and shrugs, the failure starts in the Oval Office.
So Much for Policing Themselves
The AI CEOs convinced Trump they would do fine monitoring themselves on AI security and safety. Trust us, they said. On September 29, 2026, five days after that state dinner, Trump gathered them at the White House, and Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and others signed a voluntary accord to police themselves. Trump called it “morally binding” and told reporters the companies understand they have to self-police. Critics pointed out the obvious. The companies wrote the rules and pick their own auditors, and nothing in the deal carries a legal penalty. The lawyer writing this post is telling you that the document they signed and which Trump called “morally binding” has no legal significance or impact whatsoever. It’s meaningless under the law.
The chief executive of the most important AI chip company in America cheated on his wife with a woman U.S. intelligence concluded had been recruited by China’s spy agency. This same chief executive kept Megaspeed on Nvidia’s partner list after reports that federal investigators were looking at whether it helped China get restricted chips (remember the unopened boxes).
This same chief executive fly to Beijing on Air Force One after a classified memo about that relationship had already circulated among senior officials, and then took a seat at the head table beside Xi Jinping. This is the man, and this is the company, we are supposed to trust to take care of business. Hell, the company wasn’t even keeping track of who its own CEO was sleeping with.
AI safety is national security now. The chips Nvidia builds drive the AI systems that will help run our power grids and our hospitals, and the companies building those systems answer to almost nobody. A foreign spy agency needed one relationship to get within arm’s reach of the man at the top of that chain.
A company that has no idea who its CEO is sleeping with has no business policing the safety of artificial intelligence. A president who rolls his eyes while saying no big deal after learning about all of this has no business running this country.
All Eyes on November 18
Congress has taken notice. The Republican chairmen of three House committees, including Intelligence and Foreign Affairs, have asked Jensen Huang to give their members a joint, closed session briefing on November 18, 2026, about his dealings with Alice Huang and Nvidia’s safeguards against espionage. The request is voluntary (everything is voluntary with this Republican Congress), and as of this writing Huang has not said whether he will show up.
What should be happening is Huang should be Subpoenaed and brought in to testify under oath. every detail of the relationship, every communication, every document, and every phone conversation needs to be discovered, reviewed, and discussed in detail. Many of you may not know this, but American executives are compromised all the time by foreign bad actors. Believe it or not, this isn’t that unusual, but what is unusual is this administration looking the other way and letting it continue for so long.
The American people deserve to hear in public what our lawmakers learn about how close Beijing got to the most important chip company in the country and how much the White House knew before that Beijing trip ever happened.
Your Move
This is your fight. contact your elected representatives in Congress, by phone (202-224-3121), by email, at a town hall or wherever you reach them, with a clear demand that Huang answer these questions in public and under oath. Tell them you also want to know what Trump and his administration knew and when. Morally binding agreements don’t bind anyone at all. So demand real, independent oversight of AI security written into law, run by people who answer to the public and to nobody’s business partner.
Then send this to the one person in your life who still believes these companies will keep us safe on their own, because after reading this story, the next time a foreign spy gets this close to the people building America’s future, apparently the only thing standing in the way will be how loudly you spoke up today.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
1 It is estimated that Nvidia holds about 81% of the AI data center chip market in 2026, with AMD second at roughly 10% and custom chips from the big cloud companies (Google, Amazon and others) at about 5%. Other estimates range from about 70% to 90%, depending on whether the measure is revenue or units and what qualifies as an accelerator.
No comments:
Post a Comment