US officials believe Jensen Huang was romantically involved with the reported spy, Alice Huang.
The New York Times has revealed more details about China’s efforts to spy on NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. In late October, the publication reported that China used Alice Huang, an executive at Singapore data center firm Megaspeed, to spy on the NVIDIA CEO. Now, the publication has revealed that it was China’s Ministry of State Security, the country’s main intelligence agency and its CIA counterpart, that recruited Alice Huang to gather information on him.
According to The Times, her recruitment was part of the country’s efforts to learn more about the USA’s artificial intelligence plans. In addition, China was reportedly hoping that she could influence the executive to get the US government’s permission to ship its more advanced chips to the country. As the CEO of the world’s top AI chip producer, Jensen Huang has the ability to sway President Trump’s decisions. He was, after all, the one who convinced President Trump to sell some chip models to China.
The Financial Times has also reported that US officials believe Jensen Huang was romantically involved with Alice Huang, based on information provided by American intelligence. Trump, along with select American officials, were notified about it before his trip to Beijing earlier this year with NVIDIA’s CEO and Elon Musk. The president reportedly took no action about that information, and Jensen Huang wasn’t briefed that he was being targeted by the Chinese government.
Megaspeed was a huge NVIDIA customer and had purchased billions’ worth of AI chips from the company. It’s been building data centers in Southeast Asia and then renting out the computing power to Alibaba, giving the Chinese company access to advanced NVIDIA chips that are banned in its native country. The Fincancial Times says it was also implicated in a scheme to smuggle advanced AI chips into China, but NVIDIA found no evidence of wrongdoing in an internal investigation.
