How a sex scandal at Nvidia is putting pressure on the White House

Detailed summary

Jensen Huang's personal life may have triggered the crisis, but the questions now reach into the White House itself.

The Nvidia boss was one of the few business leaders with direct access to the US president. He had met Trump repeatedly, travelled with him to Britain and, in May, joined him on Air Force One for his trip to China.

Jensen Huang wasn't just another tech billionaire seeking the president's ear. He had become an important voice in one of the biggest arguments inside the administration: how much of America's most advanced technology should be allowed to reach China.

Nvidia makes the chips that power the AI revolution. Washington has restricted exports of its most advanced processors to China since 2022, believing they could help Beijing develop its military and technological capabilities.

But enforcing those restrictions is difficult. Chips can be bought legally by customers in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia and then diverted to China. Chinese companies can also rent access to computing power through data centres outside the country.

Jensen Huang has long argued that the restrictions are counterproductive. They shut Nvidia out of a huge market and encourage Chinese companies to develop their own alternatives. Trump appeared sympathetic to this view, allowing Nvidia to resume sales of certain chips to China last year in return for a share of the revenue, although its most advanced Blackwell chips remain off limits.

The allegations surrounding Jensen Huang's reported affair with Alice Huang, of no relation but a former executive at Singapore-based company Megaspeed, have raised the possibility that a foreign intelligence operation was targeting not just a powerful businessman, but someone with unusually close access to the American president.

US intelligence reportedly suspects Alice Huang of having links to Chinese intelligence. Beijing has rejected the allegations. Nvidia's board says it has no reason to believe company secrets or national security were compromised.

His department was responsible for controlling exports of sensitive American technology.

On Thursday…

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