Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Scandal: Chips, Spies and Strategic Overreaction

Detailed summary

The spy scandal that is roiling the U.S., China and Taiwan—did Jensen Huang, the CEO of a pivotal U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia, have an affair with a Chinese woman, Alice…

Here, for Newsweek Members, is the latest edition of China Decoded in full:

The spy scandal that is roiling the U.S., China and Taiwan—did Jensen Huang, the CEO of a pivotal U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia, have an affair with a Chinese woman, Alice Huang (note: he’s only admitted he had an affair, not with whom) and was she an agent of some description for China’s Ministry of State Security—will run for a long time.

In our story today we looked at what exactly Ms. Huang might be, apart from a businesswoman. It’s unclear. If there’s one thing intelligence analysts hate, it’s rumor presented as fact. That’s only sensible, and we, too, are keeping an open mind.

But are we sure that knowledge about the “special” ties between Mr. Huang and Ms. Huang had been talked and published about in the U.S. for a year or so, in the mainstream media, Chinese-language social media, and in investment reports by people who said they were shorting Nvidia due to its risky China policies. Those are an almost indecent eagerness to export national security-sensitive chips to China amid strained relations.

Photographs of the alleged affair partner and possible MSS agent or asset in a pink sleeveless dress, sometimes holding a red wine glass, sometimes touching an apparently keen Mr. Huang, are whizzing around the world. People in China are even rushing to buy that pink dress. Why now?

Black T-shirted Jensen Huang with his back to the camera and Alice Huang (no relation):

Might there be a lot more to the story, some very experienced technology and intelligence analysts are asking? Perhaps it’s not as “simple” as it’s being presented (important chips, troubling reach into the U.S. president’s innermost circle, etc.)

We need to know more about the timeline—what the CIA and other intelligence community members knew, who knew it and when.

What about that IC report that went to President Donald Trump (he does not seem to have acted on it)?

Opening of the article, excerpted from Newsweek. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.