‘The easiest way to penetrate a billion-dollar company’: Ex-FBI operative on how spies target CEOs

Resumen detallado

“Sometimes the easiest way to penetrate a billion-dollar company is to get close to the person running it,” says Eric O’Neill.

Jensen Huang’s exit from Nvidia has put a rarely discussed risk in plain view: for a CEO, a new business contact or a budding romance may come from someone more interested in the company’s secrets.

“Sometimes the easiest way to penetrate a billion-dollar company is to get close to the person running it,” Eric O’Neill, a former FBI counterintelligence operative, told Fortune.

For O’Neill, protecting executives should include teaching them to recognize manipulation—and giving others a way to intervene when the boss won’t listen.

Huang stepped down Thursday as president, CEO, and a board member of Nvidia, No. 16 on the 2026 Fortune 500, amid scrutiny of his relationship with a woman suspected of spying for China. The company named chief financial officer Colette Kress interim CEO while its board searches for a permanent successor.

In a message to employees Sunday, Huang acknowledged being unfaithful to his wife and said he would cooperate with the board’s investigation. The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials believed Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, had been recruited by China’s intelligence service. The Chinese government has denied the allegations.

Nvidia’s board said Sunday that it had no reason to believe company secrets or national security had been compromised, but that its independent investigation, led by a committee of independent directors, would examine all available information. The company has lost about $450 billion in market value since Huang’s admission.

O’Neill, whose undercover work helped catch FBI spy Robert Hanssen, founded NeXasure AI and wrote Spies, Lies, and Cybercrime. He said an intelligence-gathering attempt often looks, at first, like an ordinary relationship.

He said an approach rarely begins with someone asking an executive to hand over company secrets. It may start at a conference, through a business introduction, over drinks, or even on a dating app.

Romance can speed things up.

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