Rob Wiblin: So Jensen was having an affair with a customer, who also happened to be a Chinese spy, for months. Lied to the board. Lied to journalists.
Meanwhile pushing to sell maximum of cutting edge AI chips to China against advice of ~entire natsec community. Can’t make this shit up.
Adam Chalmers: If your husband is going to cheat on you, ideally it’s with a spy. If your husband cheats with some random girl at a party, ouch. If your husband is ensnared by the resources of the entire Chinese state apparatus + professional seducers… you got dealt a bad hand.
If some random dad at the daycare is better at making my wife laugh, I’d feel a bit jealous. If John Mulaney was at our daycare, understandable that she’d laugh more at his jokes. He’s a top professional. Not reasonable to compare myself to him.
I would be very surprised if Jensen Huang knew he was being compromised by a Chinese agent. If you are Jensen Huang and you enter into a relationship with Alice Huang your prior on ‘she is functionally a spy’ should be very high, but presumably this was not a case of Jensen Huang thinking so clearly.
In Hindsight There Were Some Hints
There was a deleted tweet by Roon saying that rumors of this were circulating in Silicon Valley for a while.
And it’s not like the question hadn’t been asked. She did not even have to be a spy or for there to have been an affair. This was obviously ‘Nvidia selling chips to China in a way that endangers national security.’ Also a lot of people thought she was a spy.
Byron Wan (October 9, 2025): Is Huang Xiaole (黄小乐) aka Alice Huang a 燕子 working for the CCP?
Or, from Culper’s short position report on Nvidia back in May:
CEO Huang has walked alongside Megaspeed at every step, and seems to have a close relationship with Megaspeed’s Alice Huang. They partied together in June 2024 – same month as the Apex/Alibaba pledge, then dined together in May 2025 – just after U.S. trade restrictions.
Per a current Megaspeed employee, “every single time” Nvidia’s CEO visits their facility, Alibaba reps come too. One former NVDA employee told us that internally, Nvidia employees speculated as to the seemingly special nature of the relationship with Jensen.
Did Jensen Huang know?
WIRED: SCOOP: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang began working with a crisis communications firm known for handling public scandals a year before admitting to an extramarital affair with a woman suspected by US intelligence of being a Chinese spy.
The firm, Heller, handles various corporate communications and issues for its clients. It has handled Huang’s behind-the-scenes communications since at least October 2025, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Risa Heller, the firm’s founder, has built a reputation as a fixer for powerful men facing allegations of sexual misconduct and other personal controversies, according to a 2023 New York Magazine profile.
The date on the Tweet that opens this section is October 9. Trump was informed in October 2025. It is not a great leap to ask if Jensen Huang knew. If he knew? Oh boy.
Trump Knew And Did Nothing and Still ‘Backs’ Jensen Huang
One of those people who was told Alice Huang was a presumed Chinese spy and in a relationship with Jensen Huang?
Ana-Maria Stanciuc (TNW | Nvidia): US officials told Trump in October 2025 that Alice Huang had a relationship with Huang and was presumed to be a spy, according to the Times. He said he had no regrets about not acting on that intelligence.
Seriously, um, guys, what the actual fuck? The head of the most valuable company in the world, that is in charge of our most strategic asset, who has to handle allocation of that asset, is in a romantic relationship with a presumed Chinese spy whose company is under investigation for chip smuggling and is buying billions of dollars in chips.
And your response is to do nothing?
Not warn Jensen Huang. Not try to feed him counterintelligence. Not investigate Megaspeed. Indeed allow Jensen Huang’s general council to quash the investigation into Megaspeed. Do nothing whatsoever. For a year. And then have no regrets about not acting on that intelligence.
Two months after Trump was warned about Alice Huang, Trump agreed with Nvidia to allow exporting of H200s to China with a 25% government cut. It doesn’t look good.
Even now, Trump is ‘backing’ Jensen Huang and thinks Jensen did nothing wrong. Which given Trump’s own history is not especially surprising. Nor is it surprising he would call Jensen Huang a ‘fine person.’
Ana-Maria Stanciuc (TNW | Nvidia): President Donald Trump defended Huang on Sunday evening. He told reporters that Huang should stay on as chief executive. He also said he would take Huang on his upcoming trip to China, the Times reported.
“I haven’t heard he’s done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else,” Trump said.
Look. I try to avoid going there, but if Trump thinks ‘having an affair with a Chinese spy while being CEO of Nvidia’ does not count as ‘doing anything wrong’ then one must ask what he thinks about such actions if you are President of the United States.
Reconsidering Jensen Huang’s Arguments Against Export Controls
All of this puts Jensen Huang’s arguments against export controls in a new light. My analysis of Jensen Huang’s podcast with Dwarkesh Patel emphasized that Huang’s arguments about this were quite poor and highly motivated. Take that to another level.
Steven Adler: Dwarkesh: Why would we want to sell China the materials for a serious cyberweapon? It’s like selling them nukes with a casing that says ‘made by Boeing’ and claiming that’s good for the US
Jensen: Comparing AI to nukes is lunacy. Enriched uranium is a lousy analogy. It’s an illogical analogy. What we have to recognize is that AI is a five-layered cake.
Less than a month ago he was still at it, arguing that our export controls were a mistake, because China has more AI researchers than any other market. Presumably we need to ensure they use American compute to compete with us.
One can also reconsider Jensen Huang’s arguments against AI safety. He was having an affair with a Chinese spy, and he said AI safety concerns were fake.
Jensen Huang Lied About the Affair
I mean, yes, of course Jensen Huang lied about the affair. When you are married and you are having an affair with a business associate to whom you are selling billions in chips, you lie. You have your company spokesperson lie. That’s how this works.
Shakeel: Note that Nvidia’s spokesman John Rizzo has put out multiple statements in recent weeks that we now know are false. Unclear, of course, if he believed them to be true at the time.
Jensen himself directly lied to Bloomberg’s @ianmking and @tsgiles , too.
New York Times: Nvidia said the company that employed Ms. Huang, Megaspeed, was like any other regional customer and that it had previously investigated and debunked claims the Singaporean company was smuggling chips to China. John Rizzo, a spokesman for Nvidia, said: “Jensen’s interactions with Ms. Huang are not unusual or unexpected. Meetings with customers are part of a C.E.O.’s job; Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year.”
… Mr. Rizzo has maintained that Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were “not unusual” and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers.
Bloomberg UK: … In the interview, Huang said that his interactions with her were typical of those with Chinese customers and executives. She’s no longer with Megaspeed, he said.
“Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” Huang said. The CEO said he hadn’t been informed by the US government of its suspicions about Huang Le.
Jensen Huang and His AI Are Sorry, Everyone
It is good that Jensen Huang took responsibility. It is not so good there were ten days of denials before he admitted it, and that he did not name Alice Huang. He has not yet fully come clean.
The first thing that jumps out is that he tries to frame this as mostly a family matter, apologizing primarily to his wife and children as if this was an ordinary affair. Worries about the trust of the board come second, and the risk to national security is treated as almost an afterthought.
One comes away thinking this might indeed be a Wife Guy who truly loves his family, and gets less of an impression that he actually cares about national security, reinforcing the impression created by all of his previous words and deeds.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA’s Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
Jensen
There’s also the issue of how formalized and stilted it sounds. This is because Jensen Huang did not write the majority of the letter. Yes, he let an AI write his apology.
Jerusalem (I confirmed this result): No way he AI-generated his “sorry for cheating on my wife with a Chinese spy” letter.
Jerusalem: THIS is the part he AI generated??? Incredible.
Steven Adler: Remarkably poor judgment from NVIDIA’s CEO here.
Is there a role for AI in helping people express themselves more efficiently and clearly? Sure, absolutely. But I think that time and place probably isn’t ‘expressing heartfelt contrition and showing that I know I did something wrong.’
The CEO of The World’s Largest Chipmaker Having an Affair With a Chinese Spy and Then Selling Them Chips is a Huge Deal, Actually
It is hard to be more tone deaf than to try and pretend otherwise.
Bill Ackman: An alert: @JensenHuang is human. And he is an incredible human. Even incredible humans make mistakes. He takes full responsibility as he should. We should all support him and his family. Onward.
After getting properly roasted Ackman tried to clarify.
I am not suggesting he gets a free pass. If indeed this is more than an affair, then it is an obviously a real problem. I like the guy. He has done a lot of good for the world and I hope the damage here is minimal. That is, I am hoping for a simple affair, not a risk to our national security.
She was a Chinese spy. So yes. It was more than an affair. It is not only a family matter.
We are all hoping that the damage was minimal, but the only reason to think this is that Jensen Huang might have intended to do all that damage either way.
Or we could see your Bill Ackman and raise you Nikita Bier.
Nikita Bier (Twitter Head of Product): The fact he only had one extramarital affair with a state asset after leading the greatest technological revolution in history is what impresses me. For anyone else that number would be double, even triple, digits.
Ugh, my girlfriend just got a trending notification about this post.
I am also not having it with anyone who says this is ‘philandering.’
Cheating on your wife would under ordinary circumstances indeed be really terrible, and also updates me quite a lot about how much I can trust you in other ways. You either have integrity or you don’t. You either keep your word, or you don’t.
EpiK: If a man cheats on his wife the odds of him fucking you over in business drastically increases
Samo Burja: The idea that Jensen Huang or Elon Musk aren’t good or responsible businessmen because they philander is so self-refuting only an American moralist could come up with it.
That does not mean that a cheater cannot be a successful or effective leader or founder or CEO in spite of this, or indeed even in order to get all the nookie (so you can take that GPU…). There are many such cases. You can’t trust them, but as Samo goes on to say you can’t trust most successful businessmen anyway.
That is not what happened here. Alice Huang was not ordinary cheating. Alice Huang was Jensen Huang having an affair with a major customer, who he knew was trying to buy billions in chips on behalf of China, and who was widely suspected of being a Chinese spy, who indeed turned out to be a Chinese spy.
If he was French, the cheating in and of itself would indeed not have been a big deal, but if she turns out to be a Chinese spy you sold billions in chips to? Yeah, whammy.
That is a huge deal. It is disqualifying. Period.
Those who are trying to tell you otherwise have a rather hostile agenda.
Ana Mostarac: The news about Jensen Huang just broke and within a few hours big accounts are urging us to forgive and forget. No serious person gives a shit that he cheated on his wife. That’s a private family matter.
What people do give a shit about is that he may have compromised America’s long term interests for a suspected Chinese intelligence asset, all due to his poor judgment and abysmal cogsec. In previous eras he would be facing penalties considered barbaric today.
If the tables were turned and a suspected American spy got involved with a Chinese CEO, you would have never heard from him again. He deserves all the scrutiny and then some.
Those who say things like ‘no one can explain why’ this endangers national security are being at best disingenuous and extremely dense. My default assumption is they are carrying water. This is not complicated.
Kelsey Piper: It’s not just the ‘no one can explain’, the whole thread is an effort to bury the crimes that were committed and pretend everyone is just talking about a random affair, and it’s by someone who cannot possibly have believed that was the case.
… Who among us doesn’t make innocent counting errors worth billions of dollars when making mandatory reports to the government?
1) NVIDIA CEO is in a relationship with a Chinese spy
2) Said Chinese spy worked for a company under investigation for smuggling banned chips to China
3) NVIDIA’s top lawyer is poking around the federal investigation of said Chinese spy’s company
Hearings!!! Now!!!
We Don’t Go There
I do accept ‘he was up against actual professional spies and an active operation to compromise him’ as a mitigating factor. That’s a tough spot.
I just want to say to anyone who says that: What the hell is wrong with you, no.
Kelsey Piper: Maybe this is just me but I’d find it way easier to weather a betrayal if everyone agrees that I was wronged than if people are floating ‘well, maybe that was fair, since you’re not hot.’
I don’t care what the details are, no, you do not do this, ever ever ever. Just stop.
PoliMath: I am unironically just sad about the Huang scandal. I liked him. He seemed like a really solid guy & a good CEO. We need more decent people to admire and it sucks to lose of Huang as one of those people.
Kelsey Piper: When I was in college, all of America’s richest and most powerful men were married to and apparently faithful to the mothers of their children and it has been kind of sad since then to watch Musk, Bezos, Gates, Huang all leave that group
… I’m not saying “the moderns invented cheating on your wife”, which is obviously false. I’m saying that when I honestly looked around, it seemed to me that by revealed preferences even men with infinite options stuck by the mothers of their children. It was quite a whitepill.
Yes, National Security Was Compromised, What Are You Even Talking About
Patrick McKenzie: FWIW I think the proper focus of attention is “Intentionally diverted X% of compute to China in a fashion designed to obscure this, in the interests of China and against that of U.S., while being blessed by individuals responsible for and/or influential in U.S. policy.”
There are parts of story that sell more newspapers/tweets, which also absolve people who made very bad decisions from those bad decisions, since they did not personally engage w/ spies.
I think this is one reason we’re being encouraged to focus on the affair, not governance.
The Nvidia board is trying to pretend otherwisepending their investigation, and is announcing its conclusion in advance. When you are doing a real investigation, your announcement does not sound like this. They are planning to try to bury this. They may not succeed, but they are damn well going to try.
Nvidia Newsroom: The NVIDIA Board is initiating an independent investigation in light of recent reporting that founder and CEO Jensen Huang has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.
A committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, will oversee the investigation.
The Board prioritizes U.S. national and economic security, which is paramount to the interests of NVIDIA and its shareholders.
While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information.
Jensen fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.
The Board has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team and will provide further updates as appropriate.
Alec Stapp: So, the current position of the NVIDIA board is that there’s “no reason to believe that national security was compromised” by Jensen Huang having an affair with a Chinese spy. wtf?
Zac Hill: Most spies I know in it for the steamy affair part and not the valuable secrets part, true.
Even if we had no idea how exactly national security was compromised, this is insane. When the CEO of the company in charge of your most strategic asset has an affair with a Chinese spy you should damn well assume national security was compromised, even if you don’t know exactly how.
If nothing else, one should assume a massive leak of intelligence. Jensen Huang had regular phone calls with Trump. Jensen and Alice Huang presumably talked. She could plausibly have had access to his phone or computer, or opportunity to use devices on them. He could also have been influenced in various ways without giving the game away. Most importantly, he is chip allocator in chief.
In this case, we have a pretty good idea of how national security was compromised. Well, part of how.
Nvidia Intervened To Halt an Investigation into Megaspeed
Culper: Nvidia vouches for Megaspeed – its largest SEA chip buyer, under U.S. and Singapore investigation – as having no Chinese ownership and free of diversion concerns. We uncovered documents, however, that suggest Megaspeed was financed by Alibaba through a Singapore shell company.
Megaspeed’s balance sheet exploded from $33M at year-end 2023 to $3.0B at year-end 2024, driven almost entirely by $2.9B in “refundable deposits received” from an un-named source. The same $2.9B was forwarded to subsidiaries like Speedmatrix.
At this point it is safe to presume that Megaspeed is CCP.
Ana Swanson and Devlin Barrett (NYTimes): Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
… The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee Would Like a Word
He is asked to appear on November 18.
Andrew Curran: Jensen Huang has been asked to appear before the chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence over ‘significant national security concerns.’
There’s going to be an investigation.
Samuel Hammond: Alice Huang was on the IC’s radar for awhile. There are almost certainly intercepts. A DOJ or Congressional investigation may also surface personal communications. We’re only just getting started.
Patrick McKenzie: One would have to have a very poor opinion of US IC to think a) it got scooped by a random short report and b) after that report was OSINT it did not quickly start asking questions which have easily accessible answers.
Some genres of those questions are not the kind which ordinarily get brought up in Congressional reports, but e.g. “Figure out how much time these two cell phones spend with each other. In what locations? At what hours of local day?” is child’s play, right.
He Would Plausibly Have Treated America as an Obstacle Anyway
Sleeping with a Chinese spy is not necessary to explain Jensen Huang treating America like an adversary in his quest to sell as many Nvidia chips as he can to China, including via places like Malaysia.
He might or might not have done that anyway, or done that to the same extent. My opinion of how unacceptable his actions are did not change all that much.
There are two distinct important scandals here.
Jensen Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy and then sold all those chips.
We did not stop Jensen Huang from selling all those chips.
On top of that, we have the synthesis:
We knew this was going on for a year, and the government allowed the affair to continue, without informing Jensen, and for Jensen Huang to continue advising and talking to President Trump, and to not cut off Megaspeed and allow the investigation to stall, and for Megaspeed to be kept off the Entity List.
The two distinct scandals are one thing. The synthesis is so much worse.
Chris McGuire: Good for Nvidia’s board for doing an investigation. But Jensen’s behavior is only half the story.
The biggest problem remains unaddressed: the Department of Commerce has enacted policies—at the encouragement of Jensen, and which the MSS reportedly sought as well—that allow China to continue to access the most advanced Nvidia chips, including via Megaspeed. @CommerceGov leadership knew that Jensen was sleeping with a Chinese spy and that Megaspeed was a Chinese cutout, but still actively opposed any policies to tighten export controls on Nvidia chips. Why?
Commerce could have blocked chip shipments to Megaspeed the moment it found out that it was run by a Chinese spy, but it did not. Commerce has also refused to enforce regulations—which ironically remain on the books—that would require exporters to apply for a license to ship large numbers of AI chips to untrusted entities in many countries, which would prevent China from using shell companies like Megaspeed to buy controlled chips. And Commerce has done nothing to cut off China’s remote access of controlled chips, or its ability to buy controlled chips in the United States.
Why is Commerce protecting Jensen and supporting his preferred policies even though it has known for months that Jensen was sleeping with a Chinese spy? Why is it STILL doing so?
Obviously Nvidia needs to take significant steps in its operations, security, and policy advocacy to ensure it takes national security concerns more seriously. But it is even more important that the Department of Commerce tighten up export controls to prevent things like this from ever happening again. It is utterly baffling that despite being privy to this information for months, they have not taken even the most basic actions to protect the country, such as cutting off a company that is literally run by Chinese spies from buying AI chips.
By the way, as of this writing, Nvidia STILL lists Megaspeed as a “regional cloud partner” on its website.
What China Wants
What her being a spy clarifies is that China wanted him to do this and pushed for it.
Peter Wildeford: Confirmed: Chinese intelligence recruited a spy to target Jensen Huang to “potentially influence the company to push for its most advanced chips to be made available to China.”
Chris McGuire: So now we know that the IC asses not only that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy, but also that her goal was to convince Jensen to push for loosening export controls that prevent its chips from being sold to China.
For anyone who still needs convincing that export controls support US leadership in AI, the best evidence is the fact that the MSS is actively trying to convince us to loosen them!
Also, Nvidia’s most advanced chips remain available to Megaspeed, the Singapore-based company that Alice Huang led and that is known to be a Chinese cutout. And for some reason, @BISgov refuses to cut them off.
Does the CCP want Nvidia’s chips? We kept hearing claims that the CCP did not want Nvidia’s chips. Whereas if your spies are going around trying to get Nvidia’s chips, I strongly believe that you want Nvidia’s chips quite a bit. The ambivalence is a combination of the quantities involved being too low to matter, and outright fake.
Samuel Hammond: Yes, this clarifies the CCP’s strategy quite a bit.
There had been a narrative that Chinese leadership favored restricting Nvidia imports to bolster their indigenous chipmakers. This never made much sense given SMIC’s production constraints and the enormous strategic value of compute.
We now know this was a bluff, presumably to mollify the party’s protectionist faction while confusing US policymakers into favoring looser controls overtime.
Meanwhile, China’s spy agency worked overtime to acquire billions in Nvidia GPUs for their tech champions via shell companies and smuggling operations, bringing in far more compute than they would’ve via H20/H200 licenses.
Who knows what else they got off Jensen. As I write this Megaspeed is still listed on Nvidia’s website as an enterprise partner.
Teortaxes: I mean, what was the limit again? 750K H200s?
I’m not sure they have smuggled much more than that, but it wouldn’t need to be a lot to clear that bar
Also the psyop story makes little sense, the people watching them aren’t the general public
Samuel Hammond: A tiny fraction of H200s have actually shipped
Teortaxes: yeah but that’s because they weren’t letting them in
I mean the limit that was stipulated by the US side
Samuel Hammond: That’s the point. The US is reviewing licenses case by case and they’re being approved in very small batches. It doesn’t cost China much to feign ambivalence.
Time to Resign?
Yes. If he will not resign, the board must remove him. If the board will not remove him, the United States Government should force him to step down. We have plenty of leverage over Nvidia, such as its export licenses, to force his resignation if necessary.
I realize that Nvidia has a weak board and Jensen Huang has no successor, and this will trigger a governance crisis. Tough. Jensen Huang is the one who chose to have a weak board and not to have a clear successor, and to have over 50 direct reports. A lot of that was almost certainly to intentionally make him harder to fire.
As I said above, having an affair with a major customer who is also a Chinese spy while running a company vital to the national interest, and misleading the public about this, is disqualifying. Period.
Dave Kasten: It is entirely possible (perhaps even likely!) that Jensen Huang is a victim, not a knowing agent run by this Chinese intelligence officer. But either way, he is compromised, and it is not tenable for him to remain in his role.
Samuel Hammond: Jensen has no choice but to resign. This goes beyond having an affair. His credibility is gone. A cloud of suspicion will forever follow him. There may even be criminal liability under ECRA. He must step aside for the sake of his family, his country, and his shareholders.
The board investigation shouldn’t stop at Jensen. While he deserves the most scrutiny for being compromised, the rot runs deeper. Nvidia’s entire leadership, legal and GA teams may need turning over.
Samuel Hammond: Jensen’s criminal exposure hinges on his degree of knowledge or conscious disregard of Megaspeed’s role in evading export controls.
It’s normally easy to feign ignorance, but there’s a small chance the broader investigation surfaces communications that establish his knowledge.
I am sorry, but if you sleep with a Chinese spy, even one who is not buying billions of dollars of your chips, then you can no longer be CEO of Nvidia, the company charged with America’s greatest strategic asset.
I wish him and his family well in navigating these times. He cannot stay CEO.
I would also say that in a sane civilization anyone in the government who knowingly let this go on for a year should be offering their resignation as well.
Jensen Huang had an affair with a spy. You can at least understand how that happened. The United States Government, on the other hand, knew about this for a year and sat on it. That blows my mind and is completely unacceptable.
If you think Jensen Huang is a victim here and did nothing wrong, and you don’t see an actionable way to exploit that you know what is happening, and you want to keep this quiet, I can understand trying to keep it quiet. But then you very obviously still need to tell Jensen Huang so he can break it off and you can avoid further damage.
The supposed argument is they wanted to avoid alerting Alice Huang. This is crazy. If he can’t be trusted not to alert her, how in hell are you letting him continue to have an affair with her and be CEO of Nvidia?
Failing to act on this intelligence was a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America.
Or, if you think Jensen Huang was not a victim here, then not acting is far worse.
Robin Hanson highlights a correct Robin Hanson-style question. Should boards be hiring hookers to try and seduce the CEO?
Shea Levy: Boards should start hiring their own hookers to seduce their execs. If it fails, great, you’ve got a good one. If it succeeds, nothing leaks and now you know what you’re dealing with and have leverage to boot.
And it’s fine if this becomes a known tactic, plenty of men who wouldn’t think twice about the possibility of betraying their country would think ten times before risking being caught by their friends on the board.
Space Pirate: “So you’re a white-hat hooker?”
“We prefer penetration tester.”
MixingMartialArts: Should do this to lower level employees too…maybe even unemployed folks. Can’t be too careful.
Once someone rises to the level of ‘they are going to be the target of intelligence operations’ and will inevitably get tempted then yes, presumably you should do this. Which means that a large percentage of those at the frontier labs would qualify.
Not that I expect the direct ‘single turn’ version of that to work so often. Jensen Huang is presumably not about to cheat with some random hot woman who tries to seduce him. It is not an accident that Alice Huang was a serious business associate. If you want to put them to the test, you have step up.
Well, sure, it sounds bad when you put it like that.
It is indeed quite bad. National security has been compromised. He must resign.
Nvidia underperformed the Nasdaq roughly 7% on the news. Matt Levine has his usual ‘but is this securities fraud?’ style coverage of such events.
Table of Contents
Spy Versus Guy
China’s top spy agency recruited Alice Huang to be a Chinese spy. She then had an affair with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. Even if he did not know or suspect she was a spy, he knew she was a major customer and he sold her billions in GPUs.
I would be very surprised if Jensen Huang knew he was being compromised by a Chinese agent. If you are Jensen Huang and you enter into a relationship with Alice Huang your prior on ‘she is functionally a spy’ should be very high, but presumably this was not a case of Jensen Huang thinking so clearly.
In Hindsight There Were Some Hints
There was a deleted tweet by Roon saying that rumors of this were circulating in Silicon Valley for a while.
And it’s not like the question hadn’t been asked. She did not even have to be a spy or for there to have been an affair. This was obviously ‘Nvidia selling chips to China in a way that endangers national security.’ Also a lot of people thought she was a spy.
Or, from Culper’s short position report on Nvidia back in May:
Did Jensen Huang know?
The date on the Tweet that opens this section is October 9. Trump was informed in October 2025. It is not a great leap to ask if Jensen Huang knew. If he knew? Oh boy.
Trump Knew And Did Nothing and Still ‘Backs’ Jensen Huang
One of those people who was told Alice Huang was a presumed Chinese spy and in a relationship with Jensen Huang?
President Donald Trump.
Seriously, um, guys, what the actual fuck? The head of the most valuable company in the world, that is in charge of our most strategic asset, who has to handle allocation of that asset, is in a romantic relationship with a presumed Chinese spy whose company is under investigation for chip smuggling and is buying billions of dollars in chips.
And your response is to do nothing?
Not warn Jensen Huang. Not try to feed him counterintelligence. Not investigate Megaspeed. Indeed allow Jensen Huang’s general council to quash the investigation into Megaspeed. Do nothing whatsoever. For a year. And then have no regrets about not acting on that intelligence.
Two months after Trump was warned about Alice Huang, Trump agreed with Nvidia to allow exporting of H200s to China with a 25% government cut. It doesn’t look good.
The correct response to this timeline is, as Rob Wiblin puts it, ‘WITAF is this?’
Even now, Trump is ‘backing’ Jensen Huang and thinks Jensen did nothing wrong. Which given Trump’s own history is not especially surprising. Nor is it surprising he would call Jensen Huang a ‘fine person.’
Look. I try to avoid going there, but if Trump thinks ‘having an affair with a Chinese spy while being CEO of Nvidia’ does not count as ‘doing anything wrong’ then one must ask what he thinks about such actions if you are President of the United States.
Reconsidering Jensen Huang’s Arguments Against Export Controls
All of this puts Jensen Huang’s arguments against export controls in a new light. My analysis of Jensen Huang’s podcast with Dwarkesh Patel emphasized that Huang’s arguments about this were quite poor and highly motivated. Take that to another level.
Alec Stapp here provides further quotes of Jensen Huang making extremely poor arguments about chip controls.
Less than a month ago he was still at it, arguing that our export controls were a mistake, because China has more AI researchers than any other market. Presumably we need to ensure they use American compute to compete with us.
One can also reconsider Jensen Huang’s arguments against AI safety. He was having an affair with a Chinese spy, and he said AI safety concerns were fake.
Jensen Huang Lied About the Affair
I mean, yes, of course Jensen Huang lied about the affair. When you are married and you are having an affair with a business associate to whom you are selling billions in chips, you lie. You have your company spokesperson lie. That’s how this works.
Jensen Huang and His AI Are Sorry, Everyone
It is good that Jensen Huang took responsibility. It is not so good there were ten days of denials before he admitted it, and that he did not name Alice Huang. He has not yet fully come clean.
The first thing that jumps out is that he tries to frame this as mostly a family matter, apologizing primarily to his wife and children as if this was an ordinary affair. Worries about the trust of the board come second, and the risk to national security is treated as almost an afterthought.
One comes away thinking this might indeed be a Wife Guy who truly loves his family, and gets less of an impression that he actually cares about national security, reinforcing the impression created by all of his previous words and deeds.
There’s also the issue of how formalized and stilted it sounds. This is because Jensen Huang did not write the majority of the letter. Yes, he let an AI write his apology.
The CEO of The World’s Largest Chipmaker Having an Affair With a Chinese Spy and Then Selling Them Chips is a Huge Deal, Actually
It is hard to be more tone deaf than to try and pretend otherwise.
After getting properly roasted Ackman tried to clarify.
She was a Chinese spy. So yes. It was more than an affair. It is not only a family matter.
We are all hoping that the damage was minimal, but the only reason to think this is that Jensen Huang might have intended to do all that damage either way.
Or we could see your Bill Ackman and raise you Nikita Bier.
I am also not having it with anyone who says this is ‘philandering.’
Cheating on your wife would under ordinary circumstances indeed be really terrible, and also updates me quite a lot about how much I can trust you in other ways. You either have integrity or you don’t. You either keep your word, or you don’t.
That does not mean that a cheater cannot be a successful or effective leader or founder or CEO in spite of this, or indeed even in order to get all the nookie (so you can take that GPU…). There are many such cases. You can’t trust them, but as Samo goes on to say you can’t trust most successful businessmen anyway.
That is not what happened here. Alice Huang was not ordinary cheating. Alice Huang was Jensen Huang having an affair with a major customer, who he knew was trying to buy billions in chips on behalf of China, and who was widely suspected of being a Chinese spy, who indeed turned out to be a Chinese spy.
If he was French, the cheating in and of itself would indeed not have been a big deal, but if she turns out to be a Chinese spy you sold billions in chips to? Yeah, whammy.
That is a huge deal. It is disqualifying. Period.
Those who are trying to tell you otherwise have a rather hostile agenda.
Tyler Cowen frames this as primarily ‘heralding a new age of private-sector spying’ as another attempt to make us not focus on the obvious national security implications.
Those who say things like ‘no one can explain why’ this endangers national security are being at best disingenuous and extremely dense. My default assumption is they are carrying water. This is not complicated.
We Don’t Go There
I do accept ‘he was up against actual professional spies and an active operation to compromise him’ as a mitigating factor. That’s a tough spot.
However, there are those who are saying forms of ‘I don’t condone cheating, but…’ and then try to excuse his actions anyway on the grounds that his wife is insufficiently hot.
I just want to say to anyone who says that: What the hell is wrong with you, no.
I don’t care what the details are, no, you do not do this, ever ever ever. Just stop.
Yes, National Security Was Compromised, What Are You Even Talking About
The Nvidia board is trying to pretend otherwise pending their investigation, and is announcing its conclusion in advance. When you are doing a real investigation, your announcement does not sound like this. They are planning to try to bury this. They may not succeed, but they are damn well going to try.
Even if we had no idea how exactly national security was compromised, this is insane. When the CEO of the company in charge of your most strategic asset has an affair with a Chinese spy you should damn well assume national security was compromised, even if you don’t know exactly how.
If nothing else, one should assume a massive leak of intelligence. Jensen Huang had regular phone calls with Trump. Jensen and Alice Huang presumably talked. She could plausibly have had access to his phone or computer, or opportunity to use devices on them. He could also have been influenced in various ways without giving the game away. Most importantly, he is chip allocator in chief.
In this case, we have a pretty good idea of how national security was compromised. Well, part of how.
Nvidia Intervened To Halt an Investigation into Megaspeed
The obvious explanation is often the best one. Remember back in May, when Culper said Nvidia had a ‘China problem,’ that over 20% of its compute revenues were driven by China, and in particular pointed to Alice Huang’s Megaspeed, which was investigated by the Commerce Department for chip smuggling until Nvidia intervened to halt that investigation?
At this point it is safe to presume that Megaspeed is CCP.
Multiple agencies proposed putting Megaspeed on the Entity List. Commerce kept not doing so at the behest of Jensen Huang, who helped ensure no additions to the Entity List in over a year. It doesn’t look good.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee Would Like a Word
He is asked to appear on November 18.
There’s going to be an investigation.
He Would Plausibly Have Treated America as an Obstacle Anyway
Sleeping with a Chinese spy is not necessary to explain Jensen Huang treating America like an adversary in his quest to sell as many Nvidia chips as he can to China, including via places like Malaysia.
He might or might not have done that anyway, or done that to the same extent. My opinion of how unacceptable his actions are did not change all that much.
There are two distinct important scandals here.
On top of that, we have the synthesis:
The two distinct scandals are one thing. The synthesis is so much worse.
What China Wants
What her being a spy clarifies is that China wanted him to do this and pushed for it.
Does the CCP want Nvidia’s chips? We kept hearing claims that the CCP did not want Nvidia’s chips. Whereas if your spies are going around trying to get Nvidia’s chips, I strongly believe that you want Nvidia’s chips quite a bit. The ambivalence is a combination of the quantities involved being too low to matter, and outright fake.
Time to Resign?
Yes. If he will not resign, the board must remove him. If the board will not remove him, the United States Government should force him to step down. We have plenty of leverage over Nvidia, such as its export licenses, to force his resignation if necessary.
I realize that Nvidia has a weak board and Jensen Huang has no successor, and this will trigger a governance crisis. Tough. Jensen Huang is the one who chose to have a weak board and not to have a clear successor, and to have over 50 direct reports. A lot of that was almost certainly to intentionally make him harder to fire.
As I said above, having an affair with a major customer who is also a Chinese spy while running a company vital to the national interest, and misleading the public about this, is disqualifying. Period.
I am sorry, but if you sleep with a Chinese spy, even one who is not buying billions of dollars of your chips, then you can no longer be CEO of Nvidia, the company charged with America’s greatest strategic asset.
I wish him and his family well in navigating these times. He cannot stay CEO.
I would also say that in a sane civilization anyone in the government who knowingly let this go on for a year should be offering their resignation as well.
Jensen Huang had an affair with a spy. You can at least understand how that happened. The United States Government, on the other hand, knew about this for a year and sat on it. That blows my mind and is completely unacceptable.
If you think Jensen Huang is a victim here and did nothing wrong, and you don’t see an actionable way to exploit that you know what is happening, and you want to keep this quiet, I can understand trying to keep it quiet. But then you very obviously still need to tell Jensen Huang so he can break it off and you can avoid further damage.
The supposed argument is they wanted to avoid alerting Alice Huang. This is crazy. If he can’t be trusted not to alert her, how in hell are you letting him continue to have an affair with her and be CEO of Nvidia?
Failing to act on this intelligence was a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States of America.
Or, if you think Jensen Huang was not a victim here, then not acting is far worse.
You Better Watch Out
Again, we were warned.
Remember:
Robin Hanson highlights a correct Robin Hanson-style question. Should boards be hiring hookers to try and seduce the CEO?
Once someone rises to the level of ‘they are going to be the target of intelligence operations’ and will inevitably get tempted then yes, presumably you should do this. Which means that a large percentage of those at the frontier labs would qualify.
Not that I expect the direct ‘single turn’ version of that to work so often. Jensen Huang is presumably not about to cheat with some random hot woman who tries to seduce him. It is not an accident that Alice Huang was a serious business associate. If you want to put them to the test, you have step up.