MakeAmericaFairAgain

Jensen Huang Admits Affair With Suspected Chinese Spy. Beijing Has Run This Play for Decades. Less than two weeks ago, Jensen Huang called his dealings with Alice Huang "completely normal and not unusual." On Sunday, the head of the world's most valuable company told his staff, "I was unfaithful to my wife." Anyone who has studied Beijing's playbook should be appalled and not remotely surprised. His note never names her. The New York Times reports he told Nvidia's board the woman was Alice Huang (no relation), a former Chinese television reporter turned senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore data center firm and major Nvidia customer. American intelligence believes China's Ministry of State Security (MSS), the main civilian spy service of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recruited her to gather information on him. A government memo overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio reached policymakers last spring and described the romance. The reported objective was the prize of this century: details on American artificial intelligence chips, and possibly a push to get Nvidia's most advanced semiconductors into China. Huang has long pressed Washington to loosen chip limits on China, arguing they speed Beijing's own development. Nothing public shows she shaped those views. The MSS would still struggle to find a better-placed man to get close to. Alice Huang faces no publicly reported charges and has not answered reporters. Megaspeed denies breaking export rules. Nvidia's board says it has "no reason to believe" secrets or national security were compromised, an assurance issued the same day it announced its investigation. So far, no public evidence shows the MSS ordered the romance. But Chinese intelligence has never needed to stage an affair to make use of one. A leaked document from Britain's Security Service (MI5), prepared in 2008, warned hundreds of companies that Chinese services "exploit vulnerabilities such as sexual relationships" to force cooperation. Japan buried a man over it. In May 2004, the officer running encrypted communications at its Shanghai consulate killed himself, leaving notes that described blackmail over his relationship with a karaoke hostess. Tokyo blamed threats and intimidation by Chinese intelligence officers. Beijing blamed work stress. Taiwan lost a general. Maj. Gen. Lo Hsien-che fell into what the Control Yuan, Taiwan's government watchdog, called a sex trap set by Chinese agents while posted in Thailand. He spied for seven years, collecting top performance scores along the way, and drew a life sentence. Beijing's response to the Huang reporting arrived on schedule: "groundless speculation." Yet the MSS knows this craft well enough to teach it. On May 10, it warned Chinese personnel holding state secrets to beware the sudden approach of a "perfect" admirer. In the ministry's telling, the seducer works for foreigners. Chinese Americans have paid dearly for careless spy accusations, so aim this one where it belongs: at the MSS and the CCP that commands it. Three House committee chairmen have asked Huang to a closed-door briefing on November 18. They should start with what he told her about chips, customers and Washington. Then they should ask whether the MSS has tried this on other American chip executives. ACI — Aric Chen | Insights