A spy too close to Nvidia. Trump knew about it and did nothing

A year ago, Donald Trump was briefed by US intelligence agencies on the findings of an investigation into a Chinese national, an executive at a Singapore-based data centre company, suspected of having helped Beijing circumvent restrictions on access to Nvidia’s advanced chips for artificial intelligence. Investigators had concluded that Huang Le, who goes by the name Alice Huang, was an agent of the Chinese secret services, tasked with passing information to the People’s Republic of China. The US president was warned, the New York Times reported yesterday in an exclusive article detailing the affair, but chose to take no action because he “feared it would jeopardise sales of Nvidia chips, which help drive the economy and the stock market, and further complicate trade relations with China”. 

Even more alarming, according to the American newspaper which cites the surveillance revelations, is that Alice Huang had forged a very close relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, who reportedly received no security briefing – that is, the warning usually given to Americans targeted by foreign intelligence services. Meanwhile, companies linked to Ms Huang have continued undisturbed to purchase Nvidia chips, and as early as a year ago, the New York Times and Bloomberg had reported suspicions regarding Megaspeed – the company for which Ms Huang worked, which buys chips to build data centres and leases their computing power to companies in China, and which allegedly supplied AI chips to Beijing. Viewed in this light, images of Nvidia’s CEO—first with Alice Huang at parties, dinners and events in Taiwan, and later at the table of honour during the state dinner at the White House for leader Xi Jinping—take on a different significance and illustrate how Donald Trump approaches politics, even on a sensitive issue such as the race for artificial intelligence with Beijing: business takes precedence over national security.