China’s Nvidia Honeypot Isn’t Surprising. Jensen Huang Fell for It Anyway

Just before Halloween, The New York Times published a six-byline investigation reporting that Jensen Huang, the centibillionaire CEO of Nvidia, was the target of a Chinese spy plot. The report alleges that starting sometime between 2024 and 2025, Huang had an affair with Alice Huang, no relation, a former executive at the Singapore-based cloud provider Megaspeed. US intelligence agencies subsequently warned senior American officials that they believed she was a Chinese intelligence asset — news that rattled markets and pulled one of the AI industry's most consequential figures into a scandal mixing infidelity, espionage, and trade policy.

US officials told the Times and the Financial Times that Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, was reporting to China's Ministry of State Security. She is characterized as an "asset" — an outsider who assists an agency, sometimes for pay — rather than a trained officer; she previously worked as a Chinese state journalist. China's foreign ministry rejected the account on Monday, calling the spy narrative "entirely based on groundless speculation" and "slander and smearing." Nvidia's own board, which has opened an investigation, says it has "no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised."

Megaspeed, meanwhile, said on LinkedIn on Monday that US authorities found "no evidence of any violations concerning the illicit transfer of chips or any illegal activities." The company is a significant Pacific-region cloud provider focused on the advanced chips at the heart of Nvidia's business. That matters commercially: the Biden administration sharply limited exports of cutting-edge chips to slow China's AI development, and Huang has successfully lobbied the Trump administration to relax those restrictions.

The alleged approach also fits a long-documented pattern. Honeypot operations — placing an alluring operative near a valuable target — are among intelligence's oldest tactics, and French officials have warned about Chinese versions since at least 2011, when a pharmaceutical researcher was seduced and blackmailed. Silicon Valley has been a focus for two decades: a Chinese national, Fang Fang, cultivated Bay Area politicians including then Representative Eric Swalwell, though no charges were ever filed. US executives routinely travel to China with burner devices, a 2012 delegation with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was told to shower in the dark against hidden bugs, and last year Washington explicitly barred personnel in China and Hong Kong from romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens amid warnings about "LinkedIn espionage."