It sounds to me like she could simply have been a high-level smuggler: A profit-seeker, running deals, moving freight illegally (or at least in flagrant violation of contract) through Singapore and Malaysia to China, and taking chances. I mean, it certainly looks as though she did all of that.
In this narrow case, it's highly likely that she took money from the Chinese government -- which is not to say their intelligence agencies, but rather the tech funds and other national/regional government bodies that directly invest in important/strategic ventures. Almost all Chinese tech and manufacturing firms take .gov money. The Chinese government is very very good at supporting development.
What's indeed far from clear is whether she was working for any Chinese intelligence agency directly. Jensen was a China dove, and his fall from grace hurts China in the near term. It'll be interesting to see what shakes out.
From what I've read, spying for China is a very common thing, it just doesn't entail and imply what it does in the West. China has laws that require every citizen to cooperate with its intelligence agencies, and they have plenty of leverage to ensure compliance. If they ask a tourist to take some photos or perform some other innocuous task, it's gonna get done. It they ask someone like Alice Huang to report back anything juicy she comes across at Nvidia, it's gonna get done. And it follows that they'll promote an environment where people like Huang can proliferate and get around.
She just happened to be in charge of a company that was buying from his and totally coincidentally had Alibaba as the largest customer and main financial backer and lender.
This looks like an administration in trouble trying to downplay the whole thing and muddy the waters. Sadly, it's what we've come to expect from this group. Whatever the real story is, we won't get it from them. We need an independent investigation.
> looks like an administration in trouble trying to downplay the whole thing
idk. (more reputable) news where from the very beginning using terms like "suspected spy" and similar
as far as I can tell "she is suspected of it, but no evidence exists" might have been the simply truth story from the beginning
but there had been a lot of dogey things going on in context of Nvidea<->China, no matter if Nvidia is involved, and "boss has affair with spy" is the perfect instrument to funnel all the existing dissatisfaction and warning others to not be "too" friendly with china, even privately.
This is the real story with this whole thing. Nvidia received permission from the Trump admin, in some capacity, to make this backroom deal, with everyone knowing full well where those chips were actually going, but with just enough separation for plausible deniability.
But the sanctions are in place. They are technically all committing treason in allowing this deal to go through, particularly because Jensen and Nvidia donated money to let the deals go through.
With Trumps influence reduced after the midterms the administrations seems to be turning against each other to create separation and deniability of involvement in these alleged crimes.
>Whatever the real story is, we won't get it from them.
This is honestly frightening and the biggest damage done to democracy by the Administration. I may disagree with my government, but nothing matters if I can't even trust them.
It is their goal. Peter Thiel and his ilk want governments to be replaced by corporations, and the best path to that is to make governments look incompetent.
The GOP has been doing the same thing for decades, so they could argue for privatization. The desperately want their buddies in corpland to be able to make much more than the equivalent government services are charging. Government services are by definition non-for-profit and that kills them.
Welcome to being a rational adult after… I don’t know, the mid-60s at least. Certainly, the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, ‘10s. Trump is certainly an extreme example, but in the final accounting, the past 50 years rhyme with executive and general governmental mal-action.
After this much investment into the "AI race" the whole economy of US, pensions and everything, is indirectly tied to one company. What do you expect, the government will do something that makes the numbers go down?
This looks like US intelligence agencies decided to drag Jensen through mud for some reason to have such reversal. This is generally done in cahoots with an interested business party ala Heinz taking out competitors via FDA policing quality.
What Nvidia employees need to do is strike and walkout until he is reinstated.
Likely ousted due to his support of open models and refusal to implement inference blocks for unapproved models on nvidia cards. Runs right up against OpenAI/Anthropic's moat building scam which they have been ever more loudly crowing about to the press as they get closer to IPO.
Sort of like when Brian Krzanich got tossed for having an affair with an Intel employee. The affair had ended years ago, no one cared at all until the stock price went down due to his incompetence so they pulled it out of the archives. The board probably liked that he had an affair since it gave them leverage.
I don't that "spying" is the right word here. My understanding is more that she likely influenced Jensen to push for sale of AI chips to China (which he did) and that her SG company may have acted as a middleman for the chips getting to China.
That's not "spying" is the traditional sense (stealing secrets).
I think this gets the story backwards. The claim was never that China chose her and sent her after Jensen. It's that she started a relationship with Jensen, and then Chins, realizing an opportunity, kindly invited her in for a little talk.
The NYT's investigative reporting is more believable than David Sacks. If the NYT says it has sources, I believe it. I don't expect David Sacks to have done the legwork to track down the same people.
Read the original NY Times piece carefully ( https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-... ). The NY Times is not contradicting David Sacks (who is just repeating what is in a CNN article). The NY Times itself never claimed Alice was a spy, or that there was clear and convincing evidence that Alice was a spy. The NY Times reported that "A memo that circulated among top policymakers in the Trump administration last spring cited intelligence that a Chinese businesswoman who had a close relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, according to people briefed on the intelligence."
I fully believe the NY Times is correct in that there was a "memo" citing "intelligence." I believe CNN's sources in saying that this "intelligence" did not actually contain conclusive evidence. Remember that "intelligence" can mean anything from actual wire taps, to unverified claims from foreign agencies, to lies by sketchy sources, to a junior analyst reading the newspaper. And being a "spy" can mean anything from being an actual trained honey-pot, to someone the MSS had a single conversation with.
What evidence is there that she is a spy. As far as I see what Sacks said her is accurate:
- AG says no. (“no conclusions reached”).
- CIA says no. (“not yet convinced”).
- DNI says no (“not entirely accurate and over-torqued”).
- Ranking Democrat on House Intelligence (incoming Chairman) says no. (“today, at least, I don’t know”). This was immediately after he was briefed.
NYT didn't see the memo alleging Chinese intelligence ties. NYT's source didn't see the memo. NYT's source was "briefed" on the memo. That's not investigative reporting it's spreading gossip.
What a sudden 180 turn just hours after Jensen resigning.
The whole thing went from NYT’s shocking article of “Jensen was sleeping with a Chinese spy” to “We don’t know if she’s a spy, but she could be because she’s… you know… Chinese”.
And the way and timing the 2nd and 3rd affair stories broke by the NYT, this really looks like a concerted effort to oust Jensen using the NYT as an instrument.
We can only speculate who’s behind this, but multiple parties benefit from removing the biggest advocate in Silicon Valley for open-weight models and more competition.
The most likely reason is the CIA is not going to divulge how they know she is a spy even if they 100 percent know because divulging might give away some of their capabilities. They probably didn’t really want this to be public but rather inform the concerned parties and the White House of the risk, but the White House failed to act on the intelligence so someone, probably in the Trump admin, leaked it.
The spy slop is fed to the masses to make the otherwise mundane export control issue more intriguing to them. If you watch cable news, it's non stop slop about how it's sensitive IP or his closeness to Trump, AI strategy, or other labs that is jeopardized. GPU architecture doesn't make for good pillow talk.
>Still, some Trump officials told CNN that it strains credulity to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government — simply by virtue of the fact that she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working with one of America’s most powerful companies.
Good lord, the racism. I can see being a bit suspect of a foreigner harboring love for their mother nation, but existing in a world in which you literally cannot concieve of a foreigner not being a agent?
How paranoid do you have to be to get to "I cannot possibly believe that she is not a spy based solely on the fact that she's chinese."
Like, maybe she is or isn't, but to go on record saying that her innocence is literally beyond belief (or perhaps merely only hard to believe if it only 'strains' credulity) because of her heritage? That cannot be anything but racism.
This isn't necessarily racism. The way the CCP rolls is pretty hardcore. If you're part of the diaspora they actively seek to correct behavior they disapprove of or influence you to advance the CCP agenda and when they do you WILL do what they say. Or else.
The first layer is friendly - money, gifts, favors. The second is threatening. The third is no holds barred. They will jail your family members[1] if they're still mainland. Stalk and harass your family even if you live in the US[2]. Weibo is generally the main conduit.
Given we've seen this playbook first hand executed for seemingly minor offenses to the state it isn't at all unreasonable to conclude Alice was under CCP influence in some way and probably significantly given Jensen's significance.
[1] Ex-FAANG employee had one of their parents jailed for nearly a decade for non-CCP aligned views
[2] Ex-FAANG employee, after sending nearly all their salary back to China for 5+ years to secure their parent's release reported stalking incidents from CCP agents in mainland USA. Same type of CCP agents that operate out of the 18+ Chinese Police Stations recently discovered in Canada.
2. My parents, both were born behind the iron curtain in Germany in the 50s and 60s, so they spent only a little over half of their lifetimes, in technically the “western world”… they had some crazy stories how they and family friends were essentially pressured to do some morally questionable stuff, nothing like this of course. But it really isn’t that far fetched, and technically not that long ago…
It sounds to me like she could simply have been a high-level smuggler: A profit-seeker, running deals, moving freight illegally (or at least in flagrant violation of contract) through Singapore and Malaysia to China, and taking chances. I mean, it certainly looks as though she did all of that.
In this narrow case, it's highly likely that she took money from the Chinese government -- which is not to say their intelligence agencies, but rather the tech funds and other national/regional government bodies that directly invest in important/strategic ventures. Almost all Chinese tech and manufacturing firms take .gov money. The Chinese government is very very good at supporting development.
What's indeed far from clear is whether she was working for any Chinese intelligence agency directly. Jensen was a China dove, and his fall from grace hurts China in the near term. It'll be interesting to see what shakes out.
From what I've read, spying for China is a very common thing, it just doesn't entail and imply what it does in the West. China has laws that require every citizen to cooperate with its intelligence agencies, and they have plenty of leverage to ensure compliance. If they ask a tourist to take some photos or perform some other innocuous task, it's gonna get done. It they ask someone like Alice Huang to report back anything juicy she comes across at Nvidia, it's gonna get done. And it follows that they'll promote an environment where people like Huang can proliferate and get around.
I'm not 100% clear on why she'd even need to move the GPUs to China. Why not just keep them in Singapore and rent them to Chinese companies?
This whole situation is extremely confusing to me.
Is there enough electricity in Singapore or Malaysia to power these GPUs?
She is/has also been CEO of a matching Chinese company.
> It sounds to me like she could simply have been...
...a normal human with normal human drives. Let's not forget that possibility.
She just happened to be in charge of a company that was buying from his and totally coincidentally had Alibaba as the largest customer and main financial backer and lender.
It's not coincidence that people hook up with the people they work with.
This looks like an administration in trouble trying to downplay the whole thing and muddy the waters. Sadly, it's what we've come to expect from this group. Whatever the real story is, we won't get it from them. We need an independent investigation.
> looks like an administration in trouble trying to downplay the whole thing
idk. (more reputable) news where from the very beginning using terms like "suspected spy" and similar
as far as I can tell "she is suspected of it, but no evidence exists" might have been the simply truth story from the beginning
but there had been a lot of dogey things going on in context of Nvidea<->China, no matter if Nvidia is involved, and "boss has affair with spy" is the perfect instrument to funnel all the existing dissatisfaction and warning others to not be "too" friendly with china, even privately.
This is the real story with this whole thing. Nvidia received permission from the Trump admin, in some capacity, to make this backroom deal, with everyone knowing full well where those chips were actually going, but with just enough separation for plausible deniability.
But the sanctions are in place. They are technically all committing treason in allowing this deal to go through, particularly because Jensen and Nvidia donated money to let the deals go through.
With Trumps influence reduced after the midterms the administrations seems to be turning against each other to create separation and deniability of involvement in these alleged crimes.
[dead]
>Whatever the real story is, we won't get it from them.
This is honestly frightening and the biggest damage done to democracy by the Administration. I may disagree with my government, but nothing matters if I can't even trust them.
It is their goal. Peter Thiel and his ilk want governments to be replaced by corporations, and the best path to that is to make governments look incompetent.
The GOP has been doing the same thing for decades, so they could argue for privatization. The desperately want their buddies in corpland to be able to make much more than the equivalent government services are charging. Government services are by definition non-for-profit and that kills them.
Welcome to being a rational adult after… I don’t know, the mid-60s at least. Certainly, the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s, ‘10s. Trump is certainly an extreme example, but in the final accounting, the past 50 years rhyme with executive and general governmental mal-action.
[dead]
After this much investment into the "AI race" the whole economy of US, pensions and everything, is indirectly tied to one company. What do you expect, the government will do something that makes the numbers go down?
Well played, Xi.
This looks like US intelligence agencies decided to drag Jensen through mud for some reason to have such reversal. This is generally done in cahoots with an interested business party ala Heinz taking out competitors via FDA policing quality.
What Nvidia employees need to do is strike and walkout until he is reinstated.
Likely ousted due to his support of open models and refusal to implement inference blocks for unapproved models on nvidia cards. Runs right up against OpenAI/Anthropic's moat building scam which they have been ever more loudly crowing about to the press as they get closer to IPO.
Sort of like when Brian Krzanich got tossed for having an affair with an Intel employee. The affair had ended years ago, no one cared at all until the stock price went down due to his incompetence so they pulled it out of the archives. The board probably liked that he had an affair since it gave them leverage.
They rarely ever are sure are they? Intelligence is all about risks.
It is clearly, clearly enough that it looked a lot like she could be (and it does!)
I don't that "spying" is the right word here. My understanding is more that she likely influenced Jensen to push for sale of AI chips to China (which he did) and that her SG company may have acted as a middleman for the chips getting to China.
That's not "spying" is the traditional sense (stealing secrets).
That's my read. She was trying to make money.
Company takeover.
[dead]
If you were China, why would you choose an Asian to be your spy? Doesn’t make sense, China is smarter than that.
If you can use that as a reason why they couldn't have done it, they can use that as a reason why you wouldn't suspect it.
You're absolutely right!
It's a well known fact that each time we see an Asian, we are collectively thinking: "spy, spy, spy!!".
I think this gets the story backwards. The claim was never that China chose her and sent her after Jensen. It's that she started a relationship with Jensen, and then Chins, realizing an opportunity, kindly invited her in for a little talk.
[flagged]
The NYT's investigative reporting is more believable than David Sacks. If the NYT says it has sources, I believe it. I don't expect David Sacks to have done the legwork to track down the same people.
Read the original NY Times piece carefully ( https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-... ). The NY Times is not contradicting David Sacks (who is just repeating what is in a CNN article). The NY Times itself never claimed Alice was a spy, or that there was clear and convincing evidence that Alice was a spy. The NY Times reported that "A memo that circulated among top policymakers in the Trump administration last spring cited intelligence that a Chinese businesswoman who had a close relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive was a spy for China’s Ministry of State Security, according to people briefed on the intelligence."
I fully believe the NY Times is correct in that there was a "memo" citing "intelligence." I believe CNN's sources in saying that this "intelligence" did not actually contain conclusive evidence. Remember that "intelligence" can mean anything from actual wire taps, to unverified claims from foreign agencies, to lies by sketchy sources, to a junior analyst reading the newspaper. And being a "spy" can mean anything from being an actual trained honey-pot, to someone the MSS had a single conversation with.
What evidence is there that she is a spy. As far as I see what Sacks said her is accurate:
- AG says no. (“no conclusions reached”). - CIA says no. (“not yet convinced”). - DNI says no (“not entirely accurate and over-torqued”). - Ranking Democrat on House Intelligence (incoming Chairman) says no. (“today, at least, I don’t know”). This was immediately after he was briefed.
None of those are nos though.
NYT didn't see the memo alleging Chinese intelligence ties. NYT's source didn't see the memo. NYT's source was "briefed" on the memo. That's not investigative reporting it's spreading gossip.
the same NYT that run with the story about Iraq(Saddam) having WMDs ?
none of the mainstream news sources can be trusted - they all exist to manufacture consent on behalf of gvt or some other powerful individuals.
Has anyone plausibly explained what spying would take place? Jensen gives her a USB drive of schematics for the next gen?
> US Intel isn't sure
Yeah, that's what happens when you put clowns at the top and drive out the people with real experience and intellect.
Doesn't matter. She's Chinese so anything goes these days.
It doesn't escape me that as a nice bonus the most valuable US company is now out of the hands of a 'Chinese' CEO too.
Absolutely insane comment. I didn’t know blatant racism was allowed on HN now.
I believe they were pointing out anti-Chinese racism.
same with mitch mcconnall's wife
That comment is clearly not racist but is pointing out innate racism of the Washington 'blob' through a sarcastic jibe.
Perhaps for another $25 million dollar "donation" US Intel can be sure she isn't a spy?
What is this, plot twist week?
What a sudden 180 turn just hours after Jensen resigning.
The whole thing went from NYT’s shocking article of “Jensen was sleeping with a Chinese spy” to “We don’t know if she’s a spy, but she could be because she’s… you know… Chinese”.
And the way and timing the 2nd and 3rd affair stories broke by the NYT, this really looks like a concerted effort to oust Jensen using the NYT as an instrument.
We can only speculate who’s behind this, but multiple parties benefit from removing the biggest advocate in Silicon Valley for open-weight models and more competition.
The most likely reason is the CIA is not going to divulge how they know she is a spy even if they 100 percent know because divulging might give away some of their capabilities. They probably didn’t really want this to be public but rather inform the concerned parties and the White House of the risk, but the White House failed to act on the intelligence so someone, probably in the Trump admin, leaked it.
Imagine it was all a Chinese ploy to oust him with a fake story about her being a spy
Yeah it seems the “evidence” is just circumstantial.
The spy slop is fed to the masses to make the otherwise mundane export control issue more intriguing to them. If you watch cable news, it's non stop slop about how it's sensitive IP or his closeness to Trump, AI strategy, or other labs that is jeopardized. GPU architecture doesn't make for good pillow talk.
>Still, some Trump officials told CNN that it strains credulity to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government — simply by virtue of the fact that she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working with one of America’s most powerful companies.
Good lord, the racism. I can see being a bit suspect of a foreigner harboring love for their mother nation, but existing in a world in which you literally cannot concieve of a foreigner not being a agent?
How paranoid do you have to be to get to "I cannot possibly believe that she is not a spy based solely on the fact that she's chinese."
Like, maybe she is or isn't, but to go on record saying that her innocence is literally beyond belief (or perhaps merely only hard to believe if it only 'strains' credulity) because of her heritage? That cannot be anything but racism.
This isn't necessarily racism. The way the CCP rolls is pretty hardcore. If you're part of the diaspora they actively seek to correct behavior they disapprove of or influence you to advance the CCP agenda and when they do you WILL do what they say. Or else.
The first layer is friendly - money, gifts, favors. The second is threatening. The third is no holds barred. They will jail your family members[1] if they're still mainland. Stalk and harass your family even if you live in the US[2]. Weibo is generally the main conduit.
Given we've seen this playbook first hand executed for seemingly minor offenses to the state it isn't at all unreasonable to conclude Alice was under CCP influence in some way and probably significantly given Jensen's significance.
[1] Ex-FAANG employee had one of their parents jailed for nearly a decade for non-CCP aligned views
[2] Ex-FAANG employee, after sending nearly all their salary back to China for 5+ years to secure their parent's release reported stalking incidents from CCP agents in mainland USA. Same type of CCP agents that operate out of the 18+ Chinese Police Stations recently discovered in Canada.
You just reminded me of two things:
1. Their practices outside of china even, are aggressive and openly corrupt: https://netzpolitik.org/2021/wolf-culture-how-huawei-control... Which I think I first saw here on HN actually, IIRC
2. My parents, both were born behind the iron curtain in Germany in the 50s and 60s, so they spent only a little over half of their lifetimes, in technically the “western world”… they had some crazy stories how they and family friends were essentially pressured to do some morally questionable stuff, nothing like this of course. But it really isn’t that far fetched, and technically not that long ago…