{"id":10316,"date":"2026-11-10T19:19:29","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T19:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10316"},"modified":"2026-11-10T19:19:29","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T19:19:29","slug":"jensen-huang-ai-race-us-china-spy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=10316","title":{"rendered":"The US is winning the AI race. Jensen Huang could have blown it"},"content":{"rendered":"


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As espionage targets go, Jensen Huang is perhaps one of the least surprising on Earth. The Nvidia CEO runs one of the world\u2019s most valuable companies, controls the in-demand technology fueling the AI boom, and is cozy with presidents, CEOs, and all manner of important people. He also wears a cool leather jacket.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Which makes Huang\u2019s admission that he had an affair<\/a> with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy \u2014 reportedly while<\/em> her spying was known to US intelligence and even President Donald Trump \u2014 all the more shocking. The fallout goes well beyond his marriage, his reputation, or Nvidia itself. Experts tell The Verge<\/em> the incident threatens to disrupt the entire US AI industry, potentially jeopardize national security, and could undermine America\u2019s efforts to maintain its fragile technological lead over China in AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWith those chips, the US lead could vanish in a matter of weeks or months.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Anthropic is the undisputed leader in advanced computer chips, among the AI industry\u2019s scarcest resources. While many ingredients go into building AI models \u2014 including talent, energy, capital, and data \u2014 top-tier chips are one of the most important, and Nvidia is one of a handful of companies with the expertise to design or manufacture them at the cutting edge. That makes it a gatekeeper to hardware that has become a key bottleneck in global AI development. US companies \u2014 including Meta, Anthropic, and OpenAI \u2014 are racing to develop chips of their own, in part to reduce their dependence on Nvidia, even as they spend billions securing ever more compute.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For China, the US\u2019s main rival at the frontier of AI, that bottleneck is even tighter. To maintain its technological lead, the US has restricted the sale of the most advanced AI chips to the country in the hopes of slowing its progress in the sector, which has been impressive<\/a> and is thought to trail the US by a matter of months. In response, China has made developing domestic alternatives a strategic national priority, though its leaders still lag Nvidia at the bleeding edge. At the same time, a thriving black market<\/a> for restricted Nvidia chips has emerged.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Experts tell The Verge<\/em> that China could exploit access to Nvidia to accelerate its own development, or to impede the US development of AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Getting its hands on more Nvidia chips is the most obvious win for Beijing, says Emily Kilcrease, a senior fellow and director of the energy, economics, and security program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think tank. China has advantages in other parts of the AI race \u2014 including abundant energy and a solid ecosystem of open weight models<\/a> \u2014 but without the latest Nvidia chips, it \u201ccannot close the gap with US frontier capabilities,\u201d Kilcrease tells The Verge<\/em>. \u201cWith those chips, the US lead could vanish in a matter of weeks or months.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It is not clear how successful the alleged spying operation has been on that front. There is no public evidence indicating that Huang himself has helped direct restricted Nvidia chips toward China or that sensitive information about them was obtained from him. But companies linked to the alleged spy, Alice Huang \u2014 no relation to Jensen \u2014 have reportedly<\/a> enabled at least $7 billion of Nvidia chip sales to China.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Brookings fellow Kyle Chan tells The Verge<\/em> that a concern for US industry could be that companies with alleged ties to China may have had priority access to Nvidia\u2019s latest GPUs. \u201cIn a time of chip scarcity,\u201d that would make it much harder for American companies to access them, Chan says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Huang is also a prominent critic of American restrictions on chip sales, and Nvidia spends a formidable amount<\/a> lobbying in Washington. Last year, he successfully secured<\/a> White House approval to start exporting Nvidia\u2019s H200 AI GPU chips to \u201capproved customers\u201d in China and other countries. Crucially, Huang also has the ear<\/a> of President Trump as well as other world leaders, giving him great influence over policy decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Hardware is not the only thing of value China could get from close access to Huang, Sunny Cheung, a fellow for China studies at the Jamestown Foundation think tank, tells The Verge<\/em>. \u201cI actually think too many people are focused on whether somebody managed to steal Nvidia\u2019s trade secrets,\u201d Cheung says, calling it a \u201cvery narrow way\u201d of looking at espionage. \u201cI would hope Jensen Huang isn\u2019t foolish enough to hand over the blueprints for Nvidia\u2019s next-generation chips to a suspected Chinese intelligence operative.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Nvidia CEO\u2019s relationships with other tech executives, senior policymakers, and Trump himself give him an unusually intimate view into how some of the most powerful people in the US are thinking and planning. Beijing could use information on how American companies are planning major infrastructure expansions, their compute requirements, or broad industry trends to inform its own investments and industrial strategy, Cheung says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Huang\u2019s intelligence value could extend well beyond AI, too. \u201cThat information alone could be extremely valuable,\u201d says Cheung, pointing to insights Beijing could glean into White House thinking about export controls or the private views of Silicon Valley executives on China and Taiwan.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen so much of America\u2019s AI infrastructure depends on one company, any significant security or governance problem at Nvidia can create uncertainty across the industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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But helping China advance is only one side of this equation. Disrupting Nvidia \u2014 as this scandal clearly has \u2014 could destabilize America\u2019s entire AI industry. More than most companies, Nvidia is remarkably closely tied to the identity and reputation of its rockstar CEO. Huang cofounded<\/a> the company more than three decades ago, and ever since then he has served as its president, chief executive, and a member of the board of directors. Despite holding a relatively small stake in the company, in many ways Nvidia is Jensen Huang. Nvidia shares have slumped since news of the affair broke.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cWhen so much of America\u2019s AI infrastructure depends on one company, any significant security or governance problem at Nvidia can create uncertainty across the industry,\u201d Cheung says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kilcrease echoes those concerns, warning that the scandal could \u201cdestabilize\u201d the company. At the very least, she says the various investigations already underway \u201cwill consume an immense amount of bandwidth within the company,\u201d creating a very real risk of weighing down Nvidia\u2019s day-to-day operations. If those distractions begin to affect Nvidia\u2019s ability to execute \u2014 slowing decisions, product rollouts, or the allocation of already scarce chips \u2014 the consequences could quickly reach customers. The AI labs and hyperscalers such as OpenAI and Anthropic \u201ccould have a real issue accessing the vast amounts of compute they need,\u201d Kilcrease says, adding that switching to other hardware \u201ctakes time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In a race to build increasingly powerful AI, time is a precious resource. Experts say China trails the US closely, meaning that even modest delays for American companies can help Chinese rivals catch up. Nvidia is almost certain to face further disruption as investigations continue, though the extent to which the turmoil will roil the rest of the industry may be difficult to measure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For China, however, the scandal could be about to backfire spectacularly now everything is out in the open. \u201cThe odds of AI chip control legislation being passed in Congress just went through the roof,\u201d Kilcrease says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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