NYT: China’s MSS recruited exec to target Jensen Huang

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore cloud company Megaspeed, was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) to gather information on Nvidia ↗ 2.78% CEO Jensen Huang, The New York Times ↗ 4.26% reported on Friday, November 6. People familiar with U.S. surveillance told the Times that Beijing's goal was to learn about American AI chip technology and possibly persuade Nvidia to push for its most advanced chips to be made available to China.nytimes.com

The Times wrote that the link to China's main intelligence agency had not been disclosed before. It builds on the paper's report last week that Jensen Huang was seen as the target of a Chinese spy plot. The two Huangs are not related, and the Times described their relationship as "close." President Trump was briefed on it last year but took no action.theverge.com

Congress wants answers

On Thursday, the Republican chairs of the House China, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, John Moolenaar, Brian Mast and Rick Crawford, asked Jensen Huang to attend a joint closed-door briefing on November 18. "It is vital that Congress determines the extent to which US national security has been placed at risk," the lawmakers wrote, and they also asked about Nvidia's protections against "foreign adversary espionage". Nvidia would not say whether its CEO would attend.arstechnica.com

Nvidia and Beijing push back

Nvidia has rejected the allegations. "Meetings with customers are part of a CEO's job. Jensen talks with thousands of customer executives every year," the company said, adding that regional cloud customers receive "ordinary business information—not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets—and zero information relevant to national security". The company also said it was confident the U.S. government would warn it about any person who posed a threat. According to the Times, Jensen Huang never received the "defensive briefing" intelligence agencies usually give likely espionage targets. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called the earlier report "sheer speculation and an attempt to smear China".news.sbs.co.kr+1

Megaspeed's chip ties

Megaspeed is an Nvidia customer and cloud partner that rents computing capacity to Chinese firms, including Alibaba ↗ 1.28%. The Times reported that Alice Huang also has ties to top executives across the AI chip industry, including leaders at Gigabyte Giga-Byte Technology Co., Ltd.. U.S. authorities have looked into whether the company, founded in 2023 as a spin-off of a Chinese gaming firm, helped smuggle restricted chips, but no charges have been filed. Megaspeed denies the allegations and says it follows export controls. Nvidia says the diversion claims were "thoroughly investigated and debunked last year".wol.com+4