This week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang admitted to an affair with Alice Huang, a businesswoman that US intelligence says was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. On Uncanny Valley , Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer, and Leah Feiger break down what this means for Nvidia, for the AI industry, and for the chip export controls Huang has long pushed back against. Plus, now that the Democrats have swept the midterms, white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and the Proud Boys are declaring the MAGA movement dead and saying the Republican Party is theirs for the taking.
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Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors.
Brian Barrett : Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley . I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor.
Zoë Schiffer : I'm Zoë Schiffer, contributing editor.
Leah Feiger : And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.
Zoë Schiffer : This week, we're getting into the scandal that has had everyone talking. On Sunday, Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair with a businesswoman who US intelligence says is also a Chinese spy.
Brian Barrett : The affair has brought up all kinds of questions from what information might have been linked to China to why the White House was previously warned about the relationship but didn't do much about it seemingly. We're taking a step back and discussing what this whole mess means for the AI industry at large and for the future of the chip export controls that Jensen Huang has pushed back against for so long.
Leah Feiger : And after last week's democratic sweep in the midterms, you would think that the far-right would be hiding in the corner, licking their wounds. And they did for about a week, but that's all. Instead, now white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and the Proud Boys have declared that the MAGA movement is dead and the Republican Party is theirs for the taking . We're going to get into what these groups are saying and why they see the election results as an opportunity.
Zoë Schiffer : OK. So this past weekend, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sent a message to his employees that no CEO ever wants to write. He admitted basically that he has been having an affair with this woman, Alice Huang. Same last name, no relation. I keep laughing at that. I'm like, the only way this scandal could be more insane is if they were second cousins or something, but in fact, no.
Brian Barrett : And this is not something people care about necessarily, but it does make writing these stories a little bit trickier because you have to sort of switch back to first names for a while. Anyway, yes, but not the point.
Zoë Schiffer : I feel like it's fairly obvious that they're not related. However, yeah, I guess you do need to say it out loud. The New York Times has been reporting for weeks that US intelligence identified she was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, basically they're like CIA, to gather information on him. Nvidia's board has now opened an investigation into this incident and Huang is absolutely staying in charge, at least for now while this all plays out. But this whole saga has been both a very embarrassing PR nightmare with potential national security consequences, and it has the company on track to lose more than $470 billion in market value over just two days.
Leah Feiger : It's an unbelievable amount of money for an also unbelievable story. Honeypotting in this day and age, incredible stuff. Zoë, I'm sorry to be this person, but can you take us through year by year what we knew, when we knew it? Because this whole scandal didn't just break in the last couple of days.
Zoë Schiffer : Let me go back to 2023. This is when Megaspeed, the company that Alice Huang is in charge of, was created and it splits off from a Chinese gaming company just a few months after the US began restricting advanced chip exports to China. And the reason that this is important is a couple things. Number one, Malaysia where this company is operating out of, almost immediately when the export controls become a thing is identified as a very obvious loophole. Malaysia doesn't have a big AI industry , so if you see big data centers cropping up and they're full of Nvidia chips, you can be sure that those chips are actually on their way to China. And in fact, it looks like most people in Silicon Valley and in the Trump administration were aware of this and it just wasn't a huge deal. The other thing that's worth saying is that Alice Huang was a former TV journalist. This is not someone with a computer science background. It's not the person you would expect to be in charge of a company that becomes a very big part, a very important part of Nvidia's business. So in 2024, Jensen begins appearing in public with Alice Huang. Around this time, they're photographed together multiple times. Their body language is a little bit funny. So there are whispers starting at least inside the company. And again, Megaspeed begins multi-billion dollar purchases of advanced Nvidia chips, which looks a little suss. And I think it's very, very, very difficult, some might say impossible to imagine that Jensen isn't fully aware of where the chips are headed.
Brian Barrett : Yeah. Well, and he also has been very vocal about saying, "I think China should have chips." He doesn't feel any... Yeah.
Leah Feiger : Few AI executives have had as much sway over Trump's approach to AI and China as Huang, and he's made his position incredibly clear multiple times.
Jensen Huang, archival audio : I did my best to inform the policymakers in the United States of the importance of engaging the Chinese market and making sure that we serve that market for as long as we can. I've been very clear that even though although we compete against China, they're not our enemies. If we care deeply about the safety of the world with respect to artificial intelligence, then of course we must open dialogues. We must work with them in every possible way.
Zoë Schiffer : He was vocal about this before he and Alice knew each other.
Zoë Schiffer : This is a core part of his belief system. The two theories are either you sell advanced chips to China and thus China becomes reliant on US chips and maybe they don't build their own industry or you don't and you hope that you kneecap them in the short term and your AI industry is able to stay far enough ahead that it's not a huge problem. But Jensen had a very legitimate, I think, argument here. Obviously now he's never allowed to talk about export controls ever again because he's going to look-
Brian Barrett : I bet he will though. I bet he will.
Zoë Schiffer : I mean, maybe. Yeah. But it's like China does do this. They make competitive hardware all the time and then underprice it, and so it harms US industry. And I think that in addition to this being a very good business play, Nvidia could have doubled its business because China is going through the same data center build out that the US is. He also had a national security argument that wasn't totally farfetched.
Brian Barrett : I think too, and I think he also, I've heard him argue, it's a related point, but I think if China builds their own competitive chips, then they'll build their own whole tech stack and you'll have this entire world of AI that is largely open source, open weight, broadly accessible that the US is totally shut out of because it's not just Nvidia chips, it's everything around them. Setting the merits