Jensen and The Honeypot

Alex Kantrowitz is the host of Big Technology Podcast. Today he joins for a solo episode digging into the news that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the head of the world’s second largest company and the backbone of the AI buildout, has admitted to an affair with a woman that U. S. intelligence believes is a Chinese spy. His board is unsure whether Nvidia‘s or U. S. state secrets were compromised, and has opened an investigation. So today, we dig into what happened and what's next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Holy smokes. Well, in a year of countless wild headlines about the AI industry, boy, is this one for the ages. Yes, we've been doing a lot of emergency podcasts on the show, but the news cycle just requires that we weigh in on these events and we have one for you today. Jensen Wong, the CEO of Nvidia, has admitted to an affair cheating on his wife with somebody that the US government believes was working with the Chinese government to pass information along to them in her role as a spy. Today, we're going to do a quick emergency episode. I'm here solo. It's Alex Kantrowitz. We will obviously

• 0:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  be covering this later in the week, but I'm here to do a short episode to talk about what happened and what the implications are as we get the week started. Obviously, this week, this news is too big to let it go until Wednesday or Friday. So we're here talking about it right now. All right, let's go to the Wall Street Journal. Nvidia's board investigates report that CEO was spying target after affair. Nvidia's board said it's launching an investigation into reports that Jensen Wong has been the target of a foreign espionage effort after the CEO had a romantic relationship with an executive suspected of working for Chinese intelligence. US officials last year concluded that Chinese citizen Alice Wong, no information, no relation, then a top executive at Megaspeed International

• 1:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  was sharing information with the Chinese government while working with Nvidia to build data centers in Asia. Wong apologized, this is Jensen, I'll call him Jensen in the rest of this episode, and her Alice. So Jensen apologized to his staff Sunday for being unfaithful to his wife. I owe my family and all of you an apology. There's no excuse for what I did. The CEO and his wife Lori Wong have been married for about 40 years and have two adult children who work for Nvidia. We'll get to this in a bit, but of course, it's not just a, just an affair or a regular affair. Obviously, if the US government suspects, suspects that Alice was working as a, as a spy for Chinese

• 2:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  intelligence, then it's much more about what was shared and what's passed along than the infidelity itself. Of course, the infidelity is not great, but if it was just infidelity, it would be a much more minor story. A little bit about Alice Wong and Megaspeed. This is from CNBC. What is Megaspeed? Megaspeed sells services to the Asia-Pacific-based companies that need large amounts of computing capacity, usually for AI projects, by selling access to computing resources hosted in data centers in Southeast Asia. It advertises itself as a core business partner of Nvidia's Computing Power Cloud, a business in the region allowing customers to rent computer, computing power from Nvidia GPUs, which are

• 2:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  specialized chips designed to do many calculations at the same time, of course, have become central to the AI buildup. This was what Alice, Alice Wong was pitching. This is from the Financial Times. Alleged Chinese spy linked to Nvidia chief pitched AI chip deals to investors. The woman at the center of the Nvidia spying scandal pitched an AI chips deal to China-based investors, touting her ability to secure the US company's coveted GPUs and her commercial relationship with the, with Chinese tech giant Alibaba. In early 2025, Alice Wong and her business partner Kang Wei saw investment for a Southeast Asia data center project worth several hundred million dollars. The pair said they had

• 3:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  no problem securing GPUs as a key pillar of the deal and cited Alibaba as the client of the project, according to one investor present. Okay, so a couple of things here. Obviously, Jensen met Alice in their dealings in terms of him trying to bring GPUs into China. This is not a surprise. No, this is surprising, right? Jensen has always been in favor of sending GPUs to China. He's always believed it's important for China to be on the US system of AI infrastructure. It's been explained to me like this. Basically,

• 4:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  if China's using AI, USAI infrastructure and advances are made on USAI infrastructure, US will always have, US companies will always have access to that, to that infrastructure. If they move to different infrastructure and make advances on, let's say, Chinese chips from Huawei and China restricts those chips to the United States, then the United States will not have access to, to that infrastructure potentially. So that's why Jensen has always said it's important for everybody to be on the US system or GPUs. Of course, that means Jensen sells more GPUs because he's the one who's building them. But that's sort of beside the point. So obviously, he made contact with this woman, Alice Wong, you know, seemingly in the normal course of events. Nothing really suspicious

• 4:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  about how they met or the work they were doing. The only thing in this story that really goes wrong is, is they become close, they have an affair, and it doesn't stop there. The fact that she has, according to US government sources, had a connection with Chinese intelligence and was passing information along to them makes this a very big deal. Because of course, Jensen Wong is not only the CEO of the most important AI company in the United States and the world for that matter, he's also a top confidant, an ally of President Trump, a top friend of President Trump. Remember, President Trump called him

• 5:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  in the middle of a panel at the All In Podcast. And so, having a, having somebody from your intelligence services or working for your intelligence services very close to him opens up all routes to understand not only the plans to build your, your chips, the policy discussions happening in the United States, but it's also just a good asset to have, just in case, you know, you want to take that company down a peg. Okay, so this is, this is the setup. It's a classic honeypot setup. I think we've been good on the show about talking about honeypots. It's one of the things we've covered, you know, both seriously and we've kind of enjoyed the concept a little bit over the past couple of weeks.

• 6:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  But, but the bottom line is, if the reports are all true, it looks like Jensen fell right into a honeypot. So now that he has, the question is, what does it mean? There's a tremendous amount of uncertainty around Jensen's future and Nvidia's future and the AI buildup's future, because we don't really have situations like this where the leading executives in the most important companies end up in bed with, you know, adversarial nation spies, or at least we don't hear about it so often. So if that's what happened, there are going to be some issues. So a couple of things I want to share. First of all, just about Jensen. I don't think there's any executive as much of a single point of

• 7:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  failure within an important company as Jensen Wong. Remember, he co-founded Nvidia in 1993. He has about 60 direct reports, he said, and he has managed these relationships, both with partners and competitors, buyers, and governments for a long time. He's been central to the Nvidia story. He believes that GPUs were going to be very important technology when a lot of people wouldn't give Nvidia the time of day. And he is the center of that company. It is a Jensen company. And so, any, any problem with Jensen is really a problem for Nvidia, a big problem. And especially, you know, if he ends up being

• 7:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  removed or he steps down as the leader of this company, some people have suggested they don't really understand how Nvidia would continue. Now, his children are working there, but I don't know if they're ready to take on his role. Now, I do have a take about whether Wong will step down or be pushed out, but that will wait, I think, until the very end here. That'll be my punchline. So, so stick with me a little bit as I try to point out the most important issues here and what might happen. So, just to set the table here, I think it's important for anyone who says Jensen Wong's affair with Alice Wong is just a simple affair, or they're hoping for a simple affair, the way that

• 8:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Bill Ackman suggested, I think they need to get their head checked. This is not just a simple affair. This is an affair with someone that the US government believes was associated with Chinese intelligence services, right? They, they believe she was a spy, whether that's somebody who was like hired directly by them or passing information along. It doesn't matter. This is someone who was compromised. And, and, and so was Jensen. Now, Jensen was as compromised as can be, because when you have a secretive affair with somebody, they can hold it over your head. You put yourself in a position where they've got something on you, and then you're sort of, you're, you're beholden in a way to their

• 9:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  wants and interests. So I think those who believe that this was a simple affair.

• 9:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  They simply aren't seeing the full picture. This is not a marriage issue. This is not a family issue, though it certainly is that. It's not that alone. It is a corporate security issue. It's a national security issue. Now, you know, many people have said that this is not as big of a deal as people are making it out to be because Jensen, by definition, was going to be anti-export controls. He had been advocating to sell more to China as a matter of course of business. And so, of course, like, it's not like the government of China was going to cajole him into doing this with, you know, by setting him up with a member of intelligence.

• 9:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  The writer Bill Bishop of cynicism disputes this, and I think he's totally right. Now, remember, Jensen is a text buddy of President Trump. Jensen is the keeper of a lot of super confidential design and information, you know, within Nvidia. Here's what Bill writes. He says, and I think this is fair, was she ever alone with his phone or computer? Say, when he got up to go to the, to use the bathroom, right? You have a guy who President Trump is calling mid-panel, probably texting him as well. In the bedroom, yeah. You get up, you go, you go use the bathroom, you go take a walk, you go, I don't know, get something to eat from the fridge. There's all possibilities to compromise the security of the phone or the computer you

• 10:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  leave behind. I'm not saying this happens, but the point is, it didn't need to be Jensen's intent. It didn't need to be his, you know, express interest to share information he didn't want to share. When you're in a position like that, it can happen, and you can't rule it out. And I think that's why when the board, the board had a very interesting quote about this. They said, effectively, we have no reason to believe that there's anything, you know, effectively, that has been shared about Nvidia or US security interests, illicitly. Yet you can have no interest, no reason to believe that that stuff happened, but it could still have happened. And if it happened, it's a problem.

• 11:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  So the culprit here could be sloppiness, not exactly, you know, explicit leaking from Jensen, you know, doing pillow talk and like saying, you know, hey, we're going to build these data centers here, or these, you know, US is going to vote this way or that way. There are so many different permutations of what could be shared, but I think that's important. Now, when we think about the immediate issues that are going to hit here, Jensen has been the most effective advocate against export controls to China and the United States. He has taken the gloves off. He's gone at it with people like Dario Amade, right? We had Dario on my show last year, and Dario was very clear that he believed in export controls.

• 12:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  You know, this idea that, you know, Jensen has had put forth that Dario wanted to control the industry, Dario hit back on, you know, very hard. I'm sure you've heard the criticism from people like Jensen, who say, well, Dario thinks he's the only one who can build this safely, and therefore, speaking of that word "control," wants to control the entire industry. I've never said, I've never said anything like that. That's an outrageous lie. That's the most outrageous lie I've ever heard. So there have been relationships that Jensen has risked in order to push forward this idea that there shouldn't be export controls on GPUs. And, and he has, he has effectively been very successful in it.

• 12:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Last year, the Trump administration lifted a ban of selling Nvidia's H200 chips to China. Now, there are some risks there. There have been some stories recently about how those, those chips have, have been sold to companies and the people have visited, you know, these, their supposed offices or data centers, and they've been empty. Right? So effectively, you can end up, you know, selling to an approved client, and they can end up being funneled somewhere else. So basically, when you get those out in market, they can be available to everybody, but Jensen has pushed for it. He's been successful on it, and Nvidia's flourished as a result, right? Nvidia, we woke up this morning, was a $4.5 trillion company, and who knows where it ends at the end of the day.

• 13:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  But because it's been able to open up the market in China, that's been a big part of its growth, and of course, the demand in the United States, right? So now, it's very interesting. Imagine Jensen Huang says something about export controls to China. Who can take him seriously? Seriously? Is anybody going to take Jensen seriously? If he says anything logical, right? If he, if he makes an argument like he made on the Dwarke podcast about why people are, you know, overreacting about export controls, think anyone's going to be like, yeah, that makes sense, and just take it on its merits? You know, even if none of the accusations, well, he already did admit that he was having the affair, but even if that's where it ends, it's hard to imagine that, that his voice

• 14:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  on export controls is going to carry a tremendous amount of weight, at least for a little bit, and maybe forever. And if further export controls are put in by the US government, that's rough. It'll hurt Nvidia's business. So that's definitely something to watch here. Now, speaking of the US government, very interesting situation right now, because Jensen's, Jensen's scandal could not have happened at a worse timeframe. Think about the situation in the United States. Not even a week ago, the Democrats swept to power in Congress, winning the House and the Senate. They did so on a number of messages against inflation, against cost of living, against

• 15:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  the Iran War, but for anywhere between, let's say, 27 and 60% of people, AI data centers and the rise of AI was a crucial issue. We know this, and the Democrats have represented the, the fight against AI, right? They've been more anti-AI than the Republicans. Now, hearings were inevitable. We were going to see hearings. We've talked about that on the show. They were inevitable. Oh, goodness, are they going to have a juicy first target? So think about it this way. The Democrats are going to come in, they're going to have an anti-AI agenda. They're going to try to look for some very prominent AI leaders to basically bring in front of their committees and publicly roast. Who's the first one? That was the question we had up until, I don't know, 24 hours ago.

• 15:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  I believe the answer is clearly going to be Jensen Huang. Think about this. He's high-profile. He's basically the face of the AI buildup. He's a friend of Trump. He took, taking phone calls from Trump, you know, in the middle of, of conferences. Yes, it would be, you know, it would be like as symbolic as it gets to get him up there and, and beat him up over an issue that's going to be very, very difficult for him to defend himself on. So you could think about the staffers of the senators and members of Congress today that are already licking their chops, thinking about the YouTube clips and the X-posts that they'll have where their bosses will get a chance to lay into Jensen for, for,

• 16:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  effectively, well, not even effectively, for, well, again, the language on this is hard, but for sleeping with somebody who, who the US government believes is a spy for China, you know? And not only that, and lying about it. Jensen, for instance, when he went to the, when him and a spokesperson went to the New York Times and Bloomberg, they said there was nothing unusual or unexpected about the relationship. Can you just imagine Senator sitting up there and being like, you didn't know? If you, you know, you didn't know that you, that you were being infiltrated this way? You said it was unusual. You said it wasn't, it wasn't unusual. You said it wasn't, you know, expected. When exactly did you find out? If you can't know that you're sleeping with someone who our government believes is a

• 17:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Chinese spy, how can you be trusted to protect any national security secret? Why should you have security clearance if you do? Why should your company be allowed to sell outside the United States if you have no idea what's going on in the world? Tough questions to answer. So stay tuned for the hearings in Washington. Now, beyond that, you know, one of the things that has interested me about this is why China would do it. It feels like an own goal to me a little bit, right? Remember, Jensen is, has been the top advocate for selling to China and the United States, and the most effective. So, you know, some people have said, well, he's been such a strong advocate because he's been bought off, or because he is, you know, in this relationship with someone who represents

• 18:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  China's interests. I don't believe that. I think Jensen just wanted to sell GPUs. I mean, that's seriously, when it comes down to who Jensen is, the desire to sell GPUs is probably front and center, is front and center. So these are, this is the best possible, the best possible explanation I was able to come up with for this situation, why China would do this. You have basically two, you're losing to the AI war to the United States. You are. The open source Chinese models have made a lot of progress, but ultimately it's the progress of the OpenAI's and the Anthropics built on Nvidia chips, well, and TPUs, which we'll get to in a moment, that have been driving what's going on here.

• 18:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  So if you're China and you look at it and you get to send somebody to, you know, to sort of work with your intelligence service and have an affair with Jensen, it's almost a win-win. If you don't get caught, you could potentially get key information about US semiconductor plans and more from Jensen. That's your opening, right? At least, I don't know, I would imagine Alice has a better chance than a reporter asking what his plans are or some public statement. So if you don't get caught, you potentially get that information. If you do get caught, you send the most important AI company in the United States, which is Nvidia, into turmoil and it gives you a chance

• 19:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  to catch up. Maybe you learn something along the way. So don't get caught, win, get caught, kind of a win. They got the latter. China does deny the accusations, but I guess what do you expect them to do? So that's my best explanation for that. Okay, very quickly, the winners here, I would say they're Dario and Google. Again, Dario has been asking for export control, controls to China for years, put him at, and that's put him at odds with Jensen. He's going to be able to, you know, make his case in a much more righteous manner and look at least much more authentic in terms of his concerns compared to Jensen,

• 20:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  who's, again, whose credibility will be harmed after this. And the other one, of course, is Google. Google is competing with Nvidia on chips. Google has TPUs and they are performing, you know, pretty well compared to Nvidia's GPUs. Now Nvidia is still undoubtedly the leader here, but Google TPUs aren't to be underestimated. And look, I don't know if this timing was intentional or not, but today, you know, Google announced two more versions of TPUs, two more variants, they call them. And one of them is meant for, this is, this is, the timing is unbelievable, this. One of them is meant for government

• 20:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  work and work in highly regulated industries so it can protect data. I mean, if you're a Google TPU salesperson and you see this happening with Nvidia, you're making phone calls today and you're like, let's see if we can get you, you know, at least to try out our chip, you know, and you know, we're going to be here. We don't know what's going to happen with Nvidia. That would be the sales pitch I would make if I was a Google TPU salesperson today. Although I'm sure, I'm sure with such valuable hardware, it's not exactly like your, your typical, typical smile and dial. But anyway, those conversations are going to be interesting. All right, let's end here. We'll Jensen stay on as Nvidia CEO. So think about what Jensen has coming. He has this immediate wave of publicity. That's

• 21:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  not fun. He has a board investigation. That's not fun, although many of the board are loyalists. He has coming hearings, most likely. And the story is not over. More will trickle out. We're going to learn more. And so the question will be, you know, what, what, how much more and how bad it is. If you're looking just at the details, it's just crazy to, this is definitely one of those stories where I keep like remembering that this actually happened. The CEO of Nvidia, the world's largest producer of AI semiconductors or design, well, let's not say producer, had an affair with a woman who is alleged to

• 22:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  be working with Chinese intelligence. It's tough to say that this ends with him holding his job in normal, in a normal course of action. But one thing I've noticed about this AI story and the AI trade is it, it really doesn't matter what has come up here. And this is just an independent observation, not a rooting interest, none of that. But think about all the, the speed bumps and the stumbling blocks and the seemingly, and the end to certain eras of AI. We've seen Sam Altman get fired and rehired. We've seen splits like the split from OpenAI with, from the Anthropic people and the split from Elon

• 22:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Musk between OpenAI, the, the open, current OpenAI executives. So much drama. We've seen bad polling. We've seen local opposition, you know, the moratoriums and the, the pauses and restrictions that were passed this, this past week, but in the midterms weren't the first. You know, there were already some ongoing. We've seen the supposed like wall of data, the fact that the progress in AI was supposed to top out. All this stuff has come up, but the technology has, in some way, it's become so powerful, it's improved so fast and it's, and it's become in such high demand that none of this, none of it

• 23:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  has slowed AI meaningfully. The, the notion of AI, you know, slowing down or the main players leaving their positions against their will, even Jensen, it's tough to imagine right now. There's an, a, almost a, a feeling of inevitability and invincibility of the AI, of AI progress and AI in general right now. And it doesn't seem like the laws of physics apply to it in the same way they apply to every other industry and every other company and every other CEO, you know, not named Jensen Huang or Dario Amade or Sam Altman. This is why, like on the show Friday, for instance, when we were talking about

• 24:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  the vote, it's not that I was upset at the vote, obviously, like my job is to analyze what happens. I simply, you know, wanted to go through the scenario where it wasn't as big of a disaster as a lot of people thought it was because the, the voting against AI, because we've seen time and again that AI has gotten past the stumbling blocks that were supposed to, to stop it. Now, what's happened with Jensen is the most serious, I would say, of any of these, of any of the above. Again, you just kind of, you say it out loud, the CEO of Nvidia admitted to an affair and the person he was sleeping with is connected by, according to United States government's two, according to the United

• 25:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  States government, two Chinese spy agencies. Just, I mean, is there, you know, you say that and you're like, is there any room for doubt? Is there any possibility that this is going to end well for Jensen? It, it doesn't seem like it on the surface, but again, given the history that we've seen, given the developments we've seen in the past couple of months, I think Jensen's going to make it through. I think Jensen's going to remain the CEO of Nvidia, no matter what comes out, no matter how painful the hearings. Nvidia needs him. He needs Nvidia. Of course, there's always a first. It's possible that there are some consequences here, but from what we've seen, if it follows the pattern, going to be the

• 25:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  same, the same as we've seen, you know, previously. So that's my bet. Jensen stays. The show goes on. Will he be a weakened Jensen? Undoubtedly. Will he is, will he potentially face greater export controls and competition? Maybe. But is this the end of Jensen and the end of Nvidia? I don't think so. I can't find a way to get there. And I could be wrong. And if so, I'll admit it. A lot of stuff is, is still going to happen. A lot will still come out, but for the time being, this is the story. All right. We'll have more later this week.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist on tradition. A bold cranberry and winter spice flavor fusion. Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season and only for a limited time. Sprite, obey your thirst.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  Holiday drinks are now at McDonald's like the new Red Bull Frosted Cranberry Energizer. It's Red Bull meets cranberry flavors topped with cold foam and sprinkles made to charge your holiday spirit. Now at McDonald's.