Jensen Huang leads Nvidia, a major company in the artificial intelligence boom.
U.S. officials accuse a Chinese businesswoman of gathering intelligence on Nvidia’s chief, while Beijing rejects the allegations.
China espionage allegations involving Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang have renewed attention on intimate relationships in intelligence operations. U.S. officials say China’s Ministry of State Security recruited businesswoman Alice Huang to gather intelligence on him.
Huang has acknowledged having an affair with the woman, also known as Huang Le. President Trump said Huang told him he did not know she was a spy.
However, China has rejected the accusations against Alice Huang, describing them as smears against the country. U.S. officials have not presented evidence supporting their claims.
Alice Huang held a senior executive position at a Singapore company operating data centres in Southeast Asia. The company uses Nvidia chips and rents computing capacity to Chinese firms.
China espionage allegations highlight history of romantic tactics
The allegations draw attention to China’s longstanding use of romantic relationships in intelligence work. For decades, its intelligence services have used such relationships to compromise prominent people or obtain information.
Yet an earlier Chinese intelligence official publicly rejected those methods within his agency. In April 1960, Kong Yuan of the Central Investigation Department addressed agents in training about seduction tactics.
He told the group that China would not use seduction to entrap people, contrasting its principles with other intelligence agencies. He also assured the female trainees that the agency would not ask them to undertake such operations.
A former Chinese diplomat recounted that pledge in a 2010 memoir. Despite Kong’s assurances, romantic entanglements subsequently became part of China’s intelligence practices.
