WSJ

Beijing is deploying the world’s biggest intelligence-gathering operation to bolster its tech industry. U.S. officials worry Jensen Huang was ensnared.

In September, China’s senior spy master Chen Yixin went public with a blunt assessment of what he described as a growing threat to the Chinese Communist Party: artificial intelligence.

Leaps in machine learning are “directly threatening our political security, system security and ideological security,” Chen, the head of the Ministry of State Security, wrote in a lengthy article. Whoever masters AI, he concluded, will have “grasped the pulse of the times.” 

U.S. officials now fret the Chinese spies orchestrated a major coup: grasping one of the most high-profile players behind the AI boom. 

Jensen Huang was pushed out as CEO of chip company https://archive.ph/o/y6tb9/https://www.wsj.com/market-data/stock/nvda https://archive.ph/o/y6tb9/https://www.wsj.com/market-data/stock/nvdathis week after admitting to an affair with a business associate named https://archive.ph/o/y6tb9/https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/a-mystery-businessman-introduced-jensen-huang-to-his-paramourher-husband-1ec3b581, who U.S. officials suspect was working with Chinese intelligence. Nvidia’s board said it has no reason to believe U.S. national security was compromised and has launched an internal investigation. President Trump says the FBI is on the case. 

For years the Chinese state has been accused by Western countries of using covert operations to bolster strategic industries. This includes purloining cutting-edge U.S. fighter F-35 jet designs, special foam used to make submarines buoyant and even genetically modified corn seed from Iowa. The holy grail is now chips and AI.

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