What is the US intelligence assessment of the Chinese woman who had a relationship with the president of Nvidia?

US intelligence services are still working to understand the relationship between the Chinese businesswoman who had an affair with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and the Chinese government. Multiple sources told Ofoq News Network that the intelligence collected about her so far does not prove that she was working as a spy for Beijing.

There is disagreement among US officials about the strength of the evidence that Alice Huang was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, the CIA's equivalent, to spy on Jensen Huang and, by extension, US policymakers. The FBI has been investigating Huang's affair for at least a year, but Attorney General Todd Blanche said Thursday that "no conclusions have been made yet by the Department of Justice, by me, or by FBI Director Kash Patel regarding her identity."

Sources reported that some officials in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including those close to Director Jay Clayton, believe that describing Alice Huang as a Chinese spy is “inaccurate and exaggerated.” A source also told Ofoq News that CIA officials are not yet convinced that the intelligence collected on Huang so far, including intercepted communications, proves that she was intentionally leaking information to Beijing.

However, some administration officials told Ofoq News that it is difficult to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government, simply because she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working for one of the most powerful American companies. Under China's national security law, Chinese citizens can be forced to help gather intelligence for the Chinese Communist Party.

Even if she had not yet done so, given her closeness to Hwang, and thus to US President Donald Trump, some officials believed she posed a clear national security risk. But for others, the focus on Huang's relationship with the Chinese government overshadowed broader questions about the US government's inaction to address the smuggling of cutting-edge technology, vital to the artificial intelligence race, into China.

Megaspeed, a Singapore-based company owned by Alice Huang, is a major buyer of Nvidia chips. The Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce began an investigation into the company in 2024, as part of a broader investigation into a system of foreign shell companies suspected of smuggling banned Nvidia chips into China, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Questions are now being raised within the White House about why the Commerce Department did not include Megaspeed on the so-called Entity List, which restricts trade with companies that may pose a risk to US national security or foreign policy interests, at least during the period of the investigation, according to a source familiar with the matter. “There was no need for an intelligence operation to achieve this result,” a former US Commerce Department official told Ofoq News, noting that Jensen Huang had publicly called on the US to sell more chips to China.

The former official added that the possibility of transferring chips to China through Megaspeed was, in theory, a meeting point between China's interests and those of Nvidia, and that a "regulatory loophole" actually allowed this. Jensen Huang resigned from Nvidia, days after reports of an affair between him and a suspected Chinese intelligence agent.

Other reports also emerged on Wednesday evening indicating a separate romantic relationship between him and a female subordinate at Nvidia. Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico Thursday that he left a classified briefing with senior intelligence officials earlier this week unsure about the nature of Huang's relationship with the Chinese government.

“What is the nature of the relationship between Alice Huang and the Chinese, and what do we know about the amount of influence or information that was exchanged,” Hymes said. “Last year, when US intelligence officials first learned of the relationship between Huang and Alice Huang, officials across the government were quick to request more information, and some began sounding the alarm.”

A source told Ofoq News that Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio warned in a memo issued in the spring about Jensen's relationship with Hwang. But it is unclear how detailed the memo was about how much information Huang was sharing or concealing with the Chinese government.

Rubio briefed Trump on Jensen Huang and his relationship with Alice Huang on board Air Force One en route to China in May. An informed source told Ofoq News that this briefing was held before Jensen Huang joined Trump in Alaska for the final leg of the trip.

Sources reported that various agencies continued to conduct their own reviews of intelligence. A person familiar with the investigations told Ofoq News that a particularly disturbing development occurred when US intelligence obtained communications indicating that a person with close ties to Jensen Huang and Nvidia was the source of the information that ended up in Chinese intelligence channels.

One of the sources said that the FBI, which handles the main investigation into counterintelligence cases, told lawmakers last year that it had strong suspicions about the sudden turn in Alice Huang's career; She suddenly went from working as a journalist on Chinese state television to a businesswoman with unusually large purchasing power in the Chinese economy. According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, this matter, along with her close relationship with the then-CEO of Nvidia, continues to raise serious concerns within the office, as the investigation into counterintelligence issues continues.

Conclusively linking the suspicious behavior of Chinese citizens dealing with the United States to a state-directed espionage campaign remains a persistent challenge for counterintelligence officials seeking to counter Chinese espionage activities. It is known that collecting intelligence information about China is extremely difficult, and Beijing routinely obliges its citizens to carry out tasks on its behalf abroad.

Regarding Chinese espionage, estimates vary about the size of the threat. Some officials believe that fears are exaggerated, while others see in every possible meeting or interaction a Chinese spy. A former senior counterintelligence official said: “Many of these people have no fault other than that they are Chinese.”

But Joshua Hodges, a commissioner on the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which examines how trade and economic relations between the US and China affect US national security, said: “We have seen time and time again that the Chinese are very adept at exploiting individuals, whether they know it or not.” He added in his statement to Ofoq News: “In the end, what we usually notice is that these people realize - at some point - who they are working for, and realize the goals they are seeking to achieve.”

Hodges, who served on the National Security Council during Trump's first term, pointed to previous statements by Huang in which he criticized the term "China hawkishness" as a "disgrace." “The goal is clearly to get others to stop talking about this issue,” Hodges commented. “You have one of the biggest CEOs in the world attacking people for expressing their opinion on an issue that matters to them and an issue that only benefits one country.”