Jensen Huang has confessed to an extramarital affair. But his private life is not the point. Chinese regulatory and court records tell a story about the woman that American media has missed. Alice Huang was a senior executive and 25% owner of a Shanghai private equity firm. That firm was penalized by Chinese regulators for hiding its stake in a listed company while helping a rogue financier seize control of it. The financier was later sentenced to life in prison for a fraud scheme that raised more than $11 billion. The firm’s founder, her former business partner, was detained by Shanghai police this year on suspicion of stock manipulation. In China, a past like that is leverage in the hands of the state.
Ms. Huang then resurfaced in Singapore, founding a company now suspected of smuggling billions of dollars in restricted Nvidia chips into China. U.S. intelligence has reportedly concluded that she passed information to Beijing. And this is the woman the head of one of the world’s most consequential chip companies kept close in both his personal life and his business. According to the New York Times, President Donald Trump was briefed on this a year ago but did nothing. That silence is profoundly alarming. No amount of business genius can buy an exemption at the expense of America’s national security. The national interest must always outweigh the stature of any single company or CEO.
