Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is the center of a new controversy as the U.S. intelligence community believes that he had a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy.

According to the Financial Times, Alice Huang, sometimes referred to as Huang Le, was a top executive at Singaporean firm Megaspeed and was reportedly romantically involved with the CEO of the world’s largest AI chip manufacturer. Notably, Jensen is currently married to his wife of 41 years, Lori Huang.

It’s unclear whether Alice Huang was recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) before she joined Megaspeed or after she had already established a business relationship with Jensen, but it’s been reported that the suspected agent was apparently targeting the Nvidia head to help Chinese companies gain access to banned AI chips.

Megaspeed has been accused of smuggling $2 billion worth of AI chips into China via its subsidiary Speedmatrix, although Nvidia insists the company has no ties to China.

    • Garfunkel@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      I think the dumb one is the one who believes that the financial times will disclose classified intelligence operation. If Huang had done it, he’d be locked up.

      • ATPA9@feddit.org
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        13 hours ago
        1. He is rich

        2. What he did had no impact on other rich people

        So why would they lock him up?

        • Garfunkel@lemmy.ca
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          13 hours ago

          Sorry I forgot the american system is broken. I agree it’s plausible, I just prefer to question the validity of the rumor reported above.

    • takeda@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      Yeah, there always was that notion that billionaires got where they are because they are really smart.

      Those attention seeking billionaires showed us that their wealth has nothing to do with being smart, they aren’t any smarter than an average person, in fact most of the time they are dumber. They got where they are, because they already were wealthy and are not ethical.

      • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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        24 hours ago

        There is not a chance in the world that a billionaire ceo is dumber than the average person what are you smoking. Greedy, sociopathic, selfish, etc yes, but not dumb.

        • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          [TL;DR - Time, Place, Industry booms, and being from a wealthy enough family, have more to do with the current crop of tech billionaires].

          Occam, you have an oversized degree of faith in meritocracy. Most of them are either right time/place/company type deals - aided by rich parents and being somewhat able to Capitalize on local industry booms (sometimes generationally).

          How are you even claiming to measure intelligence? By standardized tests? That’s not really applicable to what we’re talking about (causes of wealth and opportunity). Money, time and place, and parentage are more pivotal than “intelligence” (whatever the hell that means).

          I mean Peter Thiel’s parents were in mining in apathied Zambia, Elon Musk’s father was also wealthy, involved with mining in a different African apathied county (so both have local booms/Colonialism, money, and family behind them). Jeff Bezos parents were wealthy enough to give him $300,000 for a business idea, and to send him to Stanford University. Peter Thiel’s parents were wealthy enough to send him to Princeton University.

          The Huangs appear to have been wealthy enough to send their children to school in America for a Western education (a big deal for Taiwan which was receiving a boom in American funds at the time). His father was actually in the same line of work (Chemical Engineering) as Thiel’s father.

          Actually a lot of these tech billionaires were also born in a specific era as well (1955 -1975) so their working lives/careers were peaking around the tech / dot com booms.

          The Huangs were in a position to flee communist China in the 1970s and chose to live under the ROC (which despite having ‘Republic’ in the name - was a rightwing millitary dictatorship up until the late 80s, hence received a lot of anti-communist American funding as a country).

          So you see, it’s not some meritocracy of “intelligence” - it’s being from a wealthy family, born at the right time, and already being in certain boom industries as those industries boom that gives most of these families/men a specific advantage. It’s time, place, boom, and pre-existing wealth that are the drivers. Intelligence is secondary at best.

          I’m not a huge subscriber to the idea we even have a good concept of “intelligent” to go on. When I say he seems kind of dumb, it’s associational. He has something about him that makes him seem kind of dumb. An affectation, type of expression. Musk and Bezos also have a bit of dumb guy energy too. Thiel - less so. He seems kind of mentally ill.

          • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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            19 hours ago

            I just think intelligence is a weird thing to attack billionaire ceos over, but if your point is more about different kinds of intelligence then I don’t have an issue with it.

            • bthest@lemmy.world
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              13 hours ago

              I just think intelligence is a weird thing to attack billionaire ceos over

              Ok wait. Why is that a weird thing? They are getting away with destroying the world because so many morons believe they are geniuses.

              • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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                47 minutes ago

                No they get away with destroying the world because they are unethical. Intelligence is unrelated to morality.

            • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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              19 hours ago

              Something about his face and the constant wearing of the same leather jacket makes me just think; this guy seems a little dumb. He’s got something a little dumb about him.

              But you’re right, no one’s “intelligent” in all ways possible. Everyone’s got their dumb.

          • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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            44 minutes ago

            In order to reach that level of success and power you need both. It’s not enough to have rich parents and it’s not enough to just be smart.

        • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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          23 hours ago

          You’re clearly not from the US then? Or have you just ignored every rich person in the news the past 6 years?

    • OccamsRazer@lemmy.world
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      24 hours ago

      100 percent chance that he is far smarter than you. He obviously has his blind spots though, like empathy, greed and apparently women.

      • DarkCloud@lemmy.world
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        22 hours ago

        He may well be smarter, all the same he “seems kind of dumb”.

        See how words have meanings, Occam.

  • CobraCommander@quokk.au
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    1 day ago

    This the same intelligence community that told the world there was WMDs in Iraq?

    Feels like they want something to pressure Nvidia leadership with more than anything.

    • Eldritch@piefed.world
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      1 day ago

      The problem with propaganda is that it generally only really works when there is a kernel of truth for it to be based on. Therefore you cannot simply completely dismiss something because it’s propaganda. And in this case it’s sort of whataboutism anyways.

      China is easily as bad with misinformation and propaganda. Yet I wouldn’t dismiss everything they say out of hand just because of that. The problem with capitalists like China is that since the state has its fingers in all pies. It’s hard to prove that the state wasn’t involved in actions like this. Maybe it was the company doing this on its own. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way is still a bad look that China shouldn’t allow.

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        23 hours ago

        Why woulda China give a shit? It wasn’t illegal to import these chips into China. Just illegal for Jensen to knowingly export them to China.

        This feels more like them saying “wow we investigated it and found you were tricked so it’s totally not your fault for purposely avoiding export bans. It’s all chinas fault.”