More on that Nvidia affair: Jensen Huang stepped down after revelations about an extramarital liaison with a woman who is credibly accused of acting as a Chinese spy. (Yesterday’s reporting also disclosed another extramarital relationship involving an executive who worked for him, per The New York Times, though that detail matters less for national security.)
“Huang is interchangeable with Nvidia,” notes The Washington Post. “The company has journeyed from manufacturing graphics cards for gaming rigs to commanding the crucial chips that underpin artificial intelligence.” The article adds that Nvidia is a heavyweight in a stock market that hinges on AI, and Huang maintains a close rapport with President Donald Trump, who as recently as Monday tried to defend him.
“I did speak to him today,” Trump told reporters on Monday, referring to Huang. “He said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy… I truly believe him.”
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Trump refused to say when he first learned that intelligence agencies had concerns about the woman, Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore-based Megaspeed, and the extent to which she was acting on behalf of Beijing. “I just know Jensen very well,” Trump added. “I think he’s a very honorable man.”
Nvidia, the country’s leading chip producer, whose parts power AI data centers, has seen its stock slide in recent days. Huang has steered Nvidia’s course since the outset, and many credit him with the company’s ascent. “Huang’s significance to Nvidia lies in his willingness to push aggressive tech upgrades and to implement them,” says Ming-Chi Kuo, a veteran analyst at TF International Securities, to Bloomberg. One lingering question, Bloomberg notes, is whether Nvidia can sustain rapid product and technology development if it reduces its reliance on Huang’s personal judgments.
The Washington Post reports:
“Chip policy experts are raising broader concerns about the race between the United States and China over the technology frontier. American firms lead the sector, and Washington players have long sought to use export controls to keep the most powerful chips out of Chinese hands. Nvidia has argued for permitting at least limited exports, a stance the administration allowed last year.”
U.S. officials have previously suspected Megaspeed of functioning as a broker that shipped Nvidia chips to China to dodge export rules, according to news reports. The Commerce Department did not respond to a request for comment.”
In China, officials have denied that Alice Huang operates as an intelligence asset. Social media within the country nudges readers to view the saga as chiefly about Jensen Huang’s marital infidelity, as if espionage concerns vanished from the narrative altogether.
In Washington, “two House Republicans—Rep. John Moolenaar, who chairs a House China committee, and House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast—stated they will likely compel Huang to appear if he doesn’t respond to a prior request for a closed-session briefing,” Bloomberg reports. And “Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, a Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee that oversees export-control programs, urged Huang to resign.”
Scenes from New York: “Across Lewis County, N.Y., where the trees are bare and roadside stalls sell maple products, Amish families—Mr. Stoltzfus among them—are recounting a measles outbreak that has swept through their homes in recent weeks, a virus that has hit their community particularly hard,” reports The New York Times. “One man described how it overwhelmed nine out of ten people in his household. Another noted eight of nine were affected.”
QUICK HITS
- “Scott Colom won a long-shot bid to dislodge Mississippi’s Republican incumbent senator,” reports The Wall Street Journal. Colom, a local prosecutor, becomes the first Democrat to win a Senate seat from Mississippi since 1982 and the first Black senator from the state since the post–Civil War Reconstruction era. The race carried an undercurrent of personal drama, as Hyde-Smith—the opponent—had blocked Colom’s bid for a federal judgeship—a lifetime appointment—when then-President Biden attempted to place him on the bench in 2023. Colom later indicated he would likely not have left the federal judiciary to run for the Senate.”
- A military sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery admonished Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth yesterday after he laughed during a photo opportunity. “All visitors must keep an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times!” the sentinel bellowed.
- Darby Saxbe’s Dad Brain asserts that fathers are inherently predisposed to partake in caregiving, arguing that their brains and bodies respond to infants in ways that prime nurturing behaviors. Yet most of these supposed adaptations only emerge when fathers commit to the responsibilities of parenting—i.e., when they accept the expectation that dads should participate in child care. However, Justin Murphy contends in Unherd that if paternal brains only alter with active parenting, then there should be observable brain changes before, during, and after the birth, even before the father begins any caregiving. This stands in contrast to the maternal brain, where women lose nearly 5% of gray matter during pregnancy prior to caregiving. The more accurate takeaway is that fathers can adapt to childcare to a degree when required, rather than being inherently wired for hands-on parenting.
