The CEO of Arguably the World’s Most Important Company Had an Affair. Here’s Why That’s a Trump Scandal.

The Slatest Democrats should probably investigate why Trump was so eager to side with one of his friends. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images and Andrew Harnik/Getty Images. This story is adapted from the Slatest newsletter. You can sign up here to get it in your inbox every day. The list of Donald Trump transgressions that merit congressional investigation—and that might get one, now that Democrats are poised to take control—just got one item longer. On Sunday, news broke that the U.S.-based tech giant Nvidia is looking into an affair its CEO, Jensen Huang, had with an alleged Chinese spy. Huang is both a Trump confidant and a key figure in the ongoing U.S.-China competition over artificial intelligence. This sounds like the plot of a John le Carré novel. What happened? As the New York Times revealed last month, U.S. intelligence agencies believe Huang became romantically entangled with a woman recruited by China’s top spy agency. That Beijing would target Nvidia’s CEO for espionage is no coincidence: The company designs and sells advanced semiconductor chips, and China is currently locked in a race with the U.S. to develop increasingly powerful A.I. systems. The woman in question, Alice Huang (no relation to Jensen), is a former Chinese state media journalist who has reportedly been funneling both chips and information to Beijing. What has Nvidia said about this? It previously insisted that its CEO’s interactions with Alice Huang were aboveboard, describing her merely as an executive at a company to which Nvidia sold chips. But on Sunday, Jensen Huang admitted to the affair—“I was unfaithful to my wife,” he wrote in an apologetic companywide message—and Nvidia said its board would investigate him. OK, that sounds bad. But why would Democrats investigate Trump for this? Despite his insistence that the U.S.-China race for A.I. dominance is existential, Trump last year eased Biden-era export controls, letting U.S. firms like Nvidia sell advanced chips to approved Chinese companies. He did so after lobbying from Jensen Huang, who labeled Biden’s policies a “failure” that had cost Nvidia and other U.S. companies billions, and whom Trump has since called “an incredible guy.” It sure sounds like Trump endangered U.S. national security at the urging of a compromised billionaire buddy. It gets worse. Concerns that Alice Huang’s company, which is based outside China, might be helping Beijing skirt U.S. export controls date to the Biden administration. But Trump learned last year about her ties to Chinese intelligence and “close relationship” with Jensen Huang, yet he continued to let Nvidia sell her company chips anyway. Trump’s Commerce Department, which is supposed to ensure that companies buying chips aren’t a threat to national security, has also permitted sales to suspicious firms in China—including some that don’t name any employees, have vacant or nonexistent headquarters, and are owned by entities the Biden administration previously blacklisted. Trump’s own relationship with Jensen Huang also appears to have been a two-way street. The Times reported today that Nvidia intervened last year to derail a Commerce Department investigation into whether Alice Huang’s company was smuggling chips into China. In its outreach, Nvidia name-dropped Jeff Kessler, a top Trump appointee at the department. (The Justice Department has reportedly taken over the case.) What has Trump said about this? China’s government denies that Alice Huang was a spy, and Nvidia’s board says it has “no reason to believe that either national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised” by Jensen Huang’s affair. But in what looks like yet another example of the president sticking by someone who praises him, Trump has defended Huang as “an honorable guy” and suggested he might bring the CEO along during a visit to China next week. Wow. So what could congressional Democrats do in response? One approach could be to investigate Trump’s motives. The president reportedly declined to act because Nvidia’s growth has helped juice the stock market, which Trump often points to as an economic success story. (On Monday, Nvidia stock dropped even as the broader stock market rose.) And because the president has bought and sold Nvidia stock while in office, l’affaire Huang may also reflect his penchant for mixing business interests with governing. To get to the bottom of it all, Democrats could force Jensen Huang, Kessler, or other administration officials to testify under oath. But just trying to clean up Trump’s mess could also keep Congress busy. Lawmakers of both parties are already talking about including provisions in a forthcoming defense funding bill that would bar advanced chip sales to China. Of course, thanks to Jensen Huang’s apparent indiscretions and the president’s apparent negligence, it may already be too late. Tolga Akdoğan Nothing kicks off the week quite like a corporate sex scandal involving one of the world’s biggest companies and its two most powerful governments. But if you’re craving an escape, my colleagues have a few suggestions: Watch a new Korean film: Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans aren’t the only example of the perils of inviting a documentarian into your home. The new Netflix film Possible Love follows the increasingly tangled dynamic between a (fictional) documentary filmmaker and her subjects. Sam Adams writes that the movie’s “stellar quartet of leads” give viewers plenty to contemplate. Revisit the making of Rocky: For years, Sylvester Stallone has told the story of being so broke while writing Rocky that he had to sell his beloved bullmastiff—and then bought the dog back once he sold the script. It makes a good comeback story, but Mike Sielski says the tale’s “a bunch of baloney.” Listen to a different kind of true-crime podcast: Elizabeth Smart is one of the most famous kidnapping survivors in the U.S. Now, she’s putting her own spin on the true-crime boom. Death, Sex & Money host Anna Sale talked with Smart about her new podcast, The Survivor Files, which puts survivors—not perpetrators—at the center of the narrative. Take your cup of tea to the next level: Many people prepare a soothing cuppa by dunking a tea bag in some hot water and letting it steep for a while. But, if you aspire to a better brew, there are some specific rules to follow, down to the “precise reference masses and dimensions for teapots and bowls.” Start heating your kettle and brush up on the International Organization for Standardization’s guidelines. OK, time for me to give these new brewing techniques a spin. See you tomorrow!