Trump is spectacularly bad at business — that’s what the Jensen Huang scandal proves

We all thought the AI bubble had burst in China, then Jensen Huang had an affair. Except, oops, it was two alleged affairs. And Donald Trump knew about at least one of them, apparently, but who doesn’t cheat on their wives and what damage can a woman really do?Now that Jensen Huang has finally “resigned” (presumably been ousted) from Nvidia, it’s probably time to discuss how damaging such a belief system is — not for someone’s soul, but for national security. Because Trump’s blind spots, and the blind spots of the fools around him, allowed for a situation that made absolutely everybody vulnerable in an industry the US was supposed to “win”. Trump’s first reaction to hearing that Huang was likely having an affair with a Chinese spy — an allegation that was shared with him by US intelligence, months ago — was, apparently, to ignore it. His second reaction, this week, when Huang’s affairs started making headlines, was to say that he thought Huang should stay on as CEO, that he’s a good guy and that it doesn’t feel like a big deal.Needless to say: it is a huge deal. It’s not just a huge deal because we now know Huang was somewhat of a tomcat, also apparently sleeping with one of his direct reports in the company. It’s a huge deal because it shows how much those all-important AI capabilities — the industry Trump is determined to “win” at; the industry he was against putting any guardrails in for, because something-something China — are controlled by a handful of extremely fallible men. Although this fact has become obvious to everyone, and has hit the stock market hard, those men still refuse to accept that that’s a problem. Case in point: Elon Musk publicly offering to hire Huang when it became clear that the CEO would actually have to go.Trump believes in a back-slapping, boys’-club business world that doesn’t exist anymore. As we know, he loves a ceremony where he can slap on a hard hat and sign a beam. He loves talking about pipes and granite outside the Reflecting Pool. He does not seem to understand how catastrophic it is that Jensen Huang was having an affair with Alice Huang, whose Singapore-based business Megaspeed appears to have helped Nvidia chips make their way into China via Singapore. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has brokered chip sales to China with Trump, has admitted to having an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence has reportedly determined to be a Chinese spy (Getty)But “he had no idea the person he was talking to was a spy,” said Trump, as if that isn’t entirely the point of spying. It’s also worth underlining that if you believe women are dispensable, naive fools, you won’t have the imagination to grasp how extremely clever women spies operate, and how extremely dangerous they can be to your national security. What Trump can’t grasp is that this isn’t about what Jensen Huang believed or knew or whether he’s a nice guy who can build some nice factories again in the future. And of course he’d rather believe his own narrative. Huang helped fund Trump’s infamous ballroom, to the tune of $25 million. He had phone calls with Trump about AI. He travelled on Air Force One. He also sold the president a vision of the future where Nvidia computer chips transformed the AI landscape and totally reshaped the economy in every way.Huang’s perspective on China was an interesting one, too. He wanted open trade with China and he argued that Nvidia should compete with them in an open market manner, rather than trying to seal off trade secrets. He thought the US should try and compete for the massive, highly lucrative Chinese market rather than leaving it to smaller Chinese competitors. Democrats wanted to speak to him in Congress about that (he never turned up.) And now it raises some questions: Sure, the chips guy wanted to sell chips to more people and make lots of money. But how much of that viewpoint was informed by conversations he was having with Alice?Now we’ve heard rumors that Huang was also having an affair with an executive at Nvidia, we have to wonder whether his behavior wasn’t more of an open secret. And even if one of your affair partners isn’t allegedly working for China, you’re still a security risk if you’re putting it about like that. Trump has created his own little oligarchy in AI. Tech billionaires cycle in and out of the White House, contributing funds to his little renovation projects, having cosy little dinners with him at Mar-a-Lago. There are only a handful of American companies that have built LLMs and they are eating up smaller companies in the space at a rapid rate. They also help choose and fund the next companies downstream, or have very close relationships with the firms that do so. Alice Huang attends a dinner hosted by Jensen Huang, Nvidia's CEO at the time, at a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 22, 2025. (TVBS/AP)President Donald Trump with now ex-Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, after presenting him with the National Medal of Science during the "A New Golden Age" summit at the US Institute of Peace, in Washington, DC, on Oct. 8 (Reuters)This network includes the president’s family: Donald Trump Jr is a partner at a company that invests in AI companies, including Musk’s xAI and Vulcan Elements, which currently has a $620 million loan with the Pentagon. Junior also has a data center business with his brother, Eric. And Eric has interests in companies that use AI for defense and robotics, including a company that has a Marine Corps contract. That’s without going into any of the other administration officials, friends and advisors who also have their fingers in a lot of AI pies. We now have ourselves a situation where there is an enormous concentration of AI infrastructure in a handful of companies, increasingly speculative investment assumptions and a political system in which the interests of major technology executives are closely intertwined with government decision-making. And so far, we’ve also had a president who completely resisted any legal oversight or guardrails around AI development, even as polling shows that’s what everyday Americans want. No wonder Trump’s meetings with Xi Jinping have been so friendly.So it turns out Trump isn’t just bad at judging people, but he’s also bad for American businesses, and that he isn’t just bad for American businesses, but he’s also bad for national security. The ideology he and his MAGA acolytes espouse is actively damaging to the country. Because the thing about diversity is that it isn’t just a buzzword; it offers multiple layers of defense. If all your biggest business ventures are controlled by a bunch of men with the same personalities and the same friends, you’re extremely vulnerable to attack from outsiders. They don’t have to spend much time and effort trying to work out how to pick each one of you off, because you’re all the same. Homogeneity breeds groupthink; groupthink breeds weakness.All that posturing about “dominating the western hemisphere” means nothing if you’re too blinded by your feelings to make logical decisions. And essentially this has always been the problem with MAGA: lots of foot-stomping, lots of rage, lots of empty words about taking back the country, and then a lot of nonsense in the background that damages the economy and puts America into a vulnerable position. Democrats will now have a chance to push pending legislation around AI and data chips while showing how truly dumb Trump, Musk and all his billionaire buddies have been to the public. This is complex, fiddly, technological stuff but communicating it concisely to a busy populace will be key to them succeeding in Congress. Trump is fond of complaining that “the world was laughing at us” before he became president. The truth is that everyone’s laughing at the leather jackets and the lapses of judgment now. And Democrats need to get the word out in a way that even Donald Trump could understand.