Did Jensen finally "Buy Chinese"?
Jensen Huang admitted an affair, and within days the story was about national security and loyalty. Jun Jiang on why a business position must not be rewritten as a question of loyalty. With a film in English, Dutch and Chinese.
By Jun Jiang
Sunday, November 8, 2026. Nvidia founder Jensen Huang sent a letter to all employees. He admitted he had been unfaithful to his wife and apologized to his family, his staff, the board and shareholders. The same day, Nvidia's board announced an independent investigation. The next day, Nvidia's stock fell about 8%.
The world was stunned. My first reaction was not surprise. It was puzzlement. Since when is a billionaire's affair news? And since when is cheating on your wife a matter of American national security?
The film 09:10
The article as an animated film, read by an AI voice. The film is also available in Dutch and Chinese.
Not a confession. A controlled amputation.
Let's be clear about one thing: Jensen Huang did not come forward "suddenly" or "voluntarily."
For a week before, The New York Times had been reporting on his close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman, and he had previously denied an affair. On Friday evening, November 7, several outlets reported that the two had a romantic relationship. At the same time, a group of Republican House committee chairs demanded that he brief them on the relationship and on Nvidia's controls over sensitive information.
So this apology letter was not an act of conscience. It was a precise calculation: rather than let others peel back the story layer by layer, admit the least damaging part first — the affair. Confessing to being unfaithful to his wife was a way to cut off the suggestion that he had been unfaithful to his country. You sacrifice the arm to save the body.
The real issue is not the affair
The woman is Alice Huang (Huang Le), no relation to Jensen, a former senior executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company. Megaspeed is an Nvidia customer that has been accused of helping advanced chips reach China in breach of US export controls. Nvidia says those diversion allegations were investigated by the company last year and found to be unfounded.
Citing unnamed people briefed on the intelligence, The New York Times reports that US agencies concluded she was an asset of China's Ministry of State Security and had been under surveillance for about a year, and that President Trump was briefed long ago but chose not to act. The Chinese government denies the allegations. So far, no public evidence has emerged that would allow these espionage claims to be independently verified.
They knew a year ago. Nothing happened for a year. So why now?
Look at the timing — but don't follow only one thread
On November 3, the US midterm elections delivered a heavy defeat to Trump's Republicans, and the Democrats won both chambers of Congress. Five days later, Jensen Huang confessed and the board opened its investigation. Many will jump to the obvious conclusion: this is post-election political payback.
I don't see it that way. The allegations were published on October 29, before the election. The people demanding a briefing were Republicans. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio had reportedly warned senior administration officials about the relationship.
This is not partisan payback. It is something more worrying: on "chips equal national security," the two American parties no longer disagree. What Jensen Huang relied on was his personal relationship with the White House. Once national security becomes a bipartisan consensus, a personal relationship is no longer a shield.
Who is Jensen Huang?
Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States, he founded Nvidia in 1993 and spent 33 years turning a graphics card company into one of the most important companies of the AI age. He is a Chinese-American, and one of the most striking success stories of American innovation.
He has consistently argued in public that the US should allow Nvidia to sell more chips to China. His logic is simple: if you don't sell, China will build its own substitutes faster, and keeping American companies out of the Chinese market for the long term may not serve American interests at all.
The problem is that Washington now defines advanced AI chips as a strategic national asset. Can the interests of an entrepreneur who thinks in terms of global markets and a state that puts geopolitics first stay aligned forever?
The sharpest counterargument — and my answer
According to The New York Times, one of Alice Huang's objectives was to push for Nvidia's advanced chips to be made available in China. That happens to match Jensen Huang's public position. Critics will say: there's your proof.
But think about where that logic leads. If "arguing for chip sales to China" can itself be read as a sign of being compromised, then every American CEO who opposes export controls, and every shareholder who wants to keep the Chinese market, becomes a suspect. A business position gets rewritten as a question of loyalty. Whether Jensen Huang's position is right is open to debate. Whether he ever leaked secrets is a question for evidence. The two must not be confused.
Who needs the deal more?
Now look at the reality of the US-China chip trade. The US restricts exports of advanced chips, and China is also holding back imports of Nvidia chips. Reuters reported in early November that about 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are sitting in Hong Kong, waiting for Beijing to approve large-scale imports.
China is the buyer, Nvidia is the seller. China needs computing power, of course — but the one holding the inventory is the one more eager to sell. That is basic business sense. China is no longer a market waiting for America to hand out chips.
So when someone on LinkedIn declares that this must be a "honey trap" carefully orchestrated by Beijing to steal Nvidia's technology, I only want to ask: Why is the first explanation always a Chinese plot whenever China is involved? Who benefits from damage to Jensen Huang's credibility? Who wants to change Nvidia's China sales strategy? If Jensen Huang's power is weakened, whose influence grows?
Asking these questions does not mean claiming that anyone orchestrated this. But accepting a single narrative without studying the interests behind it is not political analysis. It is picking a side.
Why "Buy Chinese"?
The Chinese internet reacted to this story in an entirely different register. Some people stitched together photos of tech tycoons with Chinese women and joked that Silicon Valley's giants can never resist Chinese women. Others quipped that Old Huang finally chose a "domestic product." Hence today's title.
But I added a question mark, because the joke itself deserves reflection. Western commentators call her a "honey trap"; the Chinese internet calls her a "domestic product." The two sides seem opposed, but they are doing exactly the same thing: turning a woman into a tool. One side calls her a weapon, the other a commodity, and nobody treats her as a person. Whether she actually worked for Chinese intelligence should be decided by evidence — not by her nationality or her gender.
What really worries me
What this affair makes me think about is not how charming Chinese women are. It is the future of Chinese-American tech leaders. These are people who were educated in America, built companies there, created jobs, paid taxes and made enormous contributions to American technological progress. Jensen Huang is the most outstanding among them.
As US-China tech competition intensifies, will an American entrepreneur with Chinese heritage and normal business ties to China find his loyalty questioned more and more easily? If so, can America keep attracting the best talent in the world as it has in the past?
I don't believe Jensen Huang is destined to lose Nvidia. The board says it currently has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and Nvidia says he will remain CEO. Nor have I seen any evidence of a systematic purge of Chinese-American business leaders.
But a person can love America and still want to do business with China. Commercial cooperation should not automatically equal political betrayal. National security matters, of course — but once its boundaries expand without limit, the damage is not limited to one entrepreneur. It reaches a country's whole environment for innovation.
Closing
Jensen Huang's affair is his personal responsibility. Whether there was real intelligence activity is a question for evidence. What I care about has never been who Old Huang fell for. It is this: when business, technology, capital and political power collide head-on, who actually decides an entrepreneur's fate? I'll keep watching.
Sources for the facts in this article
- Reuters, 5 November 2026: about 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips waiting in Hong Kong (via The Standard)
- NPR, 8 November 2026: the letter to employees and the board investigation
- Investing.com, 9 November 2026: the share price fell as much as 8% during the day
- Taiwan News: the letter from three Republican House committee chairs
- AP via PBS: China denies the allegations
