I’m not a conspiracy theorist. But sometimes new information emerges that makes a wild theory worth considering.
That’s where I find myself with the extraordinary downfall of Jensen Huang, the cofounder and longtime CEO of Nvidia, America’s most important AI company.
Huang resigned this week after revelations that he had an extramarital affair with a Chinese businesswoman suspected of spying for Beijing.
The woman, Alice Huang, was also an executive at a company that bought billions of dollars worth of Nvidia’s powerful AI chips and has been investigated over concerns that some of those products may have been illegally diverted to China.
The allegations were explosive. Nvidia’s board moved surprisingly quickly; Huang was out, and the company’s stock plunged, wiping about $300 billion off its market value.
But now some of America’s most respected news organizations are publishing well-sourced reports that raise serious questions about the central allegation in this scandal.
And those reports point toward another possible explanation for Huang’s abrupt departure. What if the spy allegations were exaggerated to achieve a political goal?
That might sound like a conspiracy theory. Until a few days ago, I would have been reluctant to give it much consideration. Now I’m not so sure.
The intelligence isn’t conclusive
On Thursday, CNN reported that US intelligence agencies have not established that Alice Huang was actually spying for China.
There is disagreement among officials about whether she was recruited by China’s intelligence services. Some CIA officials are unconvinced that intercepted communications prove she knowingly passed information to Beijing.
The lead reporter on this explosive piece is Natasha Bertrand, an accomplished national security reporter whose investigations have scrutinized both Republican and Democratic administrations, and whose reporting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine helped earn her team an Emmy.
The possibility that Alice Huang was a Chinese intelligence agent was likely the key reason Nvidia’s board ousted Jensen Huang so quickly. (Business Insider has not confirmed whether Alice Huang was or is a Chinese spy).
Now, there’s an open letter calling for the board to reinstate him as CEO until this is cleared up. It has over 100,000 signatures, including top executives and current Nvidia employees.
“We have not been shown evidence substantiating the allegation that the woman at the center of this controversy was a spy,” the letter reads. “Suspicion or association alone is not a sufficient basis for ending Jensen’s leadership.”
There’s more.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a prominent China hawk, took a less conclusive CIA intelligence report and used it to write his own memo warning President Donald Trump about Huang’s relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
According to a person familiar with the matter, Rubio recast the CIA’s findings in more assertive language. The memo’s findings eventually leaked, setting off the chain of events that ended Huang’s 33-year reign at Nvidia, according to the Washington Post.
The Post’s reporting doesn’t prove Rubio deliberately misrepresented the intelligence or set out to remove Huang. But it raises a question I think deserves serious attention: Was intelligence about a possible Chinese spy amplified to help remove a powerful obstacle to tougher restrictions on China?
We’ve seen intelligence go wrong before
There’s an uncomfortable historical precedent here.
In 2003, the US invaded Iraq after the Bush administration repeatedly warned that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Secretary of State Colin Powell famously presented intelligence to the United Nations to support that case.
After the invasion, investigators found that Iraq did not possess the stockpiles of weapons that had been alleged. The intelligence was badly wrong.
There has been extensive debate ever since about how much of that failure reflected flawed intelligence, political pressure, selective use of evidence, or deliberate exaggeration.
But the broader lesson is clear: Intelligence assessments can be presented with more certainty than the underlying evidence supports, particularly when powerful people have a policy goal they want to achieve.
The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq. Claims about weapons of mass destruction helped build support for that decision.
Follow the chips
So, if intelligence about Alice Huang was exaggerated, who stood to benefit?
To understand the possible motive, you need to understand a bitter fight inside Washington over China’s access to Nvidia technology.
For years, the US government has tried to stop China from obtaining Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips, which are used to develop advanced artificial intelligence. The concern is that China could use this technology to strengthen its military and challenge America’s technological leadership.
But enforcing these restrictions has proved surprisingly difficult. One reason is cloud computing. Here’s how it works.
An American company sells AI chips to a data center operator. Those chips stay physically outside mainland China. The operator then rents that computing power to customers over the internet, including Chinese companies.
This kind of remote access can be legal under existing US rules, depending on the circumstances. It’s also one of the main benefits of cloud computing: You don’t need to own a powerful computer or even be in the same country as one to use it.
But some Washington officials see this as a loophole that undermines the whole point of restricting chip sales to China. And they want to close it.
Jensen Huang was one of the most powerful voices arguing against completely cutting China off. He argued that America is better off if Chinese AI companies continue using American technology. That gives US companies revenue, keeps China dependent on American products, and potentially gives Washington more visibility and influence over Chinese AI development.
Cut China off completely, Huang argued, and Chinese companies will simply accelerate efforts to build their own technology.
Of course, Huang also had an obvious financial interest. Nvidia makes money selling chips, and China is an enormous potential market. And he had direct access to Trump and had repeatedly pushed the administration toward a more accommodating approach.
Now he’s gone. And the people who wanted tougher restrictions have shed their biggest opponent.
The timing is extraordinary
There’s another detail about all this that bothers me. Aspects of this relationship and the concerns about Alice Huang are not new.
On October 9, 2025, more than a year ago, The New York Times published a detailed investigation into Megaspeed, the Singapore-based company where she was an executive.
The Times reported that the company had purchased nearly $2 billion of Nvidia technology and was under investigation over possible violations of US export restrictions.
It also described Alice Huang’s close access to Jensen Huang, including photographs of them together.
US officials had been investigating the company since 2024. The FBI has also been investigating the relationship for at least a year, according to CNN.
So why did all this suddenly become an existential crisis for Nvidia’s CEO in November 2026?
One possible answer is that the political environment changed.
Axios reported this week on tensions inside the administration over efforts to tighten restrictions on China’s access to Nvidia technology.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are pushing legislation that could restrict Chinese companies from remotely accessing powerful American chips located in other countries. The Remote Access Security Act has already passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.
Nvidia has opposed efforts to impose sweeping restrictions on this kind of access.
A provocative assessment
On Thursday, SemiAnalysis, a respected AI research firm, published a provocative assessment of Huang’s departure.
“We aren’t ones for conspiracy theories, but a few events around the same time seem to create a narrative that is hard to ignore,” they wrote.
“The US intelligence community is a large part of the push to get Jensen out of Nvidia,” the firm added. “AI and chip restrictions on China are going to ramp now much faster with the biggest defender Jensen, gone.”
SemiAnalysis offered this as a theory, not proof. But it deserves examination, especially after CNN’s reporting and the Washington Post’s article about Rubio’s memo.
I’m not here to tell readers whether China should have access to America’s most advanced AI chips. There are serious arguments on both sides. And I do not condone Huang’s other behavior, including CEOs having relationships with subordinates at work.
What concerns me is the possibility that US intelligence was overstated to help bring down the leader of one of America’s most important companies.
If that’s what happened, officials may have damaged America’s lead in AI in the name of protecting it.
A week ago, the idea that Washington’s China hawks helped bring down Huang sounded like a conspiracy theory. Today, it’s a possibility worth considering.
And given America’s history of intelligence failures, I don’t think we should simply take the government’s word for it.
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