President Donald Trump was aware of intelligence warnings about former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s relationship with a suspected Chinese spy and brushed them off, according to insiders who spoke with Zeteo.
“Zeteo can confirm, per sources familiar with the situation, that the president knew and, in the words of one person involved in the matter, ‘didn’t take it seriously enough,’” wrote Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng in a report published Saturday. “Huang, a towering figure in the AI industry, continued to advise Trump on policies directly affecting his business and trade.”
The warnings centered on Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang, the former top executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed, whom U.S. intelligence suspects of being a Chinese intelligence recruit. U.S. investigators are probing Megaspeed for allegedly funneling restricted Nvidia chips into China in violation of American export rules. Alice Huang has not been charged, per Yahoo News.
Major news outlets previously reported that Trump downplayed the warnings, including one from Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year.
The New York Times reported that Trump called Huang on Tuesday, before the executive stepped down, and urged him to keep fighting for his job — even after intelligence agencies concluded Huang was having an affair with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy.
The fallout has sparked open warfare inside the administration. On Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that four agencies — Treasury, the Pentagon, the State Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative — had pushed “for months” to add Megaspeed to the federal entity list, which restricts companies’ access to sensitive U.S. technology.
“But Commerce has the pen,” Bessent said in a perceived swipe at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. “You will have to ask them about their internal processes.”
Multiple Trump officials have accused Lutnick of slow-walking the move. A Lutnick spokesperson said he agreed to appear voluntarily before the Banking Committee on Capitol Hill.
“It’s a feeding frenzy over Howard,” one senior administration official told Zeteo. “It’s well deserved, and not only for Nvidia.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche said Thursday that neither the Justice Department nor FBI Director Kash Patel had reached conclusions about “who she is or is not.”