Everything You Need to Know About the Jensen Huang Spy Story | Hard Fork

Speaker 0:00 In all my years on the computer, I never thought I'd see graphics cards and international sex scandal in the same story. But this week, The Times broke the news that Jensen Huang, the CEO of the chipmaker Nvidia and one of the most important figures in AI and tech, has been having an affair with a top executive at a Singaporean data center company who also happens to be an alleged Chinese spy, and whose company was reportedly illegally funneling advanced Nvidia chips to Chinese companies. Huang remains in place atop Nvidia, which is launching its own internal investigation, and the new Democratic Congress could follow with one of their own, especially since President Trump has apparently been aware of the allegations and unwilling to intervene for a year. Look, I love a spy story, and I won't pretend that the sex scandal part of this story isn't a huge draw for me here. But I'm also fascinated that this lurid tale of international intrigue is all about graphics card trade policy. The fact is, this is the quintessential 21st century spy story. We're not talking about troop movements. No one's stealing top secret microfilm. Jensen Huang wears a leather jacket, not a tuxedo. What we have instead is a tale of executive hubris, Chinese holding companies, export controls, and of course, a race to create the world's most powerful and important technology. And because this is such a rich and fascinating intersection of our interests, we had to talk about it as soon as possible. Today, on what we're calling an emergency episode, I'm joined by technology journalist Steven Witt, who literally wrote the book on Jensen Huang and Nvidia, to talk about these revelations. How did someone so powerful become an international espionage target and fall for it? Why did it take so long for this story to come out, and who leaked it? How much of what Huang has been saying as a leader of the tech industry is now going to be called into question? And is it possible that this story is dramatic enough that it could pop the bubble we're all so worried about? I'm Max Read. This is Hard Fork. Joining me from a hotel room in Singapore is Steven Witt, author of last year's book, The Thinking Machine: A Biography of Jensen Huang and Nvidia, and he's gonna help me try to wrap my head around this. Welcome to Hard Fork, Steven.

Stephen Witt 2:10 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2:11 Of course. What have your last 24, 48 hours been like as this story has been breaking?

Stephen Witt 2:15 Uh, I've been on, uh, every news network I think in the world, uh, has invited me on. Uh, I'm having to decline, uh, invitations that at any other time I would have been enjoyed, uh, you know, overjoyed to get. Um, it's 3:30 in the morning where I am, [laughs] and, uh, I'm just reporting. I'm, I'm still working. It's, it's, it's nuts. What a story.

Speaker 2:34 So it seems to me that there are sort of three big revelations in this unfolding story, or at least things that were revelations to me. One is that Jensen Huang was having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy.

Stephen Witt 2:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:44 Two, that his affair partner's company, Megaspeed, is suspected to have been funneling Nvidia chips to China in contravention of U.S. export bans, and then three, a sort of series of things we've now learned about the Trump administration's knowledge of this and possible intervention into Commerce Department investigations.

Stephen Witt 3:01 Yes.

Speaker 3:01 What I want to ask is, how much of this was revelatory to you? You know, you've spent a lot of time reporting on, talking to, thinking about Jensen Huang. How much of it was surprising?

Stephen Witt 3:10 Uh, well, everyone knew that the Malaysia, uh, data center thing was a cutout to smuggle China. That had been reported, uh, actually by The Times over a year ago, and even before that, people understood that, you know, Malaysia didn't have a big AI development program. If, if 10 or, or 15% of Nvidia's revenue was coming from Malaysia-

Speaker 3:31 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 3:31 ... uh, really that meant that those chips were being, uh, kind of s- distributed to China in one way or another.

Speaker 3:38 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 3:38 Now, people, some people think they were actually just kind of, like, brought to the data center, uh, had the labels, you know, removed and replaced and then just sent directly into mainland China as a real smuggling operation. Others were maybe like, "Well, maybe the data center's being used, you know, by Chinese assets in, in some way." Uh, but that was pretty well-known. The affair thing, there were whispers. Uh, I-

Speaker 4:02 Yeah

Stephen Witt 4:02 ... I, it wasn't a complete stunner. I had heard stuff about this, uh, uh, going into this summer particularly, and had been trying to find this, but, uh, you know, I didn't have access to the thing that I guess, I guess really broke the story, which was actually White House intelligence.

Speaker 4:19 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 4:19 And this was the kind of surprising thing getting to the third part. Although this is a story about Nvidia and although it's a story about kind of s- you know, smuggling and affairs and stuff, I think Jensen found himself on the wrong side of the China hawks here, and, uh, I think, I think that's where a lot of kind of the reporting on this, uh, uh, uh, went. It went to the China hawks who had an ax to grind, uh, with, with Jensen.

Speaker 4:42 Yeah, and I wanna talk about that in a moment, but before we get there, um, I think one of the big reasons this is a big story is we don't have that many examples of CEOs who are as powerful as Jensen Huang. So can you just briefly for our listeners, um, describe his role at Nvidia, in the greater AI ecosystem, and explain maybe, you know, why it's, it's sort of uniquely damaging for him to be involved in a scandal like this?

Stephen Witt 5:05 Jensen is the founder, CEO, and basically king of, of Nvidia. He's been in that role for 30-plus years. You know, Nvidia's an unusual organization. Typically you'll have in a corporate org chart, like, the CEO and then, like, kind of, you know, a, a second layer of management of maybe six to eight people who assist the CEO in various roles. That doesn't exist in Nvidia. There's Jensen, there's nobody in the second tier, and then there's 60 people who report directly to him. So it's a very unusual arrangement. Uh, Nvidia is Jensen, uh, i- to a degree that I've almost never seen at any other corporation, except maybe some of Elon Musk's stuff. It, it's really just this one guy in control, managing and running everything. Uh, so if he is, you know, compromised, if he has to be, has to step down, if in some way he can't do his job, that's uniquely damaging for Nvidia. Nvidia has grown so large selling AI hardware, selling microchips in particular into data centers, that it's now like a linchpin of the American economy. So there's this giant key man risk, not just for Nvidia, but actually to some extent for the entire U.S. economy around, around this guy. So this is a, a painful one for, uh, U.S. markets. It's very painful for Nvidia. You know, Jensen's judgment has to be called into question. Uh, he... This guy was bulletproof for the last decade.

Speaker 6:29 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 6:29 His stock did nothing but go up, and every call he made was right.

Speaker 6:33 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 6:34 Uh, uh, now it doesn't look that way.

Speaker 6:37 Um, I understand this is gonna take a little while to play out, but given his importance as you've described it, I mean, are, uh... would you be surprised if he was ousted?

Stephen Witt 6:44 I would be surprised if the board fired him.

Speaker 6:46 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 6:47 Uh, I don't think that would be in the best interest of Nvidia shareholders.

Speaker 6:50 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 6:50 Uh, a- and that's their job, right? I think that would make Nvidia stock go down a lot, so I don't think the board will do that. The, the real risk to me to Jensen comes from, uh, what are, you know, what if, what Democrats and Republicans are both asking for, which is congressional hearings and congressional testimony. And there's a number of ways that this can go wrong, but probably the most important one is the fact that it is so obvious to anyone looking at it for one second that this, you know, these data centers in Malaysia were, were not for Malaysian people. They were for Chinese AI developers to get around these export restrictions. And Jensen could maybe play dumb and not understand that, uh, in an abstract way, but if he's sleeping with the head of the company, he can't play dumb anymore, right?

Speaker 7:32 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 7:32 Like, he must have known what was going on. Uh, and that's against the law, right? So, so this creates an enormous, uh, I think, uh, legal liability both for Nvidia, they might have to pay a mass- a massive fine, and, and even for Jensen himself. Uh, I, you know, the Republicans are asking him to testify behind closed doors. Uh, that's actually positive for Jensen 'cause it's, it's less embarrassing.

Speaker 7:56 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 7:56 I, I think the Democrats are gonna hold their own, or attempt to hold, uh, their own inquiries and hearings once, once they take control, and I imagine those will be public. Uh, I mean, it-

Speaker 8:04 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 8:05 ... it's gonna be a tricky situation for him. I just don't know how he can say, "Oh, I don't, I didn't know that Malaysia was a, a cutout. I didn't know about this woman." And this is the thing that shocks me, okay? Like, uh, you know, it's terrible that Jensen had an affair, but these things do happen, right, in the course of kind of, like, human life. I'm so shocked that Jensen had an affair with this specific woman-

Speaker 8:31 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 8:31 ... who is just a walking red flag.

Speaker 8:33 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 8:34 Like, she had no background in computer science as far as anyone can tell.

Speaker 8:38 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 8:38 And suddenly she's running this kind of data center operation that's a front. Uh, this woman is a smuggler. A- a- and, like, to, to begin a, a romantic relationship with someone like that just shows an almost, like, self-destructive amount of poor judgment. I, I can't believe nobody warned him, but, you know, the thing about Jensen is he's, he's very headstrong and doesn't listen to any advice. I mean, so, you know, he-

Speaker 9:02 Yeah, I mean, let me ask. You wrote, you have sort of literally written the book on Jensen.

Stephen Witt 9:06 Yeah.

Speaker 9:06 You spent a lot of time sort of in his head. W- what do you think was going on there? Was it just a, a total lapse in judgment?

Stephen Witt 9:12 Yeah. Yeah, pure hubris. I mean, I don't think, I don't think there was some strategic thing he was doing.

Speaker 9:17 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 9:18 What do you think was going on in his head?

Speaker 9:20 Right.

Stephen Witt 9:20 Uh, you know, he, he, he fell for it.

Speaker 9:22 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 9:22 I mean, he got played. He got played. That's all, that's all you can say.

Speaker 9:26 Yeah. In terms of, just to return to the question of Jensen's role at Nvidia, um, if he, uh, does end up having to leave the company down the road, i- is there a succession plan in place? As you say, he's the king. Like, w- who's the heir?

Stephen Witt 9:38 I asked him, "Who's your, who is your successor?" And he's like, "Nobody." Uh, he didn't have any kind of plan personally. He never personally selected or named any kind of successor. Uh, you know, again, hubris. Maybe he thought he was immortal. Um-

Speaker 9:51 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 9:51 ... you know, I did put this question to the board, uh, this was in, back in 2024, and they say, "Oh, well, you know, we've looked at some candidates." Uh, one of those candidates was a guy named Jay Puri. Uh, he just retired. Uh-

Speaker 10:02 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 10:02 ... he's in his 70s, so I don't think it's gonna be him. You know, I think Jensen's gonna fight this one a- as hard-

Speaker 10:08 Yeah

Stephen Witt 10:08 ... as he can. And Jensen is a fighter. He, he's a-

Speaker 10:10 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 10:10 ... knife fighter. I actually think he will probably survive this, believe it or not. Um, you know, the thing that would bring him down, as I say, is congressional hearings. I don't, I, I, you know, never say never. I don't think the board will get rid of him.

Speaker 10:25 Mm.

Stephen Witt 10:25 Uh, and the board is comprised of some of the original founders of Nvidia, guys like, uh, Tench Cox, who have been there since day one, since 1993.

Speaker 10:34 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 10:34 You know, Tench Cox has, Tench, Tench Cox has I think something like $2 to $3 billion worth of Nvidia stock. Like, he, he's not gonna do anything to damage the company.

Speaker 10:44 Yeah. So, uh, I know that two of Jensen's kids and his son-in-law work at Nvidia. They're not being, as far as you know, sort of groomed to take over his position at some point?

Stephen Witt 10:51 Uh, yeah, so this is an interesting question. Uh, this is the thing. Jensen always presented to me and to others this total family man image.

Speaker 10:59 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 10:59 I mean, he talked about his wife a lot and how much he loved her. They've been together since he was 17 years old. They got married in their early 20s. Um, you know, if, if they get divorced, she may become one of the wealthiest women in America independently, sort of like Mackenzie Scott Bezos. Um, but, but, uh, you know, his kids are close. He keeps them at the company, uh, Madison and Spencer. But they don't have technical backgrounds. Uh, you know, Spencer studied photography. Madison went to culinary school. And, and whoever runs Nvidia, whoever's the CEO has to be, in addition to being a business person, a world-class computer scientist.

Speaker 11:37 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 11:37 They have to be one of the best computer scientists alive, which is what Jensen is. I mean, he's in the National Academy of Engineering. He's got a master's in electrical engineering. You know, you talk to people, they're like, "Yeah, his computer science sc- skills are excellent." So they can be present for the transition. They will inherit a large number of shares, but I don't think they can run the company. Uh, Madison married this guy Nico Caprez. Uh, earlier this year, uh, I think it was just about a month ago in Hawaii. Uh, so now, so Jen- Jensen has him as a son-in-law as well. He's been promoted, you know, rapidly within the company. Uh, we'll see if he actually has a, a role to play.

Speaker 12:12 Yeah. Let's turn to the political question here. I think it's fair to say that Jensen is Trump's favorite CEO, or certainly one of his favorite CEOs.

Stephen Witt 12:19 I think he was.

Speaker 12:20 [laughs] Um, so the, the president says he will take him on his upcoming trip to China. Here's the Trump quote, "I haven't heard he's done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody, but you know, so does everybody else. I think he's an honorable guy. I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it. No, you can't do that with people. He has done an amazing job for our country." That's the President of the United States on the man who was having an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Um, but let's ta- How did Jensen get into this position in the Trump administration? A- a- and, and furthermore, like, how, how did he become such an important figure in the AI sector in general?

Stephen Witt 12:56 Yeah, this is the amazing thing. When I was talking to Jensen in 2024, he had no interest in politics. He had never made a political donation, and he had never endorsed a political candidate or indeed any policy. I mean, a couple things related to, you know, exports, but, but very little. Uh, you know, he was not a political guy, and he didn't even attend Trump's inauguration. He was, he was in Taiwan while Sam and all the rest of them were kind of behind Trump, uh, in that show of power in the inauguration. But he got Trump's ear, a- and my impression is that he kind of became Trump's friend through this really kind of shameless approach of flattery.

Speaker 13:32 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 13:32 Uh, Jensen is an engineer, and what he told me is he thinks about everything as an engineering problem, meaning you're gonna study the inputs, look at the outputs, and then modify the inputs to control the system until you get the outcome that you want. Well, you know, Trump, he has this bottomless need for validation and, and, and Jensen supplies that to him. He just, he just shamelessly kisses his butt, a- a- and I think this makes Trump like him. Uh, you know, and, you know, the other thing is Jensen's a winner, right? Trump always wants to be around winners, and for most of this year, uh, Nvidia was the single most valuable company i- i- in the world, maybe in human history. Uh, and so this made Trump and, and Jensen wanna be close to each other. I think Jensen understands Trump at a certain level, how to program him, how to, how to... You know, he's not... Ego's not gonna get in the way of Jensen, in, in the way it might for another tech executive.

Speaker 14:22 Right. Let's talk about his, uh, Jensen's stance on China because that's important to the story on a couple different levels. He's been, um, a pretty outspoken advocate for essentially selling his own chips directly to China in contravention of US export restrictions on those chips-

Stephen Witt 14:37 Yes

Speaker 14:37 ... which have been put into place to try to slow down China's own AI development. Um, tell me a little bit about his stance, how he came to that, and, and how he's advocated for it.

Stephen Witt 14:47 You know, I was always a little surprised by it myself, but there's certainly a great business case for it, right? Uh, China's gonna have a massive data center build-out that looks just like the US's, and when they do, they're gonna fill that all with computing equipment. So that's another entire data center build-out that he could supply, which presumably would double the value of his company. And so it's a very straightforward kind of, like, P&L, you know, profit reason that, that Jensen wants this. Um, you know, I think also, you know, the, the justification for this is like if, if we don't sell this to them, they will build it. They will build their own-

Speaker 15:20 Mm

Stephen Witt 15:20 ... uh, kind of AI hardware stack, and then we'll have to compete against that, and that will be very challenging for us, and we might lose. And Jensen is, is genuinely very afraid of that.

Speaker 15:28 Mm.

Stephen Witt 15:29 That is a theme that has been going all the way back to his career right to the beginning, uh, the fear that his equipment, even in the video game days, would get cloned by Chinese competitors and sold at a fraction of the cost and he would go out of business. Certainly, that's the history of hardware, so it's, it's, it's normal that he would be afraid of that and would be looking to p- to prevent that. What poisons the discourse now is this romantic relationship. Well, are you saying this because you believe it, or are you saying this because you're, uh, entangled with a foreign intelligence asset who is manipulating you? Uh, [laughs] you know, I, and I, I think probably the, that narrative is not true. I think Jensen would say this anyway, but his credibility is zero. Like, he can never talk about China or export restrictions again without sounding like a fool, like a, like a, you know, like a, like a, like an intelligence, uh, play has happened to him.

Speaker 16:22 Like a patsy, basically.

Stephen Witt 16:23 Yeah, preci- precisely. Yeah, like a stooge.

Speaker 16:26 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 16:26 Uh, so, so I think, uh, that argument has gone out the window. I think, I, I imagine Nvidia will, in short order, not be able to sell anything [laughs] to China ever again.

Speaker 16:35 Yeah. I mean, well, let's, let's talk about a little bit, you brought up before the possibility that, that essentially what's happened here is that Jensen's enemies within the Trump administration had sort of gotten their knives out for him. Tell me why you think that and who those enemies, you know, would be.

Stephen Witt 16:50 There were people on the right who did not like this. I don't think they... It's not that they didn't like Jensen. They didn't like his kind of soft take on China. They didn't like that he was kind of pro-free trade with China. These are the China hawks i- in the right. So, you know, guys like, uh, Peter Thiel, b- guys like, uh, Paul Luckie, uh, and in particular, you know, Marco Rubio, who is a very long time China hawk and who was also Trump's Secretary of State. Uh, Rubio actually wasn't permitted inside of China for a while because his statements were, were so hawkish.

Speaker 17:20 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 17:21 The, the intelligence communities in the US got to this story because they had a, uh, some kind of wiretap on, on the woman, on Alice, and Jensen showed up in that wiretap. And, and Marco Rubio prepared a memo showing that it was Jensen and shared that with Trump. And then Trump took no action. And so I imagine at least part of the reason we in the press are now hearing that is because someone in the White House wanted to reduce Jensen's influence over the president. Uh, so I think, I think that there was an element here of, of the China hawks, I think, taking back control of the narrative and taking back control of power, uh, within the White House.

Speaker 18:01 Yeah. Let's talk about, um, the chips and the sort of supply chain. So this is a very, you know, uh, the details are sort of complicated of exactly what is happening in the Megaspeed case, but it's something like Nvidia is selling chips to the U.S. arm of a Chinese company, which then sells them on to Megaspeed.

Stephen Witt 18:19 Yes.

Speaker 18:19 Is this, is this a, a sort of normal... I mean, you, you-

Stephen Witt 18:22 No

Speaker 18:22 ... I think you sort of answered this question before.

Stephen Witt 18:24 No, this is how, this is, this is how you smuggle something.

Speaker 18:26 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 18:26 Right? You, you establish a, a, a dummy corporation in a different country, and then you, you know, you re- It's, uh, that's why ex- I- import export can be kind of a shady business, right?

Speaker 18:35 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 18:36 Sometimes, right? So there was a case earlier this year where guys at Supermicro were taking, um, these boxes full of Nvidia equipment, and they would take a hair dryer and blow the packaging, uh, label off and, and peel it off, and then replace it with a fake packaging label. Um, you know, in Megaspeed it's, it, there's, the details are still a little fuzzy. Uh, one thing that seems to have possibly happened is that they were using the data centers actually with dummy servers.

Speaker 19:02 Mm.

Stephen Witt 19:02 So the Nvidia equipment would show up, they would install it, quote, unquote. But actually they would install, uh, uh, other non-functional or other equipment in, in the data center to make it look like a functional data center. And then, you know, you wheel the Nvidia equipment maybe out the back door and you cart it off to China to some secret location somewhere.

Speaker 19:21 Right.

Stephen Witt 19:22 Um, so that's, that's one thing that seems to have been happening. Uh, and then kind of even without that, you know, it, Megaspeed seems to be downstream of Alibaba, uh, which is-

Speaker 19:31 Mm

Stephen Witt 19:31 ... kind of the Chinese eBay. Uh, and it seems like Alibaba was the main customer for, uh, for, for Megaspeed's products. Again, that appears to... It depends on how you read the law, but I think that's in violation-

Speaker 19:42 Yeah

Stephen Witt 19:42 ... of the export restriction as well, uh, because, you know, you can't use these fronts. The, the lawmakers are aware that this sort of thing exists. Um, so, so there's a couple ways to get around it. And, you know, this year I have heard that Nvidia has actually cracked down on this a lot.

Speaker 19:56 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 19:57 Uh, perhaps recognizing the political liability of, of a lot of these sales and is, is really kind of forcing the data centers to make sure that they have legitimate customers who are not in China. Um, uh, you know, I'm in Singapore right now. This is actually just across the bridge. It's like 30 minutes away from me.

Speaker 20:13 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 20:13 But, you know, as is typical with these facilities, you can't access them at all. They're surrounded by gates. They're surrounded by security. Uh, no one's allowed in or out, so it's really hard to know, uh, what's going on in there.

Speaker 20:23 Right.

Stephen Witt 20:24 You know, as I say, I think it would just, it, it defies imagination that Jensen would not understand what-

Speaker 20:34 Yeah

Stephen Witt 20:34 ... was going on here. It just is not plausible.

Speaker 20:37 Yeah. Let, let me ask, so, uh, it's the Commerce Department that is for the most part sort of investigating. Like, if you, if you're, if you're installing dummy servers in your fake data center-

Stephen Witt 20:47 Yeah

Speaker 20:47 ... it's, it's Commerce Department i- i- investigators who are stopping by to check on those? How, how does the US-

Stephen Witt 20:52 Well, not in Malaysia, right? Like, like they-

Speaker 20:53 Right

Stephen Witt 20:54 ... were saying, like, they, they, they, they have a limited... There's only so much they can do outside of the United States. So I think that they're probably guaranteeing that the o- original point of sale or the original destination that is, uh, uh, uh, whatever, where the thing is delivered, is in fact this data center in Malaysia. I mean, they're real. They exist.

Speaker 21:11 Right.

Stephen Witt 21:11 There's not nothing there.

Speaker 21:13 Right.

Stephen Witt 21:13 Uh, but, but, um, uh, you know, once it goes in, like, uh, y- the U.S. has only very limited authority a- and insight into what ha- might happen in Malaysia. And, and from there there's not much they can do.

Speaker 21:26 Um, and the, I'm not quite sure how [laughs] to ask this, but Megaspeed, is it, it's a real company? It's not, like, a fake company? It's not a cutout or anything?

Stephen Witt 21:34 It, it, it, it appears... It's a great question. [laughs]

Speaker 21:37 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 21:38 I'm, I'm not sure, but it appears to have been formed-

Speaker 21:41 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 21:42 ... in 2023. Uh, in 2023 an N- Nvidia announced that they were a preferred cloud partner, meaning we're gonna, you know, prefer selling our equipment to this company in Malaysia. Um, you know, they have facilities. They have big, you know, data centers, uh, that-

Speaker 21:56 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 21:56 ... that seem to use a lot of power. I mean, they built something here. So it's not completely phony or anything. Um, and it seems like people do use their computing resources and pay them for it. Uh, it, it is a real company in that sense. Uh, it's just who's using it, who's paying it, and, and how legit is any of it, uh, are, are kind of open questions.

Speaker 22:18 Well, that's a good place to take a break. Um, when we come back we're going to talk about what's going on in Singapore, where you are right now. [upbeat music] Welcome back to Hard Fork. I'm talking with Stephen Witt. You, you are in fact in Singapore.

Stephen Witt 22:36 I am.

Speaker 22:36 What's the reaction been like on the ground? Like, have you... You know, what, uh, [laughs] uh, is everybody in Singapore talking about this?

Stephen Witt 22:42 Oh, yeah. I mean, everybody in Singapore is li- I, I mean, I think the reaction is, "What took you guys so long?"

Speaker 22:46 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 22:47 Um, this was... Uh, Singapore had been busting smuggling rings, the authorities here, going back to 2024. Like, they, they were aware that at least some of this was happening, and I think that, you know, because Johor is just across the way and a lot of people who live in Singapore actually work kind of in, in Malaysia, because Malaysia has become, outside of Megaspeed, a data center hub. This should be said.

Speaker 23:10 Right.

Stephen Witt 23:10 Like, there's legitimately a big industry there, and it's, it's, uh, it employs a lot of people and they're very proud of it. Um-

Speaker 23:17 Mm-hmm

Stephen Witt 23:17 ... so I don't wanna smear them all as some kind of, like, criminal conspiracy.

Speaker 23:20 Right.

Stephen Witt 23:20 It's, it's a real thing. Uh, uh, but, you know, I think the impression w- that they got was like, "What is going on here?" [laughs] I think there were a lot of whispers, uh, about Jensen and, and this woman, both inside Nvidia and, uh, and sort of people who were working around there. Um, I think, you know, I think people got the impression that there was more to their relationship than, than simply business, but it's a hard thing to prove. And I, I, I think, you know, without a wiretap, which is ultimately what, what brought him down, like how are you gonna demonstrate this?

Speaker 23:54 Right. I mean, there was a short seller report back in May that-

Stephen Witt 23:57 Yeah

Speaker 23:57 ... has now been recirculating that seems to have put some of the pieces together, but doesn't, wasn't, wasn't able to sort of, um, specifically describe an affair as happening because as you say, they didn't have a, a wiretap themselves.

Stephen Witt 24:09 Yeah, it's, it's very hard. You know, I, I think people knew, uh, at lea- or they suspected that something was going on.

Speaker 24:15 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 24:15 That his behavior and, and you know, you see videos of the two of them together. There's a kinda awkward body language when they're together. Um, you know, there's, there's more photographs and videos leaking out. So I imagine if you were part of Jensen's immediate entourage-

Speaker 24:30 Yeah

Stephen Witt 24:30 ... you probably had a, a, at least a fairly good idea of what's going on. I had heard, you know, kind of like s- stray whispers from coming, coming from within Nvidia actually earlier this year.

Speaker 24:42 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 24:42 Uh, but I was not, I just wasn't able to, to find it.

Speaker 24:45 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 24:45 I wasn't able to track it down. You know, it was a, it was a hard story to get. Uh, so credit to-

Speaker 24:49 Yeah

Stephen Witt 24:49 ... credit to the Times actually for getting it. Yeah. [laughs]

Speaker 24:50 [laughs] I'll take the, I'm happy to take that credit-

Stephen Witt 24:53 [laughs]

Speaker 24:53 ... uh, you know, as a podcast host.

Stephen Witt 24:55 Yeah.

Speaker 24:55 Um, uh, I can't imagine that trying to honeypot the CEO is the first, you know, line of attack for Chinese intelligence services or, or the Chinese government in general trying to accomplish whatever in particular they're trying to accomplish. I presume that Nvidia has been a target of infiltration attempts and signals capture and whatever else you might do. I- is, is that true?

Stephen Witt 25:13 Oh, they all have. Uh-

Speaker 25:15 Yeah

Stephen Witt 25:15 ... I mean, n- I mean, Nvidia in some ways is the, is the least valuable target. They're really going after Anthropic and OpenAI. You know, uh, with, with Jensen, uh, too, you know, trade secrets from Nvidia are pretty valuable. Uh, but China can't actually manufacture, uh, what Nvidia manufacturers 'cause they can't get the equipment. So, uh, you know, I think with Jensen it probably is more about an influence campaign.

Speaker 25:37 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 25:37 Um, you know, if he s- uh, yeah, at the time that this relationship started, this is the other thing, uh, uh, you know, Jensen was not close to Trump at that time.

Speaker 25:45 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 25:46 So, so they probably had some other motive, uh, for going after Jensen for fir- uh, at first, and then suddenly they, they were like, "Oh my God, we've-"

Speaker 25:54 They lucked into it

Stephen Witt 25:54 ... "we've got a ... We, we're literally in bed with the president's top tech advisor. This is awesome."

Speaker 25:59 [laughs]

Stephen Witt 25:59 So this was a, this was a big win for the Chinese spies. They, they, it was like Christmas morning for them probably.

Speaker 26:04 Yeah, I bet. Um, so at the time we're recording this, Nvidia stock is down, but the market overall is relatively calm.

Stephen Witt 26:12 Yeah.

Speaker 26:12 This despite the importance and power of the companies we've been talking about. Why do you think there isn't a bigger reaction in the markets over this?

Stephen Witt 26:18 You know, it's funny the ... So all of the AI infrastructure stocks that make up so much of the market now are, are actually trading at very cheap valuations. Uh, the market thinks that actually the AI infrastructure play is coming to an end, or that there's gonna be a, a, a drawdown in sales in the next couple of years. That's how the stocks are priced. And so maybe some of this was priced in already. Uh, the other thing is what's bad for Nvidia is actually good for Nvidia's competitors.

Speaker 26:48 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 26:48 A- specifically AMD, Broadcom, and, and Google, who are all manufacturing rival, uh, microchips. Uh, Google in particular has really, really started to become one of Nvidia's top rivals.

Speaker 27:00 Mm-hmm.

Stephen Witt 27:01 So, so Nvidia has a number of significant business risks outside of this spy scandal that it already faced. Um, and I think some of that was priced into the stock as well.

Speaker 27:11 Well, let me ask you one final question sort of along these lines. So Jensen is u- sort of unique in this moment as a tech CEO, especially as an AI CEO, in that he's maybe he's the least safety focused, or least he's the least afraid of AI as a technology.

Stephen Witt 27:27 Yeah.

Speaker 27:27 It's almost the opposite of somebody like Dario Amodei, who's constantly warning of the possible catastrophe. Um, Jensen gave a big interview to my colleague, Ezra Klein, earlier this year-

Stephen Witt 27:35 Yeah

Speaker 27:35 ... where he sort of makes the case that it's just a tool. We shouldn't be worrying about it like this. You know, you wrote about this for, uh, uh, for the opinion section recently. Um, there's a scene at the end of your book where he sort of yells at you for even pressing him on this belief. So my question is, what happens if AI's biggest, least afraid booster loses power, loses credibility, like we've been saying? Do policymakers change their sense of what AI is? I mean, is there a, is this, does this change the direction of AI development in the future?

Stephen Witt 28:04 Yeah, probably. I mean, Jensen's not the only person who feels this way. Um, most of Trump's advisors feel this way. David Sacks certainly feels this way. Um, you know, Marc Andreessen certainly feels this way, same as Jensen. They all think AI is completely safe and that all this doomerist discourse is kind of, uh, disconnected from reality. Uh, and that has been a long debate. I mean, Jensen believed that long, long before he ever hooked up with a Chinese spy. I mean, this goes back to 2015. Um, you know, but I do think he was probably the most convincing and powerful advocate for that point of view. Um, you know, his point of view is he's looking at it from the microchip up. He's saying, "I have complete control over each kind of individual component here, and so if I'm losing control at somewhere along the system, uh, that just means it's an engineering failure, and we know how to fix engineering failures." As I'm sort of parroting his point of view.

Speaker 28:54 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 28:54 You know, from Dario and Sam and the other people who are more worried, they're looking at it from the top down and they're saying, "I don't know how this thing works. It's extremely powerful, and I might lose control of it." Um, so that's a really different point of view. I think that Jensen has lost this one.

Speaker 29:10 Mm.

Stephen Witt 29:10 I've noticed even Trump has started to talk a little bit more about, you know, well, maybe we'll regulate it a little bit. Uh, you know, I think the Democratic wave that was just put into power, I mean, it had, you know, it, it had a number of reasons, including oil prices, that they went in. But it seems like voters were very concerned about AI.

Speaker 29:30 Yeah. Mm.

Stephen Witt 29:30 Um, you know, I think, I think Trump's point of view and Jensen's point of view is, "No, you don't understand. If we stop doing this, China wins."

Speaker 29:38 Mm.

Stephen Witt 29:38 "China takes control of this technology. They are not afraid, and they are not slowing down." And I think that's the strongest argument actually against, against, um, the AI doomer narrative is that people out here in Asia, not just China, but Japan and Korea, uh, Singapore, they don't believe this at all.

Speaker 29:55 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 29:55 They just do not believe this. And, and, uh, you know, you don't hear a lot of doomerists. I never get AI risk questions out here. In US, it's the most common thing that I'm asked.

Speaker 30:05 Yeah.

Stephen Witt 30:05 So to some people, it looks like kind of a cultural hysteria, almost like a moral panic.

Speaker 30:10 Yeah. All right, Stephen, thank you so much for joining us. Uh, this has been a really enlightening and elucidating conversation. Um, I really appreciate you making the time [laughs] at 3:30 in the morning in Singapore from your hotel room. Um, Stephen's book-

Stephen Witt 30:21 My pleasure. [laughs]

Speaker 30:22 Yeah. The book is, uh, The Thinking Machine. Um, it's a great read if you're at all interested in one of the m- most important and, uh, and now sort of most talked about figures in the, in the AI era. Um, and, uh, I look forward to reading more of your reporting on this.

Stephen Witt 30:37 Thank you so much. [upbeat music]