Nvidia probes whether CEO Jensen Huang was target of foreign spying as he admits affair

Speaking to CNA’s Asia First, former US intelligence official Nicholas Eftimiades said the alleged operation could have been aimed at obtaining more than just Nvidia’s technology.

“Huang had access to the White House,” said Eftimiades, who is now an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University’s Homeland Security Program. 

“It’s more than just access to the technology. It’s access to senior people that he knows.” 

He added that Chinese intelligence could also have been interested in the US administration’s thinking on Nvidia technology and how Beijing might then “change that focus and direction”.

He expects Singapore-based Megaspeed and its Malaysian subsidiary Speedmatrix, which was reportedly set up to receive shipments of advanced chips, to face increased scrutiny following the allegations. 

“I have no doubt that the US will be asking the Malaysian government (and) the Singaporean government to look at this infrastructure very, very carefully, as they have already been doing,” he said. 

Huang, who co-founded Nvidia in 1993, said that he was “committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security”.

Nvidia had earlier said that Huang talks with “thousands of customer executives every year”, and that cloud customers in Asia receive ordinary business information, not sensitive Nvidia trade secrets or anything tied to US national security.