By Anjan Roy
It was as trilling a spy story as those in the days of Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union.
A spy came in from the cold and disappeared into darkness as unobtrusively as ever before hr existence could be confirmed. A Chinese national had appeared suddenly to be a heartthrob of Jensen Huang, CEO and one of the founders of world most valuable company, Nvidia, before she was no longer available or seen in last one year.
Almost a year back, the needles of suspicion were indicating some unusual presence in the life of Jensen Huang. Can attracting looking Chinese corporate executive was spotted being with Jensen at the high level corporate meeting and industry confabulations across the Atlantic?
Jensen Huang was seen seated with a much younger woman as industry meetings in Singapore and Taiwan. Subsequently, Jensen was photographed leaving a senior level dinner, hosted by Jensen, at Taipei in his car. The woman companion was confirmed as Huang Le, a Chinese corporate high flyer.
Further discreet enquiries revealed the deeper identity of Hung Le. Ms Huang, no relation of Jensen, was discovered to have a Chinese journalist to begin with who had quickly morphed a finance industry executive and then still changed shape into becoming the key player in a high technology cloud computing company, 7Roads, specialising in developing high end games.
These required higher level semiconductors chips of the kind available from only the top bracket chipmakers. The next part of the story sounds like the typical shorted mystery of Le Carre’s novels back in the days of Cold War. The gaming company was renamed into Megaspeed data services company, based in Singapore. Huang Le become the director of the newly named company in the city state.
Subsequent growth was still impenetrable. MegaSpeed was provided almost limitless amounts funds by Chinese mega corporation, Alibaba, for its data centre operations. Data centres need high chips and Mega Speed was estimated to have purchased no less $4 billion of the leading edge chips, essential for development of Artificial Intelligence models.
These semiconductors, capable of complex mathematical computations which are the essential backend facilities for AI computing, were not available ordinarily. These were the exclusive products of Nvidia — a company which is always under the screw scanners of the US intelligence services for maintaining US strategic supremacy in both warfare and industrial AI.
Although Nvidia was promoted in Santa Clara by three men, including Jensen, the face of the world’s most valuable company was Jensen Huang. Jensen was always a high profile man in the company of presidents and prime ministers, apart from the creme de la creme of the technology world.
As Donald Trump becomes the POTUS for a second time, Jesse was seen by his side increasingly. When it came to AI, Trump’s position was by and large that of Jensen. The US had imposed blanket ban on exports of high-end chips of Nvidia to China. There was talk of regulation of the AI industry from government.
For all such policy and security matters, US President’s voice reflected that of Jensen. As a ban was imposed on exports of Nvidia chips to China, Jensen opposed it.
As such, the company was constantly on the radar of the US Federal investigative agencies.
In a charged and suspicious world of high tech exports and moves in the Artificial Intelligence industry operators, the antennas picked up signals when they saw the industry leader Jensen Huang, getting rather cosy with Alice Huang, the last straw being Jensen and Alice leaving a high profile meeting of the industry in Taipei one evening at the end of confabulations.
By then, Alice’s antecedents were not unknown to the secret service operators. It was well known how the smooth young lady was in the closed circuits of Chinese intelligence networks. Operators of the secret services trackers smoothly picked up the threads and quietly started tracking, without either Jensen or Alice Huang being very aware of the development behind.
Attractions of a hungry older man to those of a trained female seducer are irresistible. Jensen by then was hooked and he admitted as much in an admission to his company staff and his family on Monday.
The question is now if Jensen had passed on some critical security and intelligence inputs to the Chinese. Willingly or unwittingly, this is the question.
At the same time, he insisted on his innocence. And no less than the POTUS has stood by Jensen, as Trump today told a gathering of newspersons that Jensen had admitted to him that h was unaware of the close line between Alice Huang of MegaSpeed with the Chinese intelligence infrastructure.
Innocent or otherwise, the fate of the CEO of most valuable over $4 trillion company now looks like handling in the balance. (IPA Service)
