China’s Security Services Are No Match for American HR Departments - Newsweek
Beijing obviously denies it, but China’s Ministry of State Security may have pulled off one of the most spectacular honeytrap operations in history, targeting the CEO of one of the biggest and most influential tech companies the world has ever known.
If the allegations are true, the Chinese Communist Party will be thanking its lucky stars that Alice Huang got to Jensen before Nvidia’s HR department did.
When news broke of Jensen Huang’s alleged affair with Alice Huang, a former executive of Nvidia’s Singapore-based but China-linked customer Megaspeed, the chipmaker’s CEO acknowledged he had been unfaithful to his wife but vowed to earn back the company’s trust and continue leading Nvidia forward. The company’s board also expressed confidence in Huang’s leadership, and, for a moment, it looked like he was going to steady the ship and ride out the storm.
Then news of an alleged affair with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care, emerged. Within 24 hours, Jensen was gone. An international espionage scandal was apparently something he could live with. The prospect of explaining a consensual workplace romance with a fellow high-ranking executive to HR? Intolerable. And, really, who could blame him?
Human Resources staff are the smiling guardians of mandatory sensitivity training, workplace wellness initiatives, and excruciating team-building exercises—the people who insist "we’re all one big family," right before inviting you to a confidential meeting about your future with the company. Only then do you discover they’ve been orchestrating your downfall.
A 2024 survey of nearly 1,000 Americans found that 86 percent were afraid of their HR representatives, while 68 percent complained that the department prioritized procedures over people.
The scrutiny of federal investigators, intelligence agencies, and Washington’s political establishment probably is preferable to being dragged over that particular brand of hot coals.
It’s hardly the first time the paladins of corporate conduct have vanquished a big-fish executive. In 2018, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich resigned after an investigation found that a past consensual relationship with an employee violated the chipmaker’s rules. The relationship had reportedly begun before he even became CEO and ended years earlier. But don’t let human nature and nuance get in the way of a company non-fraternization policy.
There are, of course, perfectly legitimate reasons for these rules. A relationship between a CEO and a subordinate raises obvious questions about conflicts of interest, favoritism, and potential abuses of power. Consent doesn’t eliminate the power imbalance, and no company should ignore that.
But whatever happened between Jensen Huang and Powell, the potential fallout from an office romance pales beside the prospect of a hostile foreign power gaining intimate access to, and possibly influence over, the man running America’s most-important AI chipmaker.
U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe Alice Huang was recruited by Beijing to collect information on Jensen Huang and potentially influence Nvidia’s business decisions. Her former employer, Megaspeed, has been investigated over suspicions that it helped Chinese companies obtain advanced American chips, despite U.S. export restrictions.
If those suspicions are substantiated, the implications stretch far beyond Nvidia’s boardroom. We’d be talking about a foreign intelligence operation that potentially compromised the man credited with building a cornerstone of America’s technological advantage, at a time when Washington is desperately trying to prevent its most-advanced AI chips from falling into Chinese hands.
The Justice Department has not determined whether Alice Huang was a spy, and Nvidia has not said an HR investigation caused Jensen Huang’s resignation. But perhaps Beijing’s intelligence chiefs should rethink their strategy; instead of orchestrating an elaborate honeytrap, they could be encouraging their agents to fire off applications to American HR departments.
Why bother going to the trouble to seduce the boss and painstakingly manipulate them over a period of several years when you could just plant an agent in Human Resources, uncover the boss’s affair and hold it over their head?
Keep ‘em in power, keep ‘em compromised: and, whenever Beijing needs something, just pop a calendar invitation in their diary.
