Taiwanese Media Say Alice Huang Is Linked to Chinese Spy Agency; U.S. Has Not Reached Conclusion

At a glance

Taiwan's Liberty Times reported that Alice Huang, linked to former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, belongs to a semiconductor unit of China's Ministry of State Security. U.S. officials, however, said they have not yet reached a conclusion.

Key points

• The report says China's Communist Party set up a new dedicated group to gain an edge over the U.S. in AI, and the Ministry of State Security takes part.
• The group reportedly lobbies to ease U.S. chip export controls, infiltrates third-country supply chains, and stirs opposition to U.S. data centers.
• Alice Huang was reportedly tasked with setting up shell companies abroad to obtain advanced chips and servers and with approaching Jensen Huang.
• President Trump also said in a podcast interview that it is still unclear whether Alice Huang is a spy.

Why it matters

Allegations of chip smuggling and intelligence infiltration between U.S. tech firms and China remain unconfirmed, so readers should keep that in mind.

More from this field

• NVIDIA Speeds Up Black Hole Telescope Data Processing With GPUs

  NVIDIA's cuPhoton.xBeam is a tool that uses GPUs to process radio telescope data used to image black holes. It handled 10 TB of data in 70 seconds, about 460 times faster than a CPU-based method that took 31,992 seconds.

  NVIDIA Technical blog · Nov 14, 06:17 KST
• Heat Drives Electron Orbital Currents in First Experimental Evidence of Orbital Nernst Effect

  Researchers at National Taiwan University observed, for the first time in an experiment, electrons' orbital angular momentum building up sideways when heat is applied, a effect called the orbital Nernst effect. The study was published in Nature Communications.

  Phys.org · Nov 14, 02:00 KST
• Google Maps to Offer Car and Walking Directions in South Korea

  Google has completed the security steps required by the Korean government to move detailed map data overseas. As a result, car and walking directions in Google Maps in Korea are expected to become available.

  매일경제 마켓 · Nov 13, 17:46 KST
• Chip Industry Week in Review: Memory and Quantum Advances, Visa Fee Concerns

  This week's chip news included new memory devices built from ultrathin materials and a room-temperature method for reshaping metal crystals. Several quantum chip announcements also came out. Meanwhile, the industry group SIA warned that a proposed US immigration fee could hurt semiconductor hiring.

  Semiconductor Engineering · Nov 13, 17:01 KST