The Pentagon is reportedly ramping up economic warfare and espionage. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s affair with a suspected Chinese spy shows why

AI chip leader Nvidia launched an investigation into reports CEO Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence campaign—just as the U.S. has intensified its own efforts at economic warfare.

Nvidia’s board released a statement Sunday that a committee of independent directors and an outside counsel will oversee the probe, adding that Huang supports the review and plans to cooperate.

“The Board prioritizes U.S. national and economic security, which is paramount to the interests of NVIDIA and its shareholders,” it said. “While the Board has no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised, the Board’s inquiry will examine all available information.”

The announcement followed reports that Huang had a romantic relationship with Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, whom U.S. intelligence suspects was working as a spy for China.

According to the New York Times and Financial Times , the Nvidia boss admitted to the affair and apologized in an internal message to company employees.

“I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry,” he said in the message.

Representatives for Nvidia and Megaspeed didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

U.S. officials believe Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security, sources told the FT , and surveillance revealed that she was feeding information to China, according to the New York Times .

Jensen Huang, who isn’t related to Alice, is a central figure in the U.S. AI industry, leading a company that develops world-class chips powering large language models.

Its technology is so sensitive that the Trump administration has restricted exports of Nvidia’s most cutting-edge products to China while President Donald Trump has often cited the U.S.-China AI rivalry as a reason for not slowing down development.

Meanwhile, Megaspeed is a Singapore-based data center company that quickly became one of Nvidia’s top customers in Asia, purchasing more than $4.8 billion in chips over the past two years.

But the U.S. also investigated Megaspeed last year for allegedly helping smuggle restricted AI chips into China, which the company has denied.

News of the Nvidia’s probe into Huang comes weeks after reports indicated the U.S. defense and intelligence communities are getting more aggressive about industrial espionage.