Here’s the thing about chip espionage...
While Pax Silica members seek to guard their industrial secrets from China, they are also each other’s fierce competitors.
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A screengrab from video footage shows a woman identified by Reuters as Alice Huang along with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at a restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Han-Wei Liu and Ching-Fu Lin
Nvidia, the world’s leading designer of AI chips, is investigating reports that Chinese intelligence targeted its chief executive, Jensen Huang. Its board says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and China has dismissed the reports as baseless. Meanwhile, Huang has apologised for an affair, reportedly with Alice Huang, a Chinese executive formerly with Singapore-based cloud company Megaspeed.
The episode has put chip espionage firmly in the frame, as China takes on the US and its technology partners in the battle to dominate AI. US officials are reported to be investigating whether Megaspeed helped Chinese companies get around export controls on Nvidia’s chips.