The story of the alleged romantic relationship between Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, and Alice Huang, a woman suspected of being linked to Chinese intelligence, was not just a personal scandal in the world of technology. The case has brought to light old methods used by intelligence services to penetrate Wadi al-Sili and obtain the secrets of American companies, especially at a time when artificial intelligence has become a major arena of competition between Washington and Beijing.
What is noteworthy is that espionage in Wadi Al-Siliyy did not begin with the artificial intelligence race, but rather goes back decades, and some of its facts reveal paradoxes that are difficult to imagine.
According to a report by the Washington Post, in the late 1980s, FBI agents spotted an employee at a technology company in Wadi al-Sili, who was suspected of working for China. The company was conducting advanced research with military uses, some of which was classified.
After monitoring him and tapping his phone, the office arrested him while he was traveling by air from San Francisco to Beijing, in possession of a computer disk that he had smuggled illegally.
But the surprise came after his arrest, as the company refused to cooperate with the authorities in prosecution procedures, for fear of being exposed to negative media coverage and harming its shares. The case ended up being abandoned, despite what a former agent in the office described as a clear breach of American technology secrets.
Laray Coy, who participated in the investigation, says companies sometimes would rather lose technology than risk their reputation.
Emotional relationships...an introduction to state secrets
One of the most exciting methods in the world of espionage is what is known as “honey traps,” that is, the use of romantic or sexual relationships to lure people, obtain information from them, or influence their decisions.
In Wadi Al-Sili, American agents spotted sex workers in luxury places, including the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel in Menlo Park, and the Redwood Room Lounge at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco, who were transmitting information about their clients to Russian intelligence officials.
China was not far from this method. Between 2011 and 2015, Chinese student Christine Fang succeeded in building a network of relationships with Democratic politicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, including former Congressman Eric Swalwell, with whom she established a romantic relationship.
Not only that, Fang helped raise funds for her election campaigns, and was able to bring an intern into his office. FBI officials believe she was working for China's Ministry of State Security, Beijing's main foreign intelligence agency.
Fang left the United States in 2015, after establishing personal relationships with a number of American politicians and mayors, according to former officials.
What is most surprising is that the methods of persuasion were not limited to Democrats. In 2003, Katrina Leung, a Los Angeles consultant and Republican Party fundraiser, was arrested on suspicion of passing classified information to China.
Leung had romantic relationships with two FBI agents who were supervising her case, while she made the FBI believe that she was working for its benefit, while passing information to Beijing.
Access to the person is more important than stealing files
These stories gain particular importance in light of the accusations related to Alice Huang, who held an executive position at the Singaporean company Megaspeed, which buys advanced chips from Nvidia.
According to press reports, American intelligence services suspected that she was working for the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and that she sought to get close to Huang, one of the most prominent influential figures in the artificial intelligence industry.
Megaspeed is under scrutiny by the Singaporean authorities amid suspicions about transferring advanced chips from NVIDIA to China via Southeast Asian countries.
Dennis Wilder, a former China analyst at the CIA, explains that a person who succeeds in gaining access to a high-ranking official does not necessarily need to steal documents or transfer information directly. Simply accessing his phone or movements may be enough to obtain sensitive information.
He gives an example of the possibility of planting listening devices on the phone of a person close to a senior official, and then transporting the phone with him to the Oval Office in the White House, which may allow listening to conversations taking place inside it.
Artificial intelligence...the new goal
As competition for artificial intelligence technologies intensifies, American corporate secrets have become more important to foreign intelligence services.
In January, former Google engineer Linwei Ding was convicted of stealing more than two thousand pages of confidential information related to the technical architecture of the supercomputers that the company uses to develop artificial intelligence, in a case that included accusations of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.
US authorities also revealed networks suspected of trying to smuggle advanced chips produced by NVIDIA to China, one of which had a value of about $160 million in operations, and used forged shipping documents to circumvent export restrictions.
These facts come at a time when advanced chips are increasingly important to Beijing, which considers artificial intelligence an essential arena for global technological competition.
As for Huang's case, there are still many questions surrounding it, most notably whether he knew about the US intelligence services' suspicions about Alice Huang, and whether the relationship provided access to sensitive information within Nvidia.
The company's board of directors announced the opening of an independent investigation, while the Chinese side denied the accusations, describing them as allegations not based on evidence.
Between romantic relationships, secret files, and chips worth billions of dollars, the case reveals that the most dangerous hacks in the world of technology may not always begin from a loophole in an electronic system, but sometimes from a personal relationship that appears, on the surface, to be completely far from the world of espionage.
US federal prosecutors announced new charges against a leader in the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades, who they said helped manage a plan to target Fairford Air Force Base in southern England, despite being inside a prison in Brooklyn, New York.
According to the indictment, Muhammad Baqir Saad Daoud al-Saadi used his phone calls to his mother and sister to pass encrypted messages related to the operation, and asked them to relay instructions to other people working for Iran, according to the New York Times.
Al-Saadi is being held in the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn, after he was arrested by the Turkish authorities, before being extradited to the United States, where he was charged last May with planning to target Jewish sites inside American territory.
Prosecutors said at the time that he was planning to carry out at least 20 attacks against American and Israeli targets, as part of a revenge campaign that followed the outbreak of the American-Israeli war on Iran.
Despite the tight security restrictions imposed on him inside the prison, the prosecution says that he was able to continue communicating with his accomplices. During calls with his mother and sister last summer, he conveyed to them instructions regarding the plan to target the British base.
The indictment indicates that Al-Saadi used indirect phrases during one of the calls, as he asked his sister: “What are they doing about all our old work?” A phrase that prosecutors said carried a coded meaning related to the operation.
The new indictment included two other people, the Iranian Mohsen Muhajiri and the Iraqi Muhammad Ali Al-Hassani. The US Attorney in Manhattan, Jamie McDonald, said that the defendants helped organize a terrorist campaign on behalf of groups linked to Iran.
The accusations target the Fairford Air Base of the British Royal Air Force, which is also used by American forces, and is located in the county of Gloucestershire, southwest of England.
British authorities began investigating the incident in late September, after a suspect called emergency services from one of three white trucks seen moving near the base late at night. The report raised fears of a plan to target the military facility.
This was followed by a widespread security alert, which included the arrest of five men on suspicion of involvement in terrorism, the evacuation of 85 homes, and the sending of a robot specialized in dealing with explosives to inspect trucks. The British authorities also held emergency meetings to discuss the developments.
American and British security assessments linked the plan to Iran, or to a military entity linked to Tehran, amid fears that it is part of a broader threat targeting American military bases in Europe, including the Spangdahlem and Ramstein bases in Germany.
In a later development, British prosecutors said that a man suspected of working for Iran organized the operation, by providing funding and assigning people to monitor the base and purchase trucks and supplies, as well as searching for drivers to carry out the mission.
According to US charges, Al-Hassani, who was in Iran at the time of the events, was in contact with truck drivers and paid one person to monitor the base’s perimeter in August, before directing the group to transport trucks loaded with fuel to the site on September 26.
But British searches did not reveal explosives inside the trucks, and the five men who were arrested were released on bail the next day.
On the other hand, Andrew Dallack, Al-Saadi’s lawyer, refused to comment on the new accusations, but he questioned the evidence relied upon by the authorities, saying in a judicial memorandum that what the government presented does not go beyond speculation about conversations translated from Arabic, and does not justify the continued detention of his client under strict security conditions.
On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the BBC’s request to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against it by US President Donald Trump, demanding billions of dollars in compensation.
Trump accused the BBC of misleadingly editing a clip from a documentary to make it appear as if he was inciting violence when he asked his supporters to march to the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
He sought damages of at least $5 billion for both the defamation suit and another independent lawsuit, under Florida's consumer protection law.
Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey T. Koontz asked the BBC to dismiss the defamation lawsuit, but he dropped the lawsuit filed under the Florida Consumer Protection Law.
“The question of whether President Trump is able to prove these allegations and assert that he suffered damages at summary judgment or at trial is a matter for determination at a later date,” Koontz wrote in a 40-page ruling.
The BBC documentary combined two separate clips from Trump's speech on January 6, 2021, to make it appear as if he explicitly urged his supporters to storm the Capitol building.
Despite its apology for the “documentary” that prompted a number of its senior executives to resign, the BBC believes that it did not cause any real harm to Trump.
Koontz’s ruling stated: “Given the time difference between the two clips (of Trump’s speech), this time distance in itself gives rise to a logical hypothesis that (the BBC) knew, or should have known, that the clip it prepared was not and will not be truthful.”
He added: “This was not just a simple change in the details, but rather it was the production of something completely different from what was said in the speech.”
For his part, Trump, in a post on Truth Social, praised Koontz’s ruling, which he considered a “tremendous victory.”
He added: “We will continue to fight against all those who try to deceive the American people, and we will defeat them.”
Last month, an American judge set December 11 as the deadline for Trump to testify under oath in the lawsuit. In response to complaints submitted by the British network stating that the US President had evaded appearing to testify.
In its decision, the court stated that if Trump does not attend the session designated to give his statement, he risks being subjected to penalties that may include dismissal of his lawsuit.
