China Post: Behind Huang Renxun’s loss of power, China hawks have been brewing a counterattack for a long time

Huida CEO Huang Renxun resigned due to an extramarital affair and the woman was suspected of being a Chinese spy. The Washington Post revealed that Huang's friendship with U.S. President Trump and his promotion of chip exports to China triggered a strong backlash from national security hawks determined to destroy Huang's influence on Trump.

The Post quoted two outgoing officials as saying that some national security officials within the Trump administration were extremely dissatisfied with Huang's influence on Trump. Huang's loss could represent a major shift in the power dynamics initiated by one of Washington's most influential China hawks, National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

According to people familiar with the matter, Rubio submitted a memo to Trump based on a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report warning about Jen-Hsun Huang's relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. Rubio allegedly used the CIA report to write his own memo and reinterpreted the intelligence content in stronger terms.

The Post believes that Huang Renxun's loss of power is a major victory for those who have long sought to weaken his ability to influence Trump's China policy. These so-called "China hawks" include cross-party government officials, members of Congress and think tank analysts. They believe that Nvidia chips are a key asset in the competition between the United States and China, and the United States should impose strict controls on such chips.

Since their first meeting in 2025, Trump and Huang Renxun have established a close relationship, and Trump has always supported the Huida helmsman.

For many in Washington, amid the boom in artificial intelligence (AI), the United States and China are ushering in a new competition that could reshape both countries’ military and economic power. However, Jen-Hsun Huang holds a different view, arguing that chip manufacturers should be able to continue selling products to the Chinese market and making China dependent on the U.S. system will be beneficial to the United States.

A former government official said that many people in the national security team did not agree with Trump's views on chip exports, describing Huang's relationship with Trump as a nuclear bomb for national security, "so they want to destroy Huang's influence on Trump."

Huang has sometimes defended his positions in sharp terms. In an interview with a podcast in September 2025, he said that the term "China hawks" should be regarded as a shameful label, saying bluntly that these people "think they are doing the right thing for the country, but that is not patriotic, not at all."

It is said that some staff at Washington think tanks and Capitol Hill immediately designed badges indicating the status of "China hawks" and distributed them to each other within the circle. At that time, Eric Sayers, a senior executive of the consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, posted on social media that this group of people "will hold grudges." After Huang Renxun's accident recently, he reposted this post again.

Until the midterm elections, Huang's relationship with Trump seemed to be able to survive. Now hawks are seizing the opportunity to redirect U.S. national policy toward taking a tougher stance against Beijing. China hawks in Congress are trying to include new restrictions on chip exports to China into a major defense bill that they hope to pass by the end of the year.

These bills will impose export restrictions on the most powerful AI chips, require chips to have built-in technology that can detect smuggling, and restrict China's access to chip manufacturing equipment.

Indiana Republican U.S. Senator Jim Banks said it’s time for Congress to close legal loopholes and outlaw black market transactions. He said loopholes such as chip smuggling, the use of shell buyers and remote access to chips have been allowed for a long time.

Banks said in a statement: "Huida's first obligation should be to protect American customers and American security. Congress has several bills ready to close these loopholes, and I am more confident than ever that these bills will pass."