Chinese spy, chip sales, Trump ties... The Nvidia scandal deepens

Now, for the latest on the NVIDIA scandal, this Sunday, the Singapore-based company Megaspeed said that Chinese businesswoman Alice Wong officially left the company in 2025, that she has no current role there. Now, she's the alleged Chinese spy that had an affair with NVIDIA's former CEO, Jensen Wong. Late last year, U.S. government concerns were rising about Megaspeed, a company once led by Wong. She was being investigated for chips. Smuggling. Now, this graphic from The New York Times is handy for the complex scandal. Washington regulates the sale of NVIDIA chips, which drive the AI industry and are also being sought by China, America's rival. The scandal has raised questions about how much the U.S. government knew. Trump was allegedly warned about the affair, but did nothing. And the scandal also raises questions about the workplace environment at NVIDIA because Wong had another extramarital affair with subordinate Kimberly. For more, we can speak to Leila Merc, a French entrepreneur who specializes in digital technology, artificial intelligence, and digital governance, and has worked on both sides of the Atlantic, so she can give us some insight into what's going on. Leila, what part of this scandal are you following closest? It's quite a multidimensional scandal, so having a big overview is important to understand what's happening there. But I guess what the most interesting part to me is really unveiling the fact that coming from the U.S. point of view, there is no easy answer. What should be done about the AI-China relationship? And so we can see that on one hand, we have this whole question about economical dominance and NVIDIA is this massive company and it became so big because they basically have a huge market. They control more than 80% of, you know, like the GPU selling. So that's incredible. And that's what gives the US such a strong like capitalistic power. So on one hand, you have this whole business. Yeah, I'm just wondering if you can give us. Sort of like wild speculation here, Leila. What's the worst case scenario from a U.S. perspective? And what impact would that have on an ordinary U.S. citizen? You mean what would be the worst U.S. case about what's going to happen next? Or about what actually will happen? In regards to if Wang was indeed a Chinese spy. What's the worst case scenario about what information she might have gathered and how that might affect the AI industry, how that might affect Silicon Valley, tech jobs, investors in the market? What's the worst case scenario? I'm glad you said she, because when you said it was Huang, a Chinese spy, I'm like, which one? No, definitely what would be the worst case scenario, in my opinion, about that is if she was indeed a Chinese spy and if. You know, her relationship with, well, the other one was actually defined by her trying to steal information and, you know, create business relationship and buy NVIDIA chips and all of that. If that was actually the case, the big danger would be, are we still so naive that we can have companies that are actually... Massive, bigger than other countries in the world that have such a strong geopolitical influence and might somehow shape the future. And the whole CEO of this company is maybe exposed to that kind of spying that is just, I mean, you know, level one somehow spying that has been existing for many years. And, you know, the US having this whole intelligence around them and then still falling for that. That would be... very like like worrisome on one hand and then on the other hand that would mean that um maybe and this has yet to be kind of you know explained but Who did know about that? Who did choose not to do anything? Was Trump part in that because he has such a strong and personal relationship with, you know, Justin Young? That would be very worrisome to have a detected spy that was not earlier apprehended. That would, you know, kind of like not unveiling this scandal before. Put NVIDIA in such a complicated situation as of now, and we wonder if all of this could have been maybe handled in a way more responsible and less naive way. Yeah. And just for our viewers, it should be said that Jensen Wong and other NVIDIA executives helped direct about twenty six million dollars, at least twenty six million dollars toward the Trump backed projects, including his White House ballroom. You know, Leila, when you're looking at how the U.S. government is handling this, We see some Trump administration officials raising concerns about mega speed. That was being ignored. After it emerged about these affairs and there was speculation about what would happen with Deng Xiaowang, Donald Trump comes out and urges him to keep his job despite warnings from his own administration about, you know, potential risks here. And your question is, was that wise? Is that your question, you mean? Yes. I mean, how is the administration handling this? What do you make of it? It's super hard to have like a strong opinion about this because we don't know what actually happened inside the administration. We don't know how much they knew. We don't know how much intelligence they had about it. And we are kind of like working on the eggshells right now because you have the State Treasury on one hand and the Department of Commerce on the other hand. And then you just had the midterms. So you have the Republicans that are being, you know, already quite critical about China And Trump himself hasn't been a very, you know, like. Chinese ally to some sorts. So it's kind of hard to have a strong line about why did that happen. And I would urge European to be very cautious and following very closely what happened. But I guess what we should take from that without having, you know, being like, oh, They should have done that, or they should have done that, because we don't know exactly what happened yet, and I really want us to be cautious there, because it's a very, very more complex and nuanced question. What we should as Europeans take from that, and what actually the US should do as well, is... We are over-relying on one sector distributor, we are over-relying on one company. That is NVIDIA. This NVIDIA company just drives the entire market and we can now realize that it was not that stable. It had internal politics, you know, scandals about to burst, and people were not ready and prepared for that. And then the worst thing is This company is supposedly building the infrastructure of the future, but they haven't even built an internal governance in case of crisis. For me, the strong signal about these politics in the US is really, I hope it will be an alarm for them to start decentralizing how they rely on their own companies and how they tend to distinguish their business, you know, capabilities with their strategic and, you know, like geopolitical risk management. And I'm hoping you can dump that down for me, Leila. I mean, when we're over-reliant on one company, And one man, from my perspective, this kind of speaks to the cult of personality that we so often see in the tech sector. How could you go about decentralizing that? What does that mean concretely? What steps would have to be taken? Imagine tomorrow something terrible happened to Musk and he's just, well, I'm hoping he won't die, but like something happened to him, he cannot run his companies anymore. What would happen? So we have this, you know, kind of, we say in French, les grands hommes, you know, like the big people, the big guys that just are supposedly to be the leaders leading us to what the future will be. And then we over-rely on them. And when they disappear, well, in France, we still, you know, think about General de Gaulle and how we would be so much better with him back. So we have this, in history, it's not the first time. It's not linked to technology. The technology is actually linked to the way human What I would definitely hope we would go towards would be trying to be more decentralized maybe in the way we elect our own head of different institutions. The other way would also be trying to have... More, you know, pushing for more companies doing the same things. For example, you can think of this Canadian company doing AI that's called Cohair. They are really like trying to push for a new kind of model to have more sovereignty. But instead of just saying, oh, in Europe, we have one people, we have Mistral and then the rest are in the US. We could try to understand that in a very global world, we also have global solutions. And so now we face multiple threats from multiple different... region in the world, but it also gives us so many options. So yeah, I would definitely try to see this whole governance being way more rooted on the fact that no one will survive forever. But I think this over-reliance also on those, you know, long-term... visionaries, people might also come from the Silicon Valley mindset that you have those big leaders with like a few ideas that are going to take people in the future. And then some of them might hope to live, you know, forever because thanks to AI, we'll solve this and all of that. So maybe all of that may be intertwined in kind of like a human hybrid that I've raised maybe a little too high in the tech in the tech world. And that may be coming back to realizing that markets are still fragile, that no one is above God, not even the thief. And that, you know, at the end of the road, even the most successful man might fall for like having an affair, a very flesh and bones, you know, kind of story might also help us realize that we do need as citizens, we do need as people involved in politics to try to build with long term people that might be just in different countries and have the capacity to take the next step if something happened. Honestly, I'm not that worried for NVIDIA as of now. I mean, the crisis is there. It's going to last for quite some time. But I think the company, despite the unpreparedness of the transition, is now kind of like big enough with strong economics enough to, you know, find... It's on path for the future. So it's a good warning, but I don't think we will see it fail. And I hope the good warning will be well understood by other companies, starting from the one with Musk. And real quickly, his interim replacement is Colette Kress. She faces questions about how much she knew about NVIDIA's dealings with Megaspeed. So what's chief on her priorities for trying to right this ship and sell through this scandal? Well, I mean, I guess first name, a proper long-term oriented CEO, that will be definitely the first thing that we will look forward to. And is the mindset, is it reset? So, you know, finding someone outside of NVIDIA and really like different personality and trying to be like, this is. Is it a new era for NVIDIA or is it continuity and stability and then having someone from the internal management of NVIDIA? So first, you know, identifying leadership. The second would be the results that we're going to have in two days. So... Kind of like trying to shift the conversation towards NVIDIA's business and what's NVIDIA's future. Should they keep, you know, selling to Asian countries, especially China? And if they were to sell less to those countries, what would that mean for the business of NVIDIA? What would be the market that could compensate the loss of those markets? So I guess the main, the two main points would be first leadership, second discussion, coming back to the business and the business is This is actually quite solid. And then the third one would definitely be the relationship between those massive companies and the U.S. politics. So, you know, with Democrats being way more probably active in the next few months and years, what will the relationship between those massive companies and U.S. intelligence agencies, Department of State and Commerce will run? That would be for me the three main priorities to set the company back on its road. Yeah, three main priorities, three big challenges there. Layla, thank you so much for your time. Layla Murr, joining us there. Thank you.