The Warning That Never Came

Most of us would like to think that if a government agency learned our principal was being targeted, someone would pick up the phone. It’s a reasonable expectation, especially when the principal runs a company whose technology matters to national security. But the agency may have its own reasons for keeping what it knows to itself.

Nvidia said it expected the US government to tell it about any threat. According to The New York Times, US intelligence knew a woman it was monitoring had grown close to Jensen Huang. She was a customer executive he knew through work, and officials reportedly believe Chinese intelligence recruited her to target him. Huang received no defensive briefing.

This week, On the Circuit, we look at what that silence meant for Nvidia and what the people around a principal can reasonably expect to know.

On Sunday, November 8, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang told staff he had been "unfaithful" to his wife of 41 years, admitting a relationship with Alice Huang, a Megaspeed executive whom US officials believe was working for Beijing. Nvidia's board, every member except Huang himself, has opened an independent inquiry with outside counsel. It says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, and Huang remains in charge, Al Jazeera reported.

The question now is what the US government knew, and when. The New York Times reported on October 29 that US intelligence had placed Alice Huang under surveillance over suspected chip smuggling, and that her closeness to Jensen Huang showed up in her intercepted communications. President Trump was briefed on the findings roughly a year earlier and did not act, according to the Times. Huang was never given a defensive briefing, the warning counterintelligence agencies sometimes give Americans who are being targeted by a foreign service. Telling him could have alerted her that she was being watched.

On November 6, the Times and the Financial Times reported that China's top intelligence agency had recruited Alice Huang to target him, with a US government memo describing a romantic relationship. She was reportedly tasked with gathering information and with pushing for Nvidia's advanced chips to be sold into China. It is not clear whether she was recruited before or after their business dealings began.

Her access came through ordinary industry channels. She was photographed beside Huang at an informal gathering of AI executives in Taipei during the Computex trade show in June 2024, Megaspeed went on to buy billions of dollars of Nvidia equipment, and in May 2025 Taiwanese television filmed her standing behind him after a business dinner. When the first report broke, Nvidia said Huang meets thousands of customer executives a year and that it expected the US government to tell it about any threat.

Nvidia reports earnings on November 17. The next day, three House committee chairs want Huang in a closed-door briefing on his dealings with Alice Huang and on Nvidia's safeguards against foreign espionage. No charges have been reported, no public evidence shows Huang passed sensitive information to anyone, and China calls the reporting groundless smears.

The photographs show why this would have been hard to spot. Alice Huang was beside Nvidia’s CEO at an industry gathering in 2024 and behind him after a business dinner in 2025. She was an executive at a customer that bought Nvidia equipment. Seeing her there would have told you very little about why US intelligence was watching her.

It’s still unclear when Chinese intelligence reportedly recruited her, so we can’t say the commercial relationship was set up for that purpose. What the reporting does show is that a genuine business relationship gave her repeated access, and that Huang was never briefed on what US intelligence had learned.

Nvidia’s point that its CEO meets thousands of customer executives is fair. It also explains why the case matters. The business contact who keeps turning up has a reason to be there. That reason can remain perfectly valid even as the relationship changes in ways the company can no longer see.

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🇨🇴 Colombia. Explosive-laden drones hit an army base in Santa Rosa del Sur, northern Colombia, on November 7, killing three soldiers and wounding at least 16. No group has claimed the attack.

🇵🇱 Poland. Prosecutors are investigating a terrorist offense after a gunman with far-right views killed six people, including a Briton and an Austrian, in Krakow's Main Market Square on November 7.

🇵🇹 Portugal. Police cleared housing protest camps in Lisbon's Rossio Square and Porto's Dom João Square for a second weekend on November 1. The US Embassy says to avoid both squares.

🇭🇹 Haiti. The US Embassy reported heavy gunfire near the embassy in Tabarre on November 7 during ongoing security operations and told Americans to avoid the area.

VETTING. From November 27, US gun dealers and manufacturers can run free FBI background checks on employees and contractors who handle firearms, ammunition or unfinished gun parts, the Justice Department said. Each check needs the worker's written consent and can usually be run once a year. Employers see only a pass, pending or fail result, never the record itself, and anyone who fails can appeal.

CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS. Hackers pushed fake radiation and chemical alerts through Ukraine's Air Alert app, used by 6.6 million people, late on November 1. About two hours later, Russia's emergency ministry app told users in 33 regions that nuclear warheads had been launched. Ukraine declared its alerts false within 15 minutes, and Russia said its sirens, text messages and broadcasts were unaffected.

What would you actually change about the detail after reading a threat outlook? For one team, it might be taking another look at what’s publicly available about the principal’s home. For another, it might be agreeing how staff verify an urgent instruction over the phone or what the team does when a drone appears. Those are different decisions, with different costs and different people responsible for making them happen.

This week’s Premium briefing, The 2027 Threat Outlook, takes seven shifts affecting the security industry and works through what they mean for a protection team. It brings together residential exposure, state-directed activity, lone attackers, drones, cloned voices and changes to venue and travel risk. You get a worksheet to judge which shifts matter to your principal and a first-quarter plan to put the most pressing ones into the work schedule. It’s designed to help you go into the next planning meeting with something more useful than a list of threats.

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Q: Who is the weak point in your principal's inner circle?

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️ Assistants and office staff (44%)
🟧🟧⬜️⬜️⬜️ Household staff (33%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Drivers and the protection team (0%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Something else, let us know (22%)

LD: “Staff have been found in possession of what appeared to be trash but in reality contained papers that held personally identifiable details. The family's teenage children have had to be trained to not become wrapped up in social media postings that could lead to the family being targeted like a Kardashian in Paris.”