Nvidia’s board said on Nov. 8 that it is investigating reports that CEO Jensen Huang “has been the target of a foreign intelligence effort.” Nobody has made public what that effort involved. The US government’s own guides for businesses do describe how such a foreign intelligence effort usually works. It starts with spotting someone who has access and moves through assessing, developing and recruiting them.
That matters for any company with valuable technology, and the FBI tells companies to expect it. “If your company has a technological edge, expect foreign adversaries to target your technology,” the bureau’s China: The Risk to Corporate America guide says. A target is the object of someone else’s plan. Being one is not, by itself, evidence that the person did anything wrong.
What Nvidia’s board said, and what was reported
The board’s statement says a committee of independent directors, with outside counsel, will run the inquiry. It has “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.” Huang supports the review, the board said. In a memo to staff the same day, Huang wrote that he had been unfaithful to his wife. The memo does not mention China or intelligence.
The rest comes from news reports. The New York Times and the Financial Times reported that US intelligence agencies concluded Beijing’s main intelligence service had enlisted an executive at Megaspeed, a Singapore-based Nvidia customer, NBC News reported. The FT also reported the US government’s belief that she and Huang had a romantic relationship, NBC said. We are not naming her, and we found no report of charges against her.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said “the so-called Chinese spy allegation is unsubstantiated,” according to NBC. The US government has released none of the intelligence. Our story on Nvidia’s probe of Huang covers the timeline and the stock reaction.
Spot, assess, develop: the cycle in the government’s guide
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center, part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, spells the method out plainly. Traditional intelligence services develop human assets “through the Recruitment Cycle: Spot, Assess, Develop, Recruit, Handle, and Terminate,” its guide Protect Your Organization from the Foreign Intelligence Threat says. NCSC adds that the people involved can be “witting and unwitting.”
The same guide lists “human targeting” among the methods. It describes this as going after people with access to sensitive information, who “might unexpectedly meet someone who shares their interests or seeks an ongoing relationship.”
None of this tells us what happened in Huang’s case. It does explain why the board used the word “target.” In the government’s model, the service doing the spotting runs the effort, and the person it spots may never know.
NCSC also points readers to “Think Before You Link,” a UK guide on spotting fake online profiles.
The techniques, in the government’s own words
We read eight FBI and NCSC guides for companies, schools and federal staff. The table lists each stage or technique they name, roughly in the order of NCSC’s cycle.
| Stage or technique | What the document says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Spot and assess | Joint ventures and academic links let foreign firms “spot, assess, and befriend employees” | FBI, China: The Risk to Corporate America |
| Spot online | Adversaries use social media “to spot and assess employees for potential recruitment” | Same FBI guide |
| Fake recruiters | “Hostile actors routinely pose as headhunters, interested employers” | NCSC, social media deception page |
| Develop | A new contact who “seeks an ongoing relationship” | NCSC, Protect Your Organization |
| Elicitation | “The use of conversation to extract information” | NCSC, Protect Your Organization |
| Elicitation tactics | “Flattery, indicating interest, asking leading questions, claiming a mutual interest, or feigning ignorance” | FBI, China: The Risk to Corporate America |
| Escalating requests | Reports on “innocuous topics,” then “demands for reports containing non-public or sensitive information” | NCSC, FBI and DCSA bulletin, April 2025 |
| Travel | “Beware of new acquaintances who probe for information about you” | FBI business travel brochure |
| Pressure points | Ideology, “greed or financial stress,” “ego or self-image,” “coercion or compromise” | FBI, China: The Risk to Corporate America |
The travel brochure is the bluntest. It warns business travelers about attempts to involve them in “what could become a compromising situation.” It also says that personal details, including “emotional relationships,” are “eagerly sought by those who want to exploit you.” The FBI’s corporate guide lists “manufacture of compromising situations” among the risks of foreign travel.
The laws involved, from Section 951 to China’s intelligence law
The main US law aimed at secret foreign agents is 18 U.S.C. § 951. It covers anyone who acts in the US “as an agent of a foreign government” without notifying the attorney general. An agent is someone who agrees to operate “subject to the direction or control of a foreign government or official.” The maximum sentence is 10 years, and the law exempts diplomats and people doing legal commercial deals.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act, passed in 1938, is a different tool. It requires agents of foreign principals engaged in political activities to register and disclose their work and money publicly.
Both laws apply to the agent. Neither law makes it a crime to meet one.
China’s own laws shape the other side. NCSC’s 2023 bulletin on PRC laws says the 2017 National Intelligence Law “stipulates that citizens or private organizations must assist” China’s state security ministries in intelligence work. NCSC warns it “may force locally employed PRC nationals of U.S. companies” to help.
The center’s 2025 startup bulletin names semiconductors among the technologies Chinese-backed pitch contests have sought.
Cases courts have decided, and what being a target means
Courts have decided the cases below, and none involves Nvidia, Huang or Megaspeed. They show how the government describes the method when it does go to court.
On Oct. 30, Liren “Ryan” Lai and Yuance Chen were each sentenced to 30 months for acting as agents of China’s Ministry of State Security without notifying the attorney general, the Justice Department said. They helped recruit potential intelligence assets from within the US military, the department said. We covered the Lai and Chen sentencing in detail.
The April 2025 bulletin cites a second case. Navy petty officer Thomas Zhao was first approached in a social media chat group “that focused on stock trades.” As the online relationship grew, the contact began asking him for sensitive military data. He got 27 months in January 2024 for passing it on in exchange for $14,866.
In both cases the person approached chose what to do next. NCSC’s model allows that some targets stay “unwitting,” and the FBI tells companies that suspect an approach to report it and “not alert the person under suspicion.” Nvidia’s board says it has no reason to believe anyone compromised national security or company secrets.
The next public step is on Capitol Hill. Three House committee chairs asked Huang to brief them behind closed doors on Nov. 18, and to accept that date or offer another by Nov. 11.
