Sources: U.S. Intel Unsure Woman Spied on Nvidia for China

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1:04The president has asked whether Nvidia's Jensen Huang should have stepped down in the wake of his affair with an alleged Chinese spy. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. Here's what he told sports talk show host Stephen A. Smith. The big thing is, was the woman a spy? And I don't know if that's been determined yet, but if the woman was a spy, yes. If the woman was not a spy, perhaps it would be different. But I can tell you this. Somehow he'll end up in his feet. I mean, I know him. I know him pretty well. I always thought of him as a fine man. He's I spoke to him yesterday. He's he's going through hell.

1:44Well, there's new reporting as well tonight in The New York Times that the president called on Tuesday, urging him to keep fighting for his job. One of the reporters on the byline is going to join us shortly. Huang stepped down today after 33 years as CEO, but his departure barely closes a chapter on things, let alone the entire book. There's new CNN reporting tonight on efforts within the U.S. intelligence community to determine, as the president alluded to there, the precise nature of any connections Alice Huang may or may not have had to China's state security services. There's also continued questions about what and when the president knew about all of this.

2:19A source tells CNN that back in May, he was briefed reportedly for the second time aboard Air Force One on his way to the summit in Beijing. Despite that briefing, which happened on the first leg of the flight over, the president still picked up Huang at a layover in Anchorage as his guest for the flight to Beijing and the ceremonies there that followed. Again, that summit and the briefing on Huang was in May. And again, that briefing reportedly was not the first. Now, The New York Times last month reporting, quote, Roughly a year ago, Mr. Trump was briefed about the intelligence findings, which have not been previously reported, and chose not to do anything with the information.

2:55So if the reports are to be believed, the president has known about all of this for more than a year, yet just this past Monday, he seemed to suggest otherwise. When were you first told of these potential issues with Mr. Blaine? You didn't answer that question. Well, I've been hearing about it, and I've been reading a little bit about it over a period of time. but not too long ago. When you went to China earlier this year in May, did you know about these alleged ties with the Chinese spy then? No, I didn't hear about it then. But a lot of people have heard about it, and Jensen totally denies that.

3:30I asked him that question, did you have any idea that she was a spy? He said, I had no idea that she was a spy, and I really believe him. So that certainly raises questions. There are questions, too, about Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's role in all of this. We're going to show you a picture of him with Jensen Huang in the Oval Office. Two sources tell CNN that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted Lutnick last week. He was angry. These sources say that the Commerce Department had not designated the company that Alice Huang worked for and allegedly funneled restricted Nvidia chips to China as a national security threat.

4:05Both Democrats and some Republicans now want to hear from from Secretaries Lutnik and Besant. Here's Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy talking to CNN's Casey Hunt about what he sees as Secretary Lutnik's silence on the subject. I would have already called a press conference and told the American people through the media, look, I'll be here as long as you want. I'm prepared to answer all questions. And he hasn't done that. Maybe he has a good reason not to, but he's gonna be called to testify in front of Congress. And I understand the Secretary of Treasury has some concerns about this. I want to hear from Scott Besant.

4:46This is serious as an aneurysm. Serious enough that two top Democratic senators are asking the Trump administration to preserve all documents tied to NVIDIA's chip exports to China. And the House's top Democrat is demanding answers. Any concerns that the president or the White House may have been compromised by the Chinese government over this Jensen Wang spy situation? We need a classified briefing made available to members of Congress as it relates to the NVIDIA situation. And to the extent that our national security has been compromised, the American people deserve answers. And we're going to work to make sure that happens.

5:30Well, the president, meantime, as you heard, continues to sympathize with Mr. Huang, suggesting online earlier today that former Apple CEO Tim Cook should now run NVIDIA and saying that Jensen Huang had done a, quote, fantastic job. He did not say for whom. CNN's Natasha Bertrand joins us now. How big is this disagreement over whether Alice Huang is or was a Chinese spot? Yeah, Anderson. So essentially, the U.S. intel community is still trying to piece together all of the reporting they have on her and all the intelligence collection they have on her to include intercepted communications to determine what exactly her relationship is with the Chinese government.

6:07And so you have the CIA and you have the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, officials within those agencies who say, look, the reporting that we have simply does not prove that she was actually a winning asset of the Chinese government, that she was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, which is essentially the Chinese arm of the CIA, a Chinese version of the CIA, in order to spy specifically on Jensen Wang and get information about NVIDIA. But then you have other Trump administration officials who say that it completely strains all belief that this very successful Chinese businesswoman who had a clear relationship and affair with an extremely powerful executive like Jensen Wang was not feeding information back to the Chinese government in some capacity.

6:51And so to many officials that we spoke to, this is a distinction without a difference, but it just really underscores kind of the murky nature of how China conducts its intelligence operations, how it deals with citizens who are in the business space, of course, that do have access to very powerful American executives and by extension, in this case, the president of the United States. But ultimately, what we were told is that it really obscures the broader issue here of the U.S. government's failure to crack down on the diversion of these chips that are so critical right now to the AI race and so critical to the Chinese, of course.

7:27And what more do you know by the action that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik apparently did not take against Alice Wong's company? So this really goes to that question of why wasn't there more enforcement here? If there were these concerns that this company that Alice Wong leads, Megaspeed, was potentially illicitly diverting these chips to the Chinese government. Why were they not, why was her company not placed on the entity list by the Commerce Secretary? Why were there restrictions not placed on who they could do business with in light of these findings that potentially she might be working for the Chinese government as the intelligence picture continues to become clear?

8:05But at the very least that there were questions about whether there was this illicit diversion. And so within the White House now, there are a lot of questions and a lot of angst, as you alluded to earlier, about why Howard Lutnick did not take action sooner against this company, given all of the questions swirling around it. All right, Natasha, thanks very much. For more on this, I want to turn to Tripp Mickel with The New York Times, also CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller, and Ling Ling Wei, the chief China correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. John, let me start off with you.

8:37Just from the intelligence community, is it unusual for them not to be in total agreement about whether somebody is a spy or not a spy for a particular country? So it's not unusual at the point in a case before they've developed a richer picture where they know everything they need to know. But these are angels dancing on the heads of pins, whether she was witting or unwitting, whether she was created or recruited in progress. Created meaning they saw an opportunity, they saw she had a relationship and thought, oh, well, let's reach out. If the Chinese government and their intelligence services built a business behind her with state-supported businesses, and there's nothing in business that is not connected to the state in China, where she could become a$4 billion customer to Jensen Wang and have that kind of access to him and develop a relationship and pass back information, some of that doesn't make any difference.

9:31It's still intelligence collection going on against the interests of the United States and possible chip diversion to the People's Republic of China. But I think the core thing here is we've been talking about this for three weeks. This conversation has been intense for two weeks. And the idea that intelligence sources choose now after the secretary of state wrote a detailed memo to the president of the United States and those in his immediate circle saying, we believe she's working for Chinese intelligence to say, well, we really weren't sure, may be designed to take some of the heat off of not what was done in this case.

10:12But every question that we're asking right now about what wasn't done. Right. Ling Ling, you have a fascinating story in The Wall Street Journal today. A man you identify as Alice Huang's actual husband, according to your reporting, knew Jensen Huang for years and knew about the relationship. What did you learn? Right. Our latest reporting really reveals for the first time how Alice Huang's access to Jensen Huang was created. It was created by her own husband. Alice Huang, she's around 49 years old, and her husband is around 51 years old. They have been married for many years. And our reporting shows that this couple, over the past decade, has jumped from one hot trade to another hot trade.

11:01You know, pharmaceutical companies, creating shell companies for listing in China, cloud computing, and NVIDIA AI chips are their latest play. And they created this company called MagSpeed in Singapore. And the husband, his name is Conway, he basically knew Jensen, had known him for more than 10 years. First through gaming chip business. So he introduced Alice Huang to Jensen Huang. And over the past couple years, he appeared to have accepted that they had a close relationship, according to people who know the couple. And at times, Conway, the husband, even joked to his associates that, you know, Alex Hwang was like a personal assistant to Jensen.

12:03So this close relationship was there. And our reporting shows this couple also has a pattern of using personal connection to advance their business interest. And as Zhang and other reporting has shown, there are definitely questions about whether or not Alice Huang is a Chinese intelligence asset. It's not inconceivable, especially in today's China under Xi Jinping. For people who have access to foreigners like Jensen, the face of AI revolution, those people definitely are under severe surveillance by the Chinese government. And it's inconceivable. It's definitely conceivable for the Chinese state security agent, you know, intelligence services to call her in and, you know, ask questions and maybe put pressure on her or whatever to try to get her.

13:01Unbelievable to think that they would not do that. Exactly. Whether they had a preexisting relationship or not. It's incredible reporting. I want to bring in Tripp. Tripp, as I mentioned, you and your colleagues in The New York Times have some new reporting about how President Trump called Jensen Huang and urged him to keep fighting for his job. This was on Tuesday, yeah, and this was a day before we had an additional report yesterday about a second affair that set in motion a corporate boardroom drama yesterday where the board met and decided they needed to wrestle with Jensen Huang's fate and whether or not he should stay on and leave the company in the wake of these two breaches of the company's code of conduct.

13:45John, I still can't really understand the timeline of all of this. If the president knew a year ago, why wouldn't Jensen Huang have been informed a year ago? Well, this is one of the questions, you know, that you would think the FBI would have come and done a defensive briefing. First of all, be careful of this person that you're around and be careful what you share, but also would have done an interview where they say, well, what have you discussed? What has she asked? You know, spies don't go down a list of questions. They get into conversations and they say, tell me a story. What was it like in the Oval Office?

14:20When you flew on the plane, oh, did you sit next to him? Well, what did he say? Well, what did you say? What does he think about this? You draw these things out slowly. That would have been something to do. Now, I'll tell you right now, this wasn't the FBI's intelligence. This comes from the CIA and other agencies. So under the ORCON rules, the FBI couldn't have taken that intelligence independently and done that briefing. They would have needed permission from the intelligence community. And it looks like the pathway of that information didn't go that way. Instead, it went to the National Security Advisor, who's also the Secretary of State, who put it into a briefing for the president and the people around him.

14:56So what's required now is a look back. What happened with the commerce investigation? What happened with the defensive briefing that never happened? What happened with the information that we're so certain about in the memo from the Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, that they're now casting doubt on? And then a look forward, which is Jensen's out of the company. Is he going to be interviewed now? Will the FBI open this case? Will they have permission to do that? And all the steps that need to happen today. Tripp, we mentioned how this story has created issues for Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

15:27What else have you learned about that? You know, one of the things that's taken place and played out over the last year and a half is NVIDIA's had unrivaled influence over the Commerce Department. I mean, we're talking about, and if you read our report today about the situation for Howard Lutnick and the department, it underscores how the general counsel at NVIDIA was redlining some of the rules about selling chips to China. And in conversations with industry executives, that was classified, that was described to me as rarefied air. It is the type of thing you do not see in the Commerce Department.

16:06And of course, these are very controversial chips. And this is one of the most controversial decisions that President Trump has made as a consequence of his alliance with Jensen Wang, which was to permit the sale of these chips back to China. And he was doing, And the Commerce Department was doing all of this with NVIDIA kind of participating in the rulemaking process for how that process might those sales might play out. It's fascinating reporting. Trip Mikkel, Ling Ling Wei, also just incredible reporting for The Wall Street Journal. John Miller, thank you so much. Coming up more on CEOs behaving oddly, the damage that this one may have done and why companies like NVIDIA and OpenAI are the modern day equivalents of defense contractors.

16:47That's what professor, podcaster, and corporate board member Scott Galloway believes. He joins us next. Also, shocking new footage of the collapse of a three-story building in Brooklyn that took eight lives, and the search for answers now getting underway.

17:17way more. Now is the time to score big from seasonal finds to favorites you'll use all year long. Plus with Wayfair, enjoy fast and easy shipping with delivery and time for the holidays. Save up to 70 % off early Black Friday deals. Shop now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast. We get to talk to the men's winner of the New York City Marathon, Andreas Almgren. He's a self-coached 31-year-old who was, get this, making his marathon debut. He never ran a marathon before he won it. If someone wanted to start getting serious about running and they wanted to approach it like a data scientist like you do, how would you suggest they start?

18:01Be patient. My peak weeks, I ran like 140, 150 miles per week or something. Either increase the distance or you should increased intensity, it should never increase both at the same time. Listen to Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

18:23That is the closing price of NVIDIA shares, down more than 4%, erasing about$192 billion in value from the company in the space of a trading day. AI companies, many of them powered by NVIDIA chips, are responsible for an estimated one-fifth of US GDP growth this year, according to JP Morgan. and NVIDIA's chip technology is a national security asset. The Jensen Huang scandal may have jeopardized a lot of that and potentially put a foreign intelligence asset a step away from the president. I want to get perspective now from NYU professor and podcast host Scott Galloway. So you were saying a couple of days ago that Jensen Huang should resign.

19:00What problems does his departure from NVIDIA solve and what problems does it potentially create?

19:09uh well good to be with you anderson i actually think the same idolatry of innovators that had people saying uh absolving him of guilt if this had been a one billion dollar manufacturing company they'd be talking about corporate governance and prosecution but because it's a five trillion dollar company people were making excuses for him and saying that he was indispensable that is that idolatry of innovators the same idolatry on the other side is that there's this notion that in technology, we have this Jesus-like figures that are like the white, you know, the white knight or that if this person goes away, the firm is going to collapse on itself.

19:49Whether it was Reed Hastings, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey and Larry, there's this notion that it's one person. You cannot build a$5 trillion company without a raft of outstanding executives. So in sum, if they can sequester the scandal to Jensen and the administration and put in place the right protocols, you probably have a company that, and this isn't financial advice, is a pretty decent buy right now because this company is now trading at a forward earnings multiple like Walmart or P &G, despite the fact it's growing 60 % a year. So this is a fundamental threat to the underlying protocols and security of NVIDIA, but the underlying business model is as strong as ever.

20:32It's interesting because I thought of comments you made a while ago about Oppenheimer. And when he was developing the atomic bomb, he didn't have a venture capital. He wasn't running his own company. This became a government effort. And that was because of the national security implications. These companies, I mean, there are national security implications for all of these major AI companies. And it stuns me that, like, his security people who must have, I mean, I would assume he would have had former CIA or FBI people around him. The idea that this could have happened is incredible to me. And are all these companies at risk of this kind of infiltration?

21:21Stunning is the right word. Essentially what you have here, and hopefully something this will bring to light and will change, is that what we have is Defense Department, CIA level sensitivity with WeWork like security. On your first day as a case officer for the CIA, they just sit down, everyone and say, if you're out on the road and someone finds you very attractive, you should assume they're a spy. So the notion that we have essentially provided access via a honeypot scheme to the technology that powers our most sensitive weapons, our intelligence infrastructure and our economic advantage is just like, as you said, absolutely stunning.

22:01I mean, this may go down as the biggest security breach in history. Well, it's also amazing to me because Jensen Huang, I sat down with him, I don't know, a month ago, right, where he was going to the dinner with Xi at the White House that night. And, you know, his whole argument on not regulating, having government regulation is like, look, these companies should follow the laws. And if they do something, you know, wrong, they're not they don't want to do something wrong that's going to hurt their company. and if they do, they'll bear the repercussions of that. There's laws in place for these sorts of things.

22:39The argument he was making that these CEOs essentially have a sense of responsibility, I mean, his personal activities undercut his argument. well he's fond of saying that the rules for staying a ceo were not to get bored and not get fired it ends up there's a third rule here and i actually believe that while jensen's story is going to make for great theater this isn't about infidelity it's about national security and i think the focus is going to shift from mr huang to howard lutnik and the administration the fact they let this happen the fact they haven't put in place security protocols for companies that are not only our most sensitive information, but the way we pay for our nuclear guidance systems and our hypersonic missiles is through economic dominance.

23:31And China has essentially been stealing IP from Europe and the U.S. and then repackaging and selling it back for pennies on the dollar. This not only attacks potentially our defense infrastructure and security protocols, it attacks our economic advantage. And the fact that these companies are the new defense systems, they're exceptionally powerful. And if the CEO of Northrop Grumman was found to have an affair with a spy that potentially compromised the safety of our Ohio class submarines, I mean, there'd be some explaining to do. So the silver lining here is hopefully we're going to come out of this with a recognition that we need the same kind of security protocols at these firms that we have at defense firms.

24:10Yeah, I mean, if these I mean, you know, the honeypot schemes are about black. You know, it leaves you open to blackmail, leaves you open to foreign influence. And it's incredible to me that this, again, that the security team around him did not pick up on this. I feel like there's a lot more to learn about all of this. Scott Galloway, thank you, as always. Appreciate it. Thank you, Anderson. Coming up next, Senator Bernie Sanders on what he thinks Democrats can and should do with their newly won majorities in the House and Senate. And later, what investigators are trying to learn in the wake of yesterday's deadly building collapse in Brooklyn.

24:44We'll have Senator Sanders in a moment.

24:49Big news! Wayfair's Black Friday sale is here, early! Right now at Wayfair, get up to 70 % off everything you need for the season ahead. Save on kitchen and dining, bedroom furniture and mattresses, holiday decor, and way more. Now is the time to score big, from seasonal finds to favorites you'll use all year long. Plus, with Wayfair, enjoy fast and easy shipping, with delivery and time for the holidays. Save up to 70 % off early Black Friday deals. Shop now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Fresh off sweeping winds in last week's midterm elections, a number of rising figures in the Democratic Party are gathering for a summit in Denver this week to chart a course for the future.

25:30One major outstanding question for the party is whether it's time for new leadership. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who's an independent but caucuses with Democrats, says he will not be supporting minority leader Chuck Schumer to lead the chamber. I personally have known Chuck Schumer for over 30 years. And I like Chuck, nobody who works harder than Chuck Schumer. But in my view, the time is now for change. And I will not be supporting Chuck to be reelected as the Democratic leader. I'm joined now by Senator Sanders. Senator Sanders, I'm wondering, what kind of change are you looking for? Is it more ideological, generational?

26:12Because if, as you say, no one works harder than Senator Schumer, why replace him? What this election was about, Anderson, is a crying out on the part of the American people for change. And it's not only a profound disgust at Trump's behavior and his policies, it is an understanding that in the richest country in the history of the world, there is something wrong, fundamentally wrong, why 60 % of our people are living paycheck to paycheck, why we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth, why millions of our seniors are unable to retire with dignity, all the while the people on top are doing phenomenally well.

27:01And I think all across this country, from coast to coast, people are saying status quo policies and status quo politics are no longer good enough. We need to have a government that stands up for the working families of this country and is prepared to take on the oligarchs. We need to deal boldly with the crises facing working families. What does that mean? Why are we the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee health care to every man, woman and child while we spend twice as much per capita as other countries? Why are millions of people working for 12, 13 bucks an hour starvation wages when we haven't raised the minimum wage above$7.25 an hour?

27:52Why is it that the big tech oligarchs are able to push an AI and robotics that the American people are very, very nervous about? And we have done nothing to provide serious safeguards regarding that. Why do we have a foreign policy in which we are in a war based on a lie and why we continue to fund a genocidal government in Israel? Those are just some of the issues I think the American people want us to address. You've heard Attorney General Todd Blanche signal he's going to go to the mat to protect the Trump administration from any Democratic-led investigations. What does oversight of the White House look like to you come January?

28:40And where is that on the priority list in terms of what you think Democrats should be focusing on? Well, Anderson, I happen to believe that Trump, time and time again, has acted in illegal ways, unconstitutional ways. The war in Iran is unconstitutional. or the tariffs that Trump has developed are unconstitutional and erratic, etc., etc. And I think we need to hold Trump accountable. But let me reiterate, to my mind, what this campaign, what this election was mostly about is the American people demanding fundamental change. They don't want their kids, and unless we change it, it will happen, to have a lower standard of living than they do.

29:32They don't want their kids to be$50 ,000 in debt because of the crime of going to college. We have got to stand up for working families, and to me, that is what the Democrats must do. One issue you've obviously long championed, and we have talked about it, Medicare for All. Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed has been floating the idea of calling the bill Trumpcare to get the president on board. He shared today a mock-up of a gold card with the president's name on it. We're showing it now. Do you think that strategy would actually work? Would you support adding the president's name to legislation if it actually helped get it passed?

30:06Well, I think Abdul is being a bit facetious. But what I have said is that Trump may be mentally unstable and erratic, but he's not stupid and he is a good politician. And if the Congress passes Medicare for All in its first year, what it would do is lower the age of eligibility to 55, include all of the children, expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision. Wildly popular. Do I think that when Trump looks out and sees, oh, my God, millions of people really want this? Yeah. Am I prepared to sign it? Yeah, I am. So I think it is possible, I won't guarantee it, that Trump could sign that.

30:47I think he could sign a bill that raises the minimum wage to a living wage, 20 bucks an hour. So our job is to deliver past legislation. I hope that Trump will sign it. If he doesn't, he and the Republicans will have to face up to the American people and explain why. The president is saying he's going to be Mr. Vito next year. I'm wondering, are there other areas you think you can? I mean, do you think he will do that? Do you think that's the strategy? Because it seems to be, I mean, obviously, all the people, Stephen Miller taking over, it certainly is an indication he's not kind of compromising just yet.

31:26Well, Anderson, I think, you know, you know the president as well as you. On Monday, you know, he may say he's Mr. Vito, and Tuesday he will say, well, I look forward to working with the Democrats. But bottom line is, he is a good politician. And our job is to provide, give him and pass legislation that is popular, that meets the needs of our working families, the elderly. We have got to expand Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on taxable incomes, wildly popular. We have got to make sure that we deal with the crisis in child care. All of these issues are not only important, they are popular.

32:12And it would not surprise me, because Trump is not an ideological guy, he's a politician, that he would sign many of these pieces of legislation if we passed it, which is what we must do. Senator Bernie Sanders, it's great to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Edison. Coming up next, an update from the scene of this building collapse in Brooklyn that claimed eight lives, plus what Defense Secretary Hegsteth did about the Army Sentinel who reprimanded him and others yesterday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

32:46All visitors will maintain that spirit of silence and respect at all times.

33:11Now is the time to score big, from seasonal finds to favorites you'll use all year long. Plus, with Wayfair, enjoy fast and easy shipping with delivery and time for the holidays. Save up to 70 % off early Black Friday deals. Shop now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. A terrifying video of the moment a three-story building collapsed in Brooklyn, killing eight people, including two children. The search for victims and survivors is over tonight after hours of searching made dangerous by heavy rain. More from CNN's Shimon Prokubas.

33:47Ring video from outside of an apartment door in the building that collapsed in Brooklyn Wednesday, capturing the moment it all happened. 24 hours after that deadly building collapse, a grueling search for survivors has come to an end. The FDNY confirmed no more victims remain trapped under the rubble. I want to take a moment to remember those we have so senselessly lost. These were our friends and our neighbors, parents and children. A tragedy of this magnitude demands a comprehensive and thorough investigation. It was a three-story building that collapsed on Wednesday into an adjacent construction site in Brooklyn, trapping people in both locations.

34:31I'm just so sad. at like six o 'clock yesterday, like you could hear people yelling that were trapped. So you could hear people yelling for help. Officials searched all night for survivors and rescued a woman who was six months pregnant. Her husband spoke to reporters. She is alive. She is still alive. I'm very happy. I'm very happy. Another woman whose brother is missing told CNN officials told her to check local hospitals. You have no idea how your brother's doing? Nope, we don't know. Are you feeling scared? Yep, hopefully they are good. Investigators continue to look for what caused the building to fall and whether it's related to the construction site next door.

35:18The Department of Buildings has identified five different entities associated with the construction site. Those five entities are associated with a hundred other sites across the city. The Department of Buildings is commencing sweeps of those sites. So where does the investigation stand right now? So at this point, it all stands with the Department of Buildings, Anderson. They have their forensics engineers unit. They've been out here. They came out here almost immediately, and they are really trying to dig through some of the debris. They were out here just last night going through it. They're reviewing a lot of the records.

35:56There were complaints. There was an issue here back in March, as the mayor talked about today, over the collapsed building facade. There may have been some cracks. Some of the work had to stop, and then it restarted back in August. So they're going to be looking at all of that, and certainly they're going to want to talk to the construction workers and the people who lived in the building, in the collapsed building, to see what they have to say, to get a sense from them what were they feeling, what were they experiencing in the days leading up to this. And the surviving construction workers, they're going to play a key part in all of this to try and bring some answers to what was going on here and what kind of work was being done and what they were feeling and seeing as they were doing some of this excavation work here, Anderson.

36:40All right, Shamuk Brokibas, thanks so much. At the Pentagon today, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth awarded a Joint Service Commendation Medal to the Arlington National Cemetery Sentinel, who reprimanded him and his entourage at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

37:05All visitors will maintain that spirit of silence. That was Army Specialist. At all times!

37:15That was Army Specialist Thomas Iglesias. Secretary Hegseth applauded him today on social media, writing, quote, We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, specialists. Carry on, patriots. Coming up, NVIDIA scandal has exposed how China has been bypassing U.S. export control networks and getting American AI chips. Will Ripley explains next how the technology is still reaching Chinese companies next. And a new episode of my podcast on grief and loss, All There Is, is just out tonight. I talked to Mary Cosby, whose son died in February after struggling with addiction. We talk about how her faith informs how she grieves.

37:59We touched on this at the top. Jensen Huang's affair with alleged Chinese spy shines a bright light on the problem of restricted U.S. technology ending up where it should not. CNN has uncovered evidence that it is still reaching Chinese companies. Will Ripley has more than that. These appear to be some of the most coveted American-designed computer chips in the world. And this video circulating on Chinese social media may show workers modifying them, turning gaming graphics cards into hardware for training artificial intelligence.

38:38CNN cannot independently verify this footage, but it reveals a much larger problem facing Washington. Despite years of export restrictions, advanced American chip technology keeps finding its way into China's AI industry. The power of the world between the two great powers, China and the U.S., will be decided more through technological power than brute force. Taipei-based technology journalist Tim Culpin has covered Taiwan's chip industry for decades. He says the stakes now are higher than ever. I think leading-edge chips are now the nuclear weapons of our age. Few people had more influence over who gets those chips than Jensen Huang.

39:19The ousted NVIDIA CEO became the face of the AI boom and a powerful advocate for selling American technology to China. Mr. President. With a direct line to the White House and President Donald Trump, Now, CNN has learned U.S. intelligence officials suspected Huang was being targeted by a foreign intelligence operation. This is their specialty. And the woman at the center of those concerns, Alice Huang, no relation, had ties to Megaspeed, a company buying more than$4 billion in NVIDIA chips. Technically, a lot of these Chinese companies aren't allowed to buy U.S. chips, NVIDIA chips, but they can easily get access to those chips if you just put them in a data center in Malaysia.

39:57New York Times reporter Paul Moser spent more than a year investigating Megaspeed, one of the companies supplying that computing power. Registered in Singapore, operating data centers in Southeast Asia, and linked to businesses serving Chinese customers, the arrangement exposes a loophole in Washington's restrictions. So China is getting the AI computing power of U.S. firms? Right, just outside of China. It is incredibly hard to look at this and not see a Chinese state-sponsored network for bypassing U.S. export control networks. Trade data investigator William George has been tracking another route, chip shipments passing through Southeast Asia before reaching China.

40:37This is a pipeline that is developed that benefits from the fact that there is minimal scrutiny on U.S. air data, that you can bring things into Singapore, Malaysia, Central and Southeast Asia, and then move those goods into China. In some cases, China doesn't even bother hiding it. We found this procurement record published by Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shanxi province. Two NVIDIA H200 AI chips, total price$131 ,000. And the buyer has been on a U.S. export blacklist since 2001. It's not clear why they bought the chips. President Trump approved some H200 exports to China last year, but that did not lift restrictions on this university.

41:19The Pentagon identifies it as one of China's seven sons of national defense, universities closely tied to the People's Liberation Army. The university has not responded to CNN's request for comment. And then there's Alice Wong, that Chinese businesswoman whose career mysteriously moved from media and finance into artificial intelligence, putting her up close and personal with Jensen Huang. Corporate records examined by CNN show she became a director of Megaspeed in 2023. That same year, she took this photo, visiting a Chinese state-backed automotive research center. No one seems to have suggested that she herself was an MSS officer.

42:01Former CIA counterintelligence analyst Peter Mattis says it's hard to tell whether Alice Wong was working for Chinese intelligence when she first met Jensen Wong. The third possibility is that, you know, she earned her way because she's competent and capable. The Ministry of State Security saw the beginnings of this relationship and sought to exploit it. Huang has argued China's military is unlikely to depend on American chips. We don't have to worry about that because the Chinese military, no different than the American military, will not seek each other's technology out to be built on top of it.

42:33They simply can't rely on it. That position puts Huang at odds with many U.S. national security officials. And now there's growing concern about what he might have divulged about Washington's chip policy, influenced by someone whispering in his ear. And Will joins us now. I understand he spoke to a former head of Taiwan's equivalent of the FBI. What did he say? Yeah, he told me that it's probably an 80 percent chance, in his opinion, that Alice Wong was likely not a trained Chinese spy. His theory was that Chinese intelligence identified her because of her access to Jensen Huang, potentially after the extramarital affair allegedly started, then recruited her and then sent her back to gather more information from him.

43:18And he said that she basically couldn't refuse China's Ministry of State Security if they asked her to do this, or it would have been extremely difficult because under China's national security law, Chinese citizens are basically compelled to help gather intelligence on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, Anderson. And where is Alice Huang now? Well, that's the big question. Nobody really knows. I mean, despite the fact that her face is plastered on newspapers around the region, including this one here in Taiwan, right next to Jensen Huang, there have been no confirmed sightings of her, no sightings in Beijing, even though there's some report that she might be there.

43:52We tried tracking them down. No indication of her location at this point. And that is interesting, this source from Taiwan's equivalent of the FBI told me, because he said if Alice Huang remains missing, it raises the chances significantly that she was working covertly as a spy of some kind and has essentially been possibly disappeared by the Chinese government at this point, kept out of sight deliberately, while all of this continues to kind of boil over. And hopefully it'll eventually calm down. We'll see if she ever does reemerge. But we still don't know at this stage what Chinese intelligence would have learned from her and her interactions with Jensen Huang, if anything, Anderson.

44:28Will Ripley, thanks so much. Before we hand it over to Caitlin, a quick note about my podcast on loss, all there is. A new episode just came out tonight. My guest this week is Mary Cosby, who is on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. She opens up about the death of her son, Robert Cosby Jr., who died this past February after struggling with addiction. He was just 23 years old. She shares with me how her faith shapes her grief. I believe with every ounce of me that God would never intentionally put pain on us. You believe there's a reason for all of this? I do. I do. I just accept it. If he's allowing it, he's picking a soldier that can take, like for you, his example, he puts his hardest and heaviest battles on the strongest soldiers.

45:14I wish I had that faith. I think terrible things happen all the time and there is no reason behind it. So do you believe that they're going because it's their time? Otherwise. Absolutely not. Really? I think horrible things happen to little babies and children and things that shouldn't happen to anybody. So it was your son's time, you believe? I do. Do you cry? I do cry. But I cry when I talk about it. But I don't cry in silence. I don't just weep. And I don't want to. Because? Because I feel like it would be doubting my faith. It would be doubting God. It would be a sign you don't believe he's in a better place or you don't believe there's a reason for it.

46:00Yes. Don't get me wrong. I'm not against tears. If I feel to cry, I will. If I feel to scream, I will. But I just don't let those emotions rise up in me because I don't feel like it would be easy for me to get back. That's what you're worried about is like if I start down that road, I'm not coming back from it. Right. I don't want to have those days where I just stay in the bed and I cry and I can't get out of bed. And I because I think that's more wearing on my mental. I don't want to make it a mental thing. And that's why I don't cry. You can watch the entire conversation at CNN dot com slash all there is or listen to it wherever you get your podcasts.

46:42The news continues right now. Hope you have a good night. The Source with Caitlin Collins starts now. Big news! Wayfair's Black Friday sale is here, early! Right now at Wayfair, get up to 70 % off everything you need for the season ahead. Save on kitchen and dining, bedroom furniture and mattresses, holiday decor, and way more. Now is the time to score big, from seasonal finds to favorites you'll use all year long. Plus, with Wayfair, enjoy fast and easy shipping, with delivery and time for the holidays. Save up to 70 % off early Black Friday deals. Shop now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home.

47:19I'm Adi Cornish. I'm Ari Shapiro, and it's Engagement Party. It is Engagement Party. And we get to talk about what we're obsessed with, what we're engaged with, what we need to process with a friend. Her name is Amy O'Dell. She is a fashion writer, blogger. But the thing is, she's a journalist who's written about the sacred cows of fashion. And yes, I mean, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anna Wintour. She has done biographies of both. And she is also the sort of rare fashion writer who, at this point, kind of outside the system. And so the question that we're going to try to tackle is... I'm fashion terrible now.

47:50Well, no, I mean, I would phrase it as how do you develop a personal style in the age of AI slop? You know, on social media, like creators have to try a whole bunch of different things and see what catches and then they make it over and over and over again. The same thing happens with clothing. So they're sort of seeding the market, seeding the Internet with all of these different ideas. And then they can see what sells and then they can just make them really fast. Follow Engagement Party. Wherever you get your podcasts.