When chips are down: Nvidia CEO’s risky relationship

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1:25The Economist.

1:32Hello, and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Ore Ogunbiyi.

1:42Today on the show, Africa's Ebola outbreak could be the deadliest ever. And come with us to the Appalachian Mountains for a food festival with a twist.

1:56First up, though.

2:05Donald Trump says the FBI is investigating the head of NVIDIA, one of America's most valuable and vital AI tech companies, over an affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. Nvidia has already launched its own investigation into CEO Jensen Huang, who's admitted the relationship. The company says it doesn't believe any sensitive information has been compromised, but many in the American government are worried. Jensen Huang has rock star status in the world of tech. We've described him as the Taylor Swift of AI. This is a bombshell. Henry Trix is The Economist's US technology editor. This scandal over his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy jeopardises his 33-year reign over NVIDIA.

2:59It could also have lasting implications for the way America and China interact over AI, because he's just such a pivotal figure in that debate. Henry, walk us through what's happened here. So Jensen Huang is the longstanding boss, also co-founder of NVIDIA, a company worth around$4.5 trillion that provides something like two thirds of the world's AI computing power. He says he was in a romantic relationship. What is clear is that it was with Alice Huang who happens to share his last name. And Alice Huang is a Chinese executive who works for a data center company based in Singapore called Megaspeed.

3:53American officials believe that Alice Huang is compromised and is possibly a Chinese spy. And when did Americans begin to suspect that something might be up? The two Huangs, Jensen and Alice, have been photographed together since as far back as 2024. And it's been on the American government's radar for quite a while. This spring, Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, reportedly drafted a confidential memo warning officials in the Trump administration about Jensen Huang's involvement with this suspected Chinese spy. The thing is that Mr. Huang has a very close relationship with Donald Trump. They have visited China together.

4:46Indeed, when Mr. Trump last went to China, the boss of NVIDIA was initially excluded from the executives who were traveling with the president, and then somewhat mysteriously appeared in Alaska and joined Air Force One at the last minute. So there are strange strains in the administration over how to view Jensen Huang. Henry, what do we know about the national security concerns? Well, the big question here is the role that Jensen Huang has played in lobbying America over its chip export controls to China. He has been a very strong advocate for the world's AI to be built on American infrastructure, which has meant that he's called loudly for a loosening of the restrictions on chip exports because he thinks that if NVIDIA can sell more chips to China, it will help America's AI infrastructure more broadly being propagated around the world.

6:03Now, I should be clear, the Chinese government denies any involvement in this supposed honey trap. It's clear that for many years, Jensen Huang has been pushing for more chip sales to China, making it less likely that his stance on this was influenced by his relationship with Alice Wong. But that said, any future lobbying by him is going to be met with heavy scepticism in Washington. And the relationship that NVIDIA has with Alice Wong's company Megaspeed, which has long been suspected by the US government of smuggling chips to China, is likely to come under even more intense scrutiny than it has in the past.

6:57What does all this mean for NVIDIA? So when the market opened after the news dropped, the share price fell around 5%. It looked, at least to start off with, that the market was betting that he would tough it out. And that's largely because he's considered so indispensable to NVIDIA that investors cannot really fathom what the company would be like without him. Let's be clear, he is to NVIDIA what Steve Jobs was to Apple or Elon Musk is to SpaceX. NVIDIA is Jensen Huang. As for the rest of the market, you know, AI stocks have rebounded from the sell-off last week, which suggests that they appear to be looking through the alleged spy scandal as well.

7:51But it's a hostage to fortune, because if things turn out badly for Jensen, it's almost bound to affect NVIDIA's pivotal role in the AI boom. Do you think he'll resign? Well, the board said it had no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA's secrets were compromised, which does suggest that it's going into this investigation, even though it says it will be independent, with certain amount of prejudgment. For sure, Jensen Huang is expected to remain as boss during the investigation. But while it's underway, his future will hang in the balance. He's going to be incredibly distracted.

8:38I mean, NVIDIA has quarterly results next week in which investors are bound to want answers on this rather than on NVIDIA's business. So it's going to be a very difficult time for him to be running the company. The fact is that there is no clear successor if NVIDIA's chief executive were to step down. So in a sense, it's almost like he is too big to step down. The company is too big to let him step down. That's a very invidious position to be in. You mentioned that Jensen Huang is close to President Trump. What could this scandal mean for the relationship between NVIDIA and the US? Jensen Huang does have strong critics within the administration.

9:26Particularly, he gets up the nose of China hawks, who are much less keen on the relationship because of Mr. Huang's push to relax chip export bans to China and his strong position arguing that both America and China should work together on forwarding AI. Congress is very keen for explanations. So even before Mr. Huang's confession this weekend, three influential Republican congressmen had summoned him to a closed door briefing, partly on his interactions with Alice Huang. As we know from the midterms, the Democrats are also exercised over data centres and the AI boom. And it seems clear that they will also seek to investigate the relationship between Hwan, the Trump administration and Chinese spies.

10:28So it's a pretty perilous path that lies ahead for Jensen Huang. Henry, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Oreg. Great talking to you, too.

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12:23The Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which began in 2014, lasted more than two years and killed over 11 ,000 people. It's the worst outbreak of the disease on record. The new epidemic is centred on the conflict-ridden east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The disease, which spreads via direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluids, is now being found outside the country's borders too. It's only been six months, but is on track to become an even more deadly outbreak than the one of 12 years ago. The current Ebola outbreak emerged in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year.

13:07Gisa Tunbridge writes about Africa for The Economist. The outbreak was declared in May, but the virus had probably been circulating for several weeks before that. So far there have been more than 10 ,700 confirmed cases, and almost half of those have resulted in death. Giza, why is this outbreak in particular so concerning? I think the short answer is that it's spreading quite quickly and a lot about it is unknown. So fewer than a quarter of new cases in Congo occur in patients who are known contacts of previous cases and the virus is now moving across borders. In early October Kenya reported its first ever case and its first ever death of Ebola and later on in October Nigeria reported its first case of Ebola in more than a decade.

13:55The Nigeria case was a woman who had traveled home to Uganda for a couple of weeks and tested positive for Ebola upon her return. There is some degree of mystery and concern about this case because Ugandan officials had initially suggested that she traveled to Congo. This now doesn't seem to have been the case. She's thought to have been at Uganda's main airport on the same day as Kenya's first Ebola patient. There's no evidence yet that they came into contact with one another. If she neither traveled to Congo nor came into contact with Kenya's first case, then this raises questions about whether there is a undetected outbreak in Uganda, which has claimed to be Ebola-free since August and whose officials continue to claim that the country is free of the virus.

14:44To all Ugandans watching and listening, we don't have any case of Ebola in Uganda. These competing accounts have raised some concerns about what's happening in Uganda and whether there are active cases in the country or not. What's been the main challenge with containing this outbreak? So it's proved very difficult to contain this outbreak in Eastern Congo for a number of reasons. One is there is a real scarcity of testing kits and isolation facilities. A second is the chronic instability and insecurity that has plagued this region for decades and which has been particularly severe over the last couple of years as a result of the ongoing conflict with M23, a Rwandan-backed rebel group.

15:34All of this has made it difficult for health workers to reach patients, test them, and also to bring in supplies. One thing also that hasn't helped is that the population of Eastern Congo has a deep lack of trust in the state, which has made it even more difficult for health workers to do their jobs. We've seen some very worrying manifestations of this in recent months. In late October, a mob killed a nurse whom they accused of spreading Ebola by contaminating water supplies. Back in September as well, a politician from the ruling party who had gone on the radio to urge people to take precautions against Ebola was beaten to death a short time later.

16:18So all of this has made it very difficult for health workers to respond to the outbreak and get the spread of disease under control. So aside from Congo, you've mentioned it's already in Kenya, it's been in Nigeria, Uganda as well. How much further do you think that Ebola could spread? So one thing we should say is there's no sign yet of community transmission either in Kenya or Nigeria. And more generally, countries like Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda have relatively effective health systems. So they should be able to stop the virus from taking off quite so badly as it has in Congo, even if new cases emerge.

16:56A bigger concern is that Ebola could spread and take off in much more vulnerable, fragile neighbouring states, particularly South Sudan. and the Central African Republic. And another big worry is that the longer the outbreak continues, the worse the secondary effects on healthcare will become. So doctors working in Congo, for example, say that fewer children are now being immunized. Malaria is becoming more prevalent. And this is because as health workers and authorities struggle to deal with Ebola, resources are being diverted from other tasks that they would normally be pursuing. There is a chance that this could end up being the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

17:40The current outbreak involves a relatively rare strain of Ebola called Bundabujo. There is at present no vaccine against this strain. Because of the difficulty in tracking and tracing the spread of this outbreak, it's hard to compare it to previous ones, but it seems to be spreading and killing more quickly than previous outbreaks. Just for reference, a previous outbreak in West Africa, which is the worst on records, took place between 2014 and 2016 and killed more than 11 ,000 people. Is there any good news on the horizon? A vaccine, for example, some form of treatment that might actually help contain this once and for all?

18:21Yes, we are holding out for a vaccine and there's been some encouraging progress in this direction. On October 23rd, the first participants received shots of Ervebo, which is a vaccine that protects against a more common strain of Ebola. And scientists are looking to see whether it might provide some sort of protection against Bundabugio as well. There is also work being done to produce a bespoke jab that will be designed to protect specifically against Bundabudger. But it will be months before an effective vaccine can be made available and that might end up being far too late for many people.

19:00Gisa, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Ori.

19:21West Virginia is the only state in America located entirely within the Appalachian Mountains. John Fasman is our senior culture correspondent. That, combined with the rich coal seams under those mountains that generations of West Virginians have worked to extract, has given it a unique cultural identity. With its rural seclusion and legacy of poverty, it's not the kind of place that screams oat cuisine. And yet it was nothing other than a food festival that brought me here. My name is Kayla and our team's name is The Ditch Divas. And what are you cooking this year? We are cooking what we call the Mac of the Ditch.

20:00Of course, this wasn't just any food festival. Which is mac and cheese with bear meat. It's barbecued bear meat. We found it in the ditch along Route 42 in Maysville. Yep.

20:16Every year, the Pocahontas County Roadkill Cook-Off draws thousands of gastronomers and gawkers to a tiny town tugged deep in the Appalachian Mountains. Now in its 35th year, veteran attendees told me of its humble beginnings. So the first year we had five cooks. We were at the depot in Marnington. We started in 1991. A guy in Charleston, West Virginia, Mr. Everball, had a roadkill cookbook. Is that a thing people do here ordinarily? Actually, I guess yes. Yeah, he actually feeds the shelter in Charleston. But yeah, I have friends that do it here. If they hit one, well, I let it go to waste. Put it in your truck and take it home.

20:55Although some purist contestants might scavenge for carcasses by the roadside, this is not a requirement. Dishes need only be made from the kinds of preachers commonly hit by cars on rural roads.

21:10The event reveals much about food culture here and beyond. For one thing, even in historically poor regions like Appalachia, abundance reigns. A few generations ago, anyone who ate roadkill would have done it out of necessity. Today, it's by choice. It also proves that delicious ingredients are everywhere, if you know where to look for them and have a little imagination. Today we got road hard rutting buck with skunk cabbage. What does that mean? Just what it is, road hard rutting buck with skunk cabbage. No, we got cabbage, peppers, onions, banana peppers, jalapenos, some ground venison. In previous years, cooks have served up elk, snake, snapping turtle, and possum.

21:56At the festival I attended, contestants made ground buck with cabbage and braised deer with pancakes and beetroot cream sauce. But today's best dish, I thought, was a rustic and comforting wild boar stew. But as the winning team told me, they'd come a long way. 1997 was our first one. We did wild turkey gumbo surprise. And the wild turkey came from a friend of ours. And so I know he went into his freezer and reached all the way in the back to those foil-wrapped ones that had been there for five years. Because this was the driest birds that I've ever, ever seen. And anyhow, we brought them out here and had the gumbo.

22:36It was pretty good gumbo. And a judge comes up to me and she says, are you the chef? I said, yes, ma 'am, I am. And she said, well, I found your surprise. And she's like, and just spit out a birdshot. She said, I think I broke a tooth on it. And that year we came in like 10th out of nine teams. I mean, we were abysmally poor. So we sat out the next year. and then since then, it's like every year that we've been here, we've taken at least one award.

23:11This festival is a reminder that wastefulness should be unpalatable to chefs and eaters alike. Nose-to-tail cooking is now fashionable. It's no longer unusual to see bone marrow, kidney, or sweetbread on the menu of a big city restaurant. But as the competition attests, talented cooks everywhere have long been making the most of every bit of every animal. Appalachian culinary culture in particular prizes thrift and resourcefulness. Hunting, drawing, and pickling all feature heavily. And while the festival leans into stereotypes of West Virginians as wild mountain men who eat what they can peel off the tarmac, it also subverts them.

23:51The team that cooked the boar stew called themselves the Cole Hollow Brothers and drank a homemade concoction called swamp water from a plastic jug. But closer inspection reveals mixology rather than moonshine. It's got green chartreuse, fresh squeezed lime juice, and pineapple juice. And you mix them together, and once I mix them up, I'll track you down there. We'll get you to try some, but it's high potency. Indeed, these deceptively talented wild game cooks produced a dish that could grace the menu of any restaurant anywhere. And when animals, wherever they're found, are prepared with this kind of care, you'll want to eat the heart out.

24:50That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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