This is a strange take. There is no reason Huang couldn't have been both a fixer and an intelligence asset at the same time. That someone could be both is not at all unusual in China; it's common.
Beijing has designated AI as a "strategic technology" so the idea that someone buying billions of dollars of chips that were being smuggled to China wouldn't be interfacing in some way with key parts of the Chinese state, and being supported by the Chinese state, is silly.
If the end customer of these chips was Alibaba, or any other big Chinese tech company, that only increases the likelihood that the people at the center of the smuggling network would be involved with the state. Alibaba ADRs might be traded on the NYSE but Alibaba is on the 1260H list, which contains entities identified as Chinese military companies operating in the United States. There is literally no big technology business in China that operates independent of the state, even if it's not officially a state-owned enterprise.
This is a strange take. There is no reason Huang couldn't have been both a fixer and an intelligence asset at the same time. That someone could be both is not at all unusual in China; it's common.
Beijing has designated AI as a "strategic technology" so the idea that someone buying billions of dollars of chips that were being smuggled to China wouldn't be interfacing in some way with key parts of the Chinese state, and being supported by the Chinese state, is silly.
If the end customer of these chips was Alibaba, or any other big Chinese tech company, that only increases the likelihood that the people at the center of the smuggling network would be involved with the state. Alibaba ADRs might be traded on the NYSE but Alibaba is on the 1260H list, which contains entities identified as Chinese military companies operating in the United States. There is literally no big technology business in China that operates independent of the state, even if it's not officially a state-owned enterprise.