Since the story broke over a week ago, it's been clear to anyone passingly familiar with intelligence tradecraft that Alice was not a "spy". Today, having exhausted the salacious surface story, MSM editors are finally printing the reality their writers knew all along. From the NYT:
> "People briefed on the intelligence say it appears that she was not a trained intelligence officer but rather an “asset,” someone providing information secretly to the Ministry of State Security. Chinese espionage is complicated. There are a range of ways that Chinese business executives can conduct espionage for the Beijing government, from simply reporting what they know to taking active direction." (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/13/us/politics/nvidia-alice-...)
And a WSJ editorial this morning started by conceding that Ms. Huang being an alleged MSS asset has always been the least important and interesting part of the story. The allegations about Alice have been widely known in the White House for over a year. Strong suspicions about "Jensen's China Problem" were surfaced publicly over six months in a report by Culpepper, but the media wasn't interested in until they had an insider official willing to leak it 'unofficially'. And that happened last week, motivated by a long-simmering factional dispute in the White House. Between:
China AI Hawks: State (Rubio), Defense (Hegseth), Treasury (Bessent) Depts
vs
China AI Trade Pragmatists: Commerce Dept (Lutnick), White House advisors and trading desks, and NVidia.
Jensen was the wildcard who'd been effective in reaching Trump and swaying him at the last minute multiple times. Back in Dec last year Trump was briefed on it and again in May Rubio attempted to neuter Jensen's influence by personally telling Trump that Jensen was banging a suspected Chinese asset, but Trump shrugged it off and kept Jensen involved. The interesting thing is that the Commerce Dept knew this and has never added Megaspeed to the blocked Entities List, and in fact recommended the waiver that's kept the more powerful H200 card available to Megaspeed since last year. The U.S. Govt knew and approved of NVidia selling H200s in mass quantity to Megaspeed.
The timing of the leak of this old info to publicly damage Jensen was likely the U.S. / China summit coming up in Shenzen on the 18th and 19th. That's where the current B200 chip export waiver extension will be either re-negotiated or not negotiated (the waiver expires in January). The Hawks want to let the waiver expire and are unwilling to negotiate it no matter what's offered. The Pragmatists want to offer a B200 waiver extension in exchange for high-value goals like rare earth metals, Iran and/or trade concessions. This has been an escalating battle inside the administration for well over a year. Also: this isn't a clear red / blue issue. There are congress members of both parties on each side.
The ironic parts of this are:
- Alice wasn't an agent targeted at Jensen, MSS contacted her after she became friends with Jensen in March '24.
- Alice's business already relied on getting as many of the best GPUs as possible allocated to her company.
- Jensen was already aligned and working closely with the China AI Trade Pragmatists in the administration. He was already maximally incentivized as NVidia CEO to do everything the Chinese Govt and Alice personally wanted him to do - and there's no sign the existence of their relationship changed anything (but it's obviously a 'bad look').
Since the story broke over a week ago, it's been clear to anyone passingly familiar with intelligence tradecraft that Alice was not a "spy". Today, having exhausted the salacious surface story, MSM editors are finally printing the reality their writers knew all along. From the NYT:
> "People briefed on the intelligence say it appears that she was not a trained intelligence officer but rather an “asset,” someone providing information secretly to the Ministry of State Security. Chinese espionage is complicated. There are a range of ways that Chinese business executives can conduct espionage for the Beijing government, from simply reporting what they know to taking active direction." (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/13/us/politics/nvidia-alice-...)
And a WSJ editorial this morning started by conceding that Ms. Huang being an alleged MSS asset has always been the least important and interesting part of the story. The allegations about Alice have been widely known in the White House for over a year. Strong suspicions about "Jensen's China Problem" were surfaced publicly over six months in a report by Culpepper, but the media wasn't interested in until they had an insider official willing to leak it 'unofficially'. And that happened last week, motivated by a long-simmering factional dispute in the White House. Between:
China AI Hawks: State (Rubio), Defense (Hegseth), Treasury (Bessent) Depts
vs
China AI Trade Pragmatists: Commerce Dept (Lutnick), White House advisors and trading desks, and NVidia.
Jensen was the wildcard who'd been effective in reaching Trump and swaying him at the last minute multiple times. Back in Dec last year Trump was briefed on it and again in May Rubio attempted to neuter Jensen's influence by personally telling Trump that Jensen was banging a suspected Chinese asset, but Trump shrugged it off and kept Jensen involved. The interesting thing is that the Commerce Dept knew this and has never added Megaspeed to the blocked Entities List, and in fact recommended the waiver that's kept the more powerful H200 card available to Megaspeed since last year. The U.S. Govt knew and approved of NVidia selling H200s in mass quantity to Megaspeed.
The timing of the leak of this old info to publicly damage Jensen was likely the U.S. / China summit coming up in Shenzen on the 18th and 19th. That's where the current B200 chip export waiver extension will be either re-negotiated or not negotiated (the waiver expires in January). The Hawks want to let the waiver expire and are unwilling to negotiate it no matter what's offered. The Pragmatists want to offer a B200 waiver extension in exchange for high-value goals like rare earth metals, Iran and/or trade concessions. This has been an escalating battle inside the administration for well over a year. Also: this isn't a clear red / blue issue. There are congress members of both parties on each side.
The ironic parts of this are:
- Alice wasn't an agent targeted at Jensen, MSS contacted her after she became friends with Jensen in March '24.
- Alice's business already relied on getting as many of the best GPUs as possible allocated to her company.
- Jensen was already aligned and working closely with the China AI Trade Pragmatists in the administration. He was already maximally incentivized as NVidia CEO to do everything the Chinese Govt and Alice personally wanted him to do - and there's no sign the existence of their relationship changed anything (but it's obviously a 'bad look').
Who phased out "honeypot"? Is that not 'hip' anymore? I honestly missed that memo.
CNN covered it a few days ago https://www.cnn.com/2026/11/12/business/jensen-huang-honeypo... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50477010)
I am guessing that a honeytrap is a honeypot but used as a trap.
Which is the meaning hackers always used for a honeypot, but the term seems not really correct, and now people are correcting it.
(?)
Wasn’t the honeypot open to anyone who might put their hand in it, while the honey trap was for a specific victim?