Washington bureau chief, The Economist. Formerly defence editor. Signal: shashank.96
Washington, DC
Joined November 2008
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“Jensen Huang, the leader of Nvidia who is under investigation for an affair with a woman who U.S. intelligence determined is a Chinese spy, also had a extramarital relationship with an executive who reports to him, according to five people who worked at the company.
The relationship, which has not been previously reported, was with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care”
NYT says Jensen Huang had a relationship Nvidia's vice president of health care. nytimes.com/2026/11/11/techn…
"The frustrating thing is that whilst we are left speculating over the order of magnitude by which some of these groups are more likely to offend, the government holds all the data and is refusing to publish it despite being told to."
"For every additional dollar the Pentagon receives, Democrats could demand a matching increase for domestic programmes, he says. All of this would add to the deficit. Allianz Research, an arm of the insurer, expects a fiscal loosening of about 0.2% of GDP in 2027." economist.com/finance-and-ec…
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Admin turning on Lutnick over the Nvidia mess.
US official said this week "any arrangements will respect the national sovereignty and independent decision making, with NATO remaining central to this to European collective defense, and that's going to be very very important." We can debate whether that is consistent with force posture changes in eastern Europe, of course.
An AUKUS update. "An American commodore will command the American navy’s newly set-up Submarine Squadron 3 from Stirling. When The Economist visited, secure communication equipment was being installed to let him talk to the Pentagon over classified channels." economist.com/asia/2026/11/1…
"Nearby, housing is going up for some of the 1,200 American sailors under his command, along with a tax-free grocery shop stocking American snacks, open only to American sailors and their families. The island’s cricket oval has been taken over by construction crews; a basketball court has taken its place nearby."
Astonishing.
"President Trump was told aboard Air Force One in May en route to China that the United States had obtained sensitive intelligence showing that Nvidia’s chief executive was in a relationship with a woman believed to be a Chinese spy, people with knowledge of the matter said. The message was delivered by Marco Rubio, his secretary of state and national security adviser, shortly before the Nvidia leader, Jensen Huang, joined the presidential trip to Beijing at Mr. Trump’s invitation. It marked at least the second time in seven months that the president had been told of intelligence about Mr. Huang’s involvement with the woman."
.@ChrisRMcGuire on China Talk.
"the big question for Congress and for the administration is: how could the Commerce Department have known about this? Have known that Mega Speed is being run by Chinese spies and not done anything to stop the export of chips to them? $4.8 billion worth of chips, and they were sitting on information that said they're being run by Chinese spies, and those spies are actively trying to to penetrate Nvidia at the highest levels. It is baffling to me how they could have sat on that and done nothing..."
McGuire:
"Right now, this year alone, the number two, four, and five importers of AI chips are Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, and collectively they've imported $80 billion worth of AI chips just this year, and that's not all necessarily for you know China. But I'll bet you a lot of it is. This is this is a consequence of the policy lapses, and I think collectively you're probably seeing... the largest technology transfer in history between the United States and any of its adversaries of controlled goods. This is this is an insane scandal."
“2 people who know Alice say while involved with Litong she helped move about 240,000 export-restricted chips into China, mostly H100s and H200s.
For scale that's more than double the number of H100s in xAI's Colossus”
New article from The Information is mad.
Turns out Jensen's mistress leveraged her access to him to help move ~240k export-controlled chips to China (!).
Just to back up: Century Litong was founded by the sister of Alice (the mistress and alleged spy) in 2023.
Alice had zero AI background but got credibility by telling everyone she could always get chip supply through her contacts in and around Nvidia.
She bragged that Jensen celebrated her birthday every year with dinner / gifts, and posted photos of them together on WeChat.
Within 4 months Litong was a Nvidia 'preferred cloud partner' giving it priority access to chips (which it still has today!).
And 2 people who know Alice say while involved with Litong she helped move about 240,000 export-restricted chips into China, mostly H100s and H200s.
For scale that's more than double the number of H100s in xAI's Colossus.
Apparently a business contact described Litong as the place to get any chip the US gov had banned and some of the chips ended up with Alibaba and Tencent.
Asked detailed questions, Nvidia didn't deny anything specific, it just gave a generic statement that it sells through partners and its due diligence has led to prosecutions.
(If there's more stuff like this the pressure on Jensen to resign might get really serious. How can he possibly work with the incoming Congress?)
"This isn't about Iran, this is about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon."
I think this is probably true. If it were just about Iran, boat-strikes, Venezuela & Kelly, you wouldn't flip as many Republicans. The factional and ideological purges of flag officers, as well as the antagonistic approach to Congress, has done more to alienate many Republican lawmakers.
Has Pete Hegseth committed impeachable crimes? The question is absurd and the answer is: obviously not.
Like so much of Congress, impeachment has become a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking. Congress has so many tools for registering its policy disagreements. Rather than use them, they're going to try to impeach Pete Hegseth. They did the same to Donald Trump. Legislation is hard. Impeachments are easy (and ultimately, inconsequential).
The irony is that legislators are most angry at Pete on the issues where he's most correct: repositioning forces away from Europe/Ukraine and reorganizing the general officer corps.
This isn't about Iran, this is about the fact that Pete took on the bureaucracy at the Pentagon.
Impeachment vote for the secretary of defence on veteran's day.
What is the charge? Winning a war? A succulent air & naval war?
“The situation is already drawing comparisons to Mississippi’s past efforts to systematically disenfranchise Black voters. In DeSoto County, inactivations surged in recent months, and the number of active voters declined by nearly 10,000 from September to October, according to state data. The county, just south of Memphis, is home to one of Mississippi’s largest concentrations of Black voters.”
Of course I don’t want the MS senate election to reach SCOTUS—but it would be quite a natural experiment for our legal clerisy to block election of the 1st black senator in the Confederacy since Reconstruction by upholding a GOP voter suppression scheme.
theatlantic.com/politics/202…
“…Democrats just won by such huge margins in so many different places and in so many different ways that any and every would-be presidential candidate can selectively parse the results to claim validation for his or her demographic profile, temperament, experience or ideological leanings.” nytimes.com/2026/11/09/opini…
"I’m sorry that the voters made the wrong choice"
Asked Speaker Johnson if Trump should course correct after last week’s sweeping losses:
“I’m not going to tell the president how to do his job,” he told me. “I’m sorry that the voters made the wrong choice. I really do believe that this next two years is going to be a bit of a circus. It’s going to be chaos …. and that’s a great tragedy.”
Republicans, he said, would have “stayed on course.”