Jensen Huang reportedly built Beijing a backdoor through South-East Asian data centres
From The Hinge · 9:04
Show by AI news of lasting consequence
Welcome to The Hinge, a daily briefing on AI developments with macrostrategic significance.00:00:00 Jensen Huang reportedly built Beijing a backdoor through South-East Asian data centres00:01:23 Howard Lutnick reportedly ignored Marco Rubio's March memo on the Huang spy risk00:02:21 Data-centre construction stocks shed $4.2trn as the AI trade unravels00:03:17 Gemini 4 Carbon takes the MathArena crown, at roughly 15 times GPT-6.1 Sol's cost00:04:33 Megaspeed says Alice Huang left in August 2025, and launches an internal probe00:05:51 OpenAI folds its robotics team into research and product, apparently betting on general models00:07:03 The White House's lawyer won't commit to complying with subpoenas from a Democratic-led Congress00:07:59 A petition urging Nvidia's board to reinstate Jensen Huang passes 100,000 signaturesJensen Huang reportedly built Beijing a backdoor through South-East Asian data centresJensen Huang reportedly built the backdoor route that keeps Beijing in the AI race: massive data centres in South-East Asia provided crucial computing power for Chinese companies, and cover for alleged chip smuggling. Alice Huang, a suspected Chinese spy with whom Mr Huang is alleged to have had an affair, had arranged to send $12bn-worth of “top-of-the-line” chips to China, according to a post on X attributing the figure to the same newspaper. Her rapport with Mr Huang, this newsletter reported on Wednesday, had reportedly helped at least $7.5bn of Nvidia chips flow through Chinese companies since 2023.Why it matters: If confirmed, the $12bn she reportedly arranged to send suggests ambitions larger than the $7.5bn earlier said to have flowed, though the two figures may not measure the same thing. And the report suggests that offshore data centres, not just smuggled hardware, are a central channel for China's access to American compute.Howard Lutnick reportedly ignored Marco Rubio's March memo on the Huang spy riskIn March Marco Rubio, the secretary of state and White House national security adviser, compiled a memo to ensure that cabinet officials with “equities” in Nvidia and AI were told of CIA intelligence that Jensen Huang was the target of espionage, according to sources. “Howard was given the memo. He ignored the memo,” said one of Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, whose receipt of a classified memo we noted on Wednesday. In May Mr Rubio reportedly briefed Donald Trump too, verbally, as a “reminder”.Why it matters: The account suggests the warning reached the top of the administration months before the scandal broke. That is likely to sharpen congressional scrutiny of how the Commerce Department has enforced chip-export controls.Data-centre construction stocks shed $4.2trn as the AI trade unravelsShares in data-centre construction companies have lost $4.2trn as the boom in the AI trade unravels; the tech sell-off has hit AI's “picks and shovels” companies hard. Money is moving elsewhere. Indian stocks, which suffered bruising losses in the first nine months of the year as the AI trade hoovered up global investor capital, have turned into world beaters as that strategy unwinds, and foreign funds are coming back.Why it matters: When the sell-off reaches the firms that build AI's physical infrastructure, it suggests investors are questioning the build-out itself, not just the model makers. Financing for data-centre projects could tighten as a result.Gemini 4 Carbon takes the MathArena crown, at roughly 15 times GPT-6.1 Sol's costFor the first time in a while, a model not made by OpenAI tops MathArena, a maths benchmark: Gemini 4 Carbon, a Google model, has knocked OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol off the top spot. Carbon scores 85.4%, ahead of Claude Fable 5.2, an Anthropic model, on 82.8% and Sol on 80.6%. The extra marks do not come cheap: with the reasoning settings used in testing, Carbon and Fable 5.2 cost roughly 15 and 40 times as much as Sol. OpenAI's models that have reportedly solved demanding equations, meanwhile, are not yet publicly available.Why it matters: OpenAI's loss of the top spot suggests that, among public models, the frontier in mathematical reasoning is now contested by three labs. Yet the wide cost gap means Sol probably remains the most economical choice for maths at scale.Megaspeed says Alice Huang left in August 2025, and launches an internal probeMegaspeed, the Singapore-based cloud computing company, said on Sunday that Alice Huang, a former executive, had officially left it effective August 30th 2025. Media reports about its business and supply chain, it says, are not supported by verifiable evidence; even so, it has retained external legal counsel to conduct a “thorough internal investigation”. Asian governments, meanwhile, are responding to Jensen Huang's exit. South Korea's science ministry said Nvidia had reaffirmed its plan to supply 260,000 advanced GPUs to the country; more than $3bn of Chinese AI computing projects reliant on Nvidia's restricted processors reportedly…
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