U.S. spy agencies had gathered striking intelligence.

A top executive at a Singapore-based data center company was under scrutiny for possibly steering advanced Nvidia artificial intelligence chips to China. And now U.S. officials had concluded that she was a Chinese intelligence asset, funneling information to Beijing.

But what came next was even more alarming. Surveillance of the executive, Alice Huang or Huang Le, a Chinese citizen, revealed that she had developed a close relationship with Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO.