Here’s a cui bono thought experiment for your weekend merriment: Let’s assume China has a vested interest in winning the AI race. (Because, duh.) Let’s also assume that high-end Nvidia chips are superior to Chinese chips, and access to Nvidia chips gives American companies a strategic advantage.

What’s China’s smartest, most cost-effective strategy for leveling the playing field?

Is it wooing Nvidia’s (now-ex) CEO Jensen Huang with a sexy Chinese spy to finagle high-end chip deals? Because so far, that’s been the dominant media narrative: Jensen Huang couldn’t keep his (micro?) chip in his pants and was seduced in a ChiCom honeypot operation.

(Or maybe it was a honeytrap operation: CNN actually ran a story about this all-important debate. Thanks, guys.)

Anyhoo, the TL/DR explanation is that the sexy spy dialed up her “feminine charms,” seduced Jensen Huang, secured high-end Nvidia chip sales to ChiCom shell companies, and then the chips were secretly rerouted to China’s frontier tech companies.

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Advantage: China!

Brilliant strategy, right? Yeah, sure — it means that China’s tech companies will always lag behind America’s, because American companies can access Nvidia’s most advanced chips first, faster, and with far less red tape, but hey, no strategy is perfect. 

Still, not bad.

Or would China’s smartest, most cost-effective strategy for leveling the playing field simply be to set up Jensen Huang in … drum roll, please … a public sex scandal?

Right now, Nvidia — an American company — has a quasi-monopoly on high-end AI chips. By some estimates, it has an 85% market share. Destabilizing Nvidia would destabilize the entire U.S. AI industry.

This would give Chinese AI companies the time they need to catch up. (According to Huang, China’s frontier AI development is only “nanoseconds” behind America’s.) Destabilization is necessary because China can’t catch up unless America slows down.

So the current media narrative only makes sense if we assume:

  1. China is satisfied with second place and doesn’t really care about winning the AI race.
  2. China couldn’t otherwise access high-end Nvidia chips without stooping to honey operations.

I don’t think China is content with the silver medal. I imagine that Xi Jinping views the AI race similarly to President Donald Trump, who predicted, “Whoever wins AI wins.” It’s already a trillion-dollar industry, and this is just the beginning.

So China is unlikely to adopt a strategy that keeps it trapped in perpetual second place.

And I’m also skeptical about China needing a honeypot/honeytrap booty-call to access high-end Nvidia chips. There seems to be plenty of ginormous loopholes already. (And besides, with 250,000 Chinese nationals currently attending U.S. colleges, it’s highly probable that China’s top AI researchers could figure out a way to use Nvidia products whenever they wanted.)

When the “sexy spy” story broke, the first few breadcrumbs supported the theory. Multiple news outlets reported it as fact. There were even claims that Marco Rubio personally warned the president. 

Then, when Huang resigned as CEO, the theory seemed validated: If he had nothing to hide, surely he’d stay and fight. After all, he’s not the first tech CEO to get caught with his trousers down. 

So maybe he’s resigning to draw heat away from his company as he fights the inevitable legal charges. After all, collaborating with a Chinese spy is serious, life-and-death stuff. We’re talking, potentially, about treason. (Go ask Julius and Ethel Rosenberg what the U.S. government does to traitors.)

Of course, there are other plausible explanations for Huang’s resignation, too: He’s a 63-year-old dude with a net worth of over $141 billion whose life is falling apart. His marriage of 40-plus years is now in jeopardy, and I’d imagine that his two kids aren’t exactly thrilled with him right now.

Maybe he resigned because he already has all the money he’ll ever need and wants to salvage his family.

Furthermore, a very curious thing has happened since the media went wild with stories about honeypots, honeytraps, Nvidia, and sexy Chinese spies: There’s been a deafening silence of ANY official confirmation.

David Sacks, who co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, said, point-blank, that “the spy narrative is collapsing already”:

Bombshell story. The spy narrative is collapsing already. 

Is there clear & convincing evidence that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy? 

- AG says no. (“no conclusions reached”). 
- CIA says no. (“not yet convinced”). 
- DNI says no (“not entirely accurate and over-torqued”). 
- Ranking Democrat on House Intelligence (incoming Chairman) says no. (“today, at least, I don’t know”). This was immediately after he was briefed. 

Who argues otherwise? Anonymous officials tell CNN “it strains credulity to believe that she was not acting as an agent of the Chinese government — simply by virtue of the fact that she is a successful Chinese businesswoman working with one of America’s most powerful companies.” 

This is their proof after a year of investigating and surveillance? That she was a “successful Chinese businesswoman”? 

At this point, the only crime that we know for sure happened is the leaking of the classified memo. Who did that and why? 

An investigation should be opened. [emphasis added]

In an interview with Stephen A. Smith, President Trump said, “The big thing is, was the [affair partner] a spy? And I don’t know if that’s been determined yet.”

Well, if the president doesn’t know yet, how would anyone in the media?

What we do know is that AI hysteria is everywhere. There’s been a never-ending parade of media stories about Americans hating AI, the evils of data centers, and the desperate need for guardrails. Left-wing politicians have hopped aboard the anti-AI bandwagon:

And if it was something the public genuinely cared about, the media’s fixation would make sense because, like it or not, that’s how the free market is supposed to work.

But that’s not what the midterm data shows.

From Newsweek (Friday, Nov. 13, 2026): “AI Barely Drove Votes. Voters Still Wanted a Crackdown.”

Data centers became one of the most visible targets of voter resistance to the AI boom in the 2026 midterms. Across 41 local ballot-measure contests, the side opposing development prevailed in all but one.

But some post-election polling suggests that data centers and AI weren't really that much of a priority for voters. Brent Buchanan, founder and CEO of Cygnal, a Republican polling and research firm, discussed this apparent disconnect during a Newsweek webinar on Tuesday.

“AI was literally the bottom option at one percent of what drove their vote,” Buchanan said. [emphasis added]

Right: AI and data centers have been successfully demonized — nobody disputes that — but the God’s honest truth is, they’ve never been high-priority issues for voters. They’re proxies for our other ideological wars: If you oppose billionaires, capitalism, and wealth inequality, you probably oppose AI and data centers, too. 

In fact, most of the opposition is based on vibes, not facts:

In focus groups, Buchanan heard participants describe data centers as “soulless” buildings where “nobody actually works.” Some apparently wondered whether the facilities would expand surveillance or allow technology companies to collect more personal information. Even explaining that data centers help power services such as GPS navigation and Netflix did little to persuade some participants.

“'Those all seem to be working pretty fine for me right now. Why do we need more data centers?'” Buchanan recalled voters responding.

Meanwhile, 84% of Chinese people say they’re excited about AI. In America, it’s now just 38%.

This has all the telltale signs of not just a Chinese psyop, but a dedicated, multiyear plan to defeat America in the AI race.

Look at what’s happened in the past two years:

  1. AI and data centers have been thoroughly (and, possibly, permanently) demonized in America. Especially after the midterms, very few politicians will approve new large-scale data centers.
  2. The U.S. AI industry is currently being destabilized. “Someone” is spreading unsubstantiated rumors (and/or leaking classified information) about the private lives of top U.S. tech CEOs.
  3. The “vast Chinese spying machine” continues to Hoover up our tech secrets.
  4. The media keeps pushing anti-AI propaganda into the political discourse, even though it’s a 1% issue.
  5. The Democrats in Congress are prioritizing AI slowdowns, guardrails, moratoriums, hearings, and regulations. (Reuters calls it a “flood of AI bills.”)

Everything China wanted is coming true!

The Jensen Huang/sexy Chinese spy story was fun. Call it a honeypot, a honeytrap, or anything you want. 

But I seriously doubt that story is the real story. Too many coincidences. Too many pro-Chinese, anti-American outcomes in a row. Including outcomes FAR better than what you’d get from a one-off honeypot operation and ChiCom shell companies.

Sorry, but this isn’t a story about honeypots or sexy spies. It’s way bigger than that.

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