By Sophie Lindqvist

By 2020, nearly half of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's roughly 5,000 active counterintelligence cases (investigations into foreign intelligence activity) were China-related. The bureau was opening a new China-related case every 10 hours, then-Director Christopher Wray said.

That record supplies the risk context for Nvidia's board investigation into whether chief executive Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. More recently, the FBI said it had facilitated 62 removals of foreign intelligence threats through its China program this year.

US officials have long warned that Chinese intelligence services target American companies, particularly those holding valuable technology. Their message to business has been to improve self-protection, where Assad says training remains inconsistent.

What does the Nvidia inquiry establish?

Michele Rigby Assad served in the Central Intelligence Agency from 2002 to 2012, including 10 years working undercover in the Middle East on counterterrorism and counterintelligence assignments. She now works as a corporate counterintelligence trainer and international-security consultant, including work on Chinese intelligence operations in Florida.

Assad said: “It takes a disaster for people to realize that a little bit of training could have mitigated the risk.” Her warning, however, does not establish findings in Nvidia's inquiry: she did not assess the evidence or say what Huang knew about the relationship.

Nvidia has not said Huang shared company information or that Alice Huang was involved in a foreign intelligence operation. China has denied the espionage allegations, leaving the central issue unresolved.

Separate scrutiny has focused on Megaspeed, an Nvidia customer, and whether it helped Chinese customers obtain advanced chips restricted by U.S. export controls (government limits on transfers of sensitive technology). Nvidia said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised. It also found no evidence that Megaspeed illegally transferred its products.

In September, Assad said Chinese operations against the United States far outnumbered FBI agents able to pursue them. In a Tuesday follow-up, she said leaders of strategically important companies may underestimate the risk that personal relationships can be exploited for intelligence purposes.

Nvidia's central role in the U.S.-China competition over artificial intelligence made reports that Huang may have been targeted unsurprising to Assad. That assessment supplies context, not corroboration; no reported finding establishes Huang's conduct or knowledge.

Recruitment starts with ordinary contact

The FBI says counterintelligence risks often resemble ordinary business interactions. Warning signs include:

• an unusually “too perfect” investor, recruiter or customer request;
• a new hire seeking unusual access; and
• a friendly contact who gradually asks for more information.

Assad said recruitment can begin with an invitation to speak at a conference in China. Chinese contacts may develop a friendship before asking for reports or insights they pay the expert to provide.

Those contacts can then request additional reports and increasingly sensitive information. Assad said people become entangled because paid work feels natural or carries little apparent risk.

The intelligence service identifies a target's vulnerabilities and applies them. Incentives may be financial, or the service may insert a honeytrap (a romantic relationship used to extract information) into the target's social circle when the person feels lonely or unappreciated. Assad described honeytraps as a longstanding technique.

The wider failure is optimism bias (the tendency to discount warning signs), which she says leads executives to ignore what lies in front of them. She wants private-sector counterintelligence training to be a priority, so employees understand the risk and recognize an intelligence operation in real life.

The training gap on the Space Coast

Companies in strategically important industries generally receive too little training on foreign intelligence risks. Assad pointed to Florida's Space Coast, where companies work on sensitive technology and development projects.

She and her husband once saw people in a Cocoa Beach bar whom they believed were Chinese intelligence operatives working the room. She recognized tactics from her overseas intelligence work. Business Insider has not independently verified that observation.

Assad warned that secret development efforts cost companies billions of dollars while Chinese operatives operated nearby. Her concern matches a 2023 federal advisory, reported by MarketWatch, that foreign intelligence entities sought sensitive technology and data from commercial space companies, including SpaceX and Blue Origin.

She offered free counterintelligence training to companies and business networks in the region, but no company or network took up the offer. The episode exposes a practical failure: the warning reaches an exposed industry, while the preventive service remains unused.

What does this change for technology leaders?

Assad's answer begins with a simple assumption: valuable technology attracts foreign interest. She said: “If you have products that are of interest to the Chinese and you've spent millions or billions of dollars developing that product, you are a target.”

Her economic logic is that stealing product designs costs less than spending billions to engineer them. She says companies should identify technology, products and data that foreign governments value, then train staff to recognize recruitment patterns and reporting requests.

For technology leaders, the change is procedural: make counterintelligence training routine rather than an emergency response. Ordinary contacts deserve attention when requests escalate from friendship to paid work, paid work to sensitive reporting, and sensitive reporting to broader access.

The available reporting provides no measured case study showing how training reduced losses. The Nvidia inquiry has also not established that Huang was targeted, that Alice Huang had an intelligence role, or that company information was shared.

The defensible conclusion is narrower still: companies should not treat every foreign contact as an intelligence agent. They should also stop relying on goodwill, optimism or routine commercial habits as security controls.