International Spy Museum Historian Mark Jacobson Talks Nvidia Crisis

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The Jensen Wang saga, just the latest example of what governments around the world say is a broad push by China to steal commercial and technological secrets and gather intelligence on foreign leaders and military plans. The revelation that Nvidia's now ex-CEO had an affair with a woman suspected of spying for China has rocked the USAI boom and thrust allegations that Beijing is seeking to infiltrate Western tech giants into public view. It fits what foreign officials say is a globe spanning project. For more on espionage, we turn to Mark Jacobson. He's a retired US Naval Intelligence Officer, served in Afghanistan and with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He was also a senior advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration among many other former position. Now, he's the historian of the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. He joins us from Washington DC now.

We should note Mark also was my wife's professor at the University, the Ohio State University. So full disclosure there.

Mark Jacobson (1:02)

Oh, you had to mention that.

SPEAKER_4 (1:03)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_2 (1:04)

Even though he's a Michigan guy, apparently.

SPEAKER_4 (1:06)

There we go.

Mark Jacobson (1:07)

Now I'm happy.

SPEAKER_2 (1:08)

All right. Dr. Jacobson, welcome back to the program.

We should note that China has denied any allegations of espionage here. And there's still a lot that needs to play out with the Nvidia story. But if we zoom out here and just look at this in the context of corporate espionage, state-sponsored espionage, what is the history here?

Mark Jacobson (1:34)

All right. And I'm glad you said that there's a lot we need to know. There's a lot we don't understand yet. Were the participants witting? In other words, did they understand what was going on or were they unwitting? Did they have no knowledge of what was going on and did they get played? But look, there's been a long history of corporate espionage. I'm thinking back to the end of the Cold War, where intelligence agencies, even in the United States, had to decide should we do what some of the European countries had been doing during the Cold War and focus on industrial espionage. Let's give our corporations an advantage. Usually, that had been left to the private sector, competitive intelligence, business intelligence, what have you. But the principles are the same. When you're trying to get restricted technology, that may mean a covert operation to acquire it, let's say, through cyber means. This has happened to some of the big four aerospace companies in the past. Or are we going to use a human source? Are we going to blackmail someone? Are we going to influence someone to provide secrets? There's nothing new about this.

I think what's challenging is that it doesn't appear that leaders in the tech, the AI, space, Silicon Valley, understand that they are serious targets, and the Chinese and the Russians in particular are going to take Herculean efforts to try and get a competitive advantage, especially when it comes to AI.

SPEAKER_4 (2:59)

Mark, are we doing the same, though, on our foreign competitors in other countries?

Mark Jacobson (3:04)

I hope so.

But at the same time, no, are we doing the same? Are we doing honey traps? Are we?

I doubt it. I mean, that's really been the province of the Russians and Chinese. There are other ways of acquiring information. For example, let's think about cyber break-ins.

Let's think about acquiring the scientists themselves. Why don't we attract the engineers to come work for us?

There's all sorts of different ways to gain a competitive advantage. But I think where our intelligence agencies in the United States are focusing is on these critical technologies, these breakthrough technologies. For US national security, we want to be on the leading edge of what's going on in the quantum space. And we certainly want to be on the leading edge of what's going on in the AI space. I think here, though, it's more than just the espionage itself. One of the key questions is, did the Chinese seek to have this relationship, either through Alice Wong or in some other method with Jensen Wong, in order to influence the Trump administration's policies? And we know that there's a debate going on between Lutnick and between Commerce and Treasury, between Lutnick and the White House. The White House has been a little soft on China at times. And that this chip issue with regards to Nvidia was a challenge for the last administration as well as this administration.

SPEAKER_4 (4:27)

Yeah.

Mark Jacobson (4:28)

And that's really the valuable piece here. Can you get someone like a Jensen Wong to advocate for a position that may not just be of interest to China, but even better when it's of interest to Nvidia as a company?