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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s intimate relationship with a woman accused of being a Chinese spy has highlighted divisions in Washington over the export of advanced chips to China.

Huang, the head of one of the most critical firms in the global artificial intelligence race, has long been among Silicon Valley’s most powerful voices arguing against restrictions on high-end chip sales.

For years, the tech executive lobbied United States President Donald Trump to loosen export controls, finding allies in sympathetic administration figures such as David Sacks, Trump’s former AI tsar.

Whereas hawkish voices argued that Beijing should not have access to cutting-edge US technology on national security grounds, Huang and like-minded executives argued that China already had the computing power to make strides in AI and that wider uptake of US technology would help maintain its dominance in the field.

Jensen Huang’s lobbying now faces intense scrutiny following claims that former Megaspeed executive Alice Huang — with whom he had an affair — was an intelligence agent recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied the allegations, calling them “entirely groundless, speculative and intended to smear and malign China”.

Alice Huang has not publicly commented on the claims, which The New York Times and the Financial Times first reported, citing unnamed US intelligence officials.

Nvidia’s board of directors on Sunday launched an inquiry into Jensen Huang’s relationship, pledging to examine “all available information” while also expressing confidence in the CEO.

Jensen Huang, who cofounded Nvidia in 1993, has pledged to cooperate fully with the inquiry and expressed his commitment to protecting Nvidia and US national security.

Trump has meanwhile said the FBI too is investigating whether Huang’s affair led to any compromise on US national security.

Already, US lawmakers have invoked the controversy to push for tighter restrictions on China’s access to US chips.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator Jim Banks on Monday called on the US Congress to take “decisive action” and pass their AI Overwatch Act, which would empower lawmakers to scrutinise and potentially halt exports of advanced chips to China and other adversaries.

“The Commerce Department should complement these efforts with immediate action to close export control loopholes and ensure that advanced AI chips are not going to China’s military,” Warren and Banks said in a joint statement.

Democratic House Representative Bill Foster also cited Jensen Huang’s relationship in a statement on Monday in which he called on his fellow lawmakers to get his Chip Security Act “across the finish line”.

The legislation, cosponsored by Republican House Representative Bill Huizenga, aims to prevent illicit smuggling to countries such as China by implementing measures to track the location of chips sent overseas.

Advocates of tighter restrictions now have a “much stronger political argument” and are likely to make use of it, said Rui Ma, a tech industry consultant and founder of Tech Buzz China.

“Chip exports to China have been deeply divisive in Washington, and Huang has been one of the strongest advocates for keeping that market open,” Ma told Al Jazeera.

“If his influence is diminished by this investigation, regardless of its eventual findings, those pushing for tighter restrictions will be in a much stronger position,” she said.

Trump, who has forged a close relationship with Jensen Huang since returning to the White House, has taken several actions to make it easier for chip makers to do business with China, while also maintaining significant export controls.

In May last year, the US Department of Commerce announced that it would scrap the previous Biden administration’s “AI Diffusion Rule”, which would have imposed caps on chip exports to more than 100 countries, including some US allies.

In December, Trump said he had granted Nvidia approval to sell its second-most powerful chip, the H200, to China under an arrangement that would see 25 percent of sales paid to the US government.

Nvidia, which controls an estimated 80 to 90 percent of the market for graphics processing units (GPUs) used to run frontier AI, welcomed the decision at the time, saying it would “support high-paying jobs and manufacturing in America”.

On the other hand, Trump has resisted calls to allow exports of Nvidia’s top-of-the-line Blackwell chips, which deliver about 2.5 times the performance of the H200.

“I think recent events likely increase attention on export control loopholes, and add momentum to bills already being discussed in Congress, like the Chip Security Act,” Erich Grunewald, a senior researcher at the Institute for AI Policy and Strategy, a Washington, DC-based think tank, told Al Jazeera.

While export controls have spurred contentious debate, their effectiveness has been called into question amid China’s steady advances in AI development.

Authorities and analysts have documented widespread smuggling of restricted chips into China, mainly through Southeast Asia.

Chips with compute power equivalent to 1.6 million Nvidia H100s made their way to China in violation of export restrictions up to the end of 2025, according to an estimate by Epoch AI.

Chinese companies have also been able to bypass US law by remotely accessing compute capacity supplied by Nvidia-powered data centres in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

Gabriel Wildau, managing director at global business advisory firm Teneo, said claims that Huang had been ensnared in an espionage campaign deserved to be treated with skepticism given the anonymous leaks and motives to discredit him and his company.

“President Trump shows no sign that he intends to disrupt the current US-China rapprochement, but he may face new pressure from Congress and hawkish voices inside his administration to address the remote access issue,” Wildau, who focuses on political risk analysis in China, told Al Jazeera.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping have already met twice this year: The US president visited Beijing in May, and the Chinese leader reciprocated with a state visit to Washington in September. They are scheduled to meet again next week when Trump visits Shenzhen for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. And they are expected to meet a fourth time in 2026 in December, when Trump hosts the G20 summit in Miami.

“The risk is that Washington acts to close this loophole [in the aftermath of the Huang controversy], and Beijing regards the action as a violation of the bilateral truce,” Wildau said, referring to the trade truce Trump struck with Xi during their summit in South Korea last year.

Chris Clague, an associate fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said the revelations about Jensen Huang would inevitably undermine the “legitimate” argument in favour of allowing tech transfers between the US and China.

“This has made it a little bit easier for his detractors to poke holes in that,” Clague told Al Jazeera. “It’s indicative of the tensions that exist between the US and China, which are never going away, but it shouldn’t derail efforts at finding some sort of compromise.”

DELANO, Calif. — While cutting men’s hair in his barbershop, Jorge Navarro has been hearing the same concerns over and over: The prices of gas, food and housing are going up. Immigration agents are lurking outside stores and schools. And President Trump and the Republicans are to blame.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the decisions being made in Washington, he said, helped Democrat Randy Villegas trounce Republican incumbent David Valadao to take his congressional seat in Tuesday’s election.

“We want a change,” Navarro said, speaking in Spanish. “We hope for a change.”

Villegas won in a region of the San Joaquin Valley that has been dominated by Republicans for two decades. The majority Latino district stretches from western Fresno to Bakersfield, an agricultural area with dairy farms, grapevines and vast orchards of almonds, pistachios and oranges.

That Valadao lost to Villegas, a community college professor who ran on a populist message, was not a major surprise, given the gains Democrats made nationwide. But Villegas’ margin of victory left both Republican and Democratic leaders and operatives stunned. The progressive challenger has maintained a lead of roughly 30 percentage points since election night. Although votes still are being counted, the Associated Press has declared Villegas the winner.

“It was remarkable,” said Christian Romo, chair of the Kern County Democratic Party. “I knew we would win but didn’t expect this margin, and I didn’t think that we would have the turnout we did.”

Jorge Navarro cuts Victor Salazar’s hair at Jorge’s Barber Shop in Delano. Navarro supported Randy Villegas in the congressional election.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Even Paul Mitchell, the redistricting and election data consultant who drew the reconfigured map to favor Democrats, was surprised by Villegas’ performance.

“We drew the district to be three points more effective for Democrats, and I was off by a factor of 12,” he said.

Though Democrats had a registration advantage even before voters approved the new congressional lines via Proposition 50, Valadao continually frustrated the party by winning over enough independent voters in what historically has been a low-turnout district.

This year voters turned out in droves, especially young Latinos, the district’s largest voting group. Though mail-in ballots still are being processed, turnout may have doubled compared with the last midterm election in 2022.

Villegas, who will turn 32 this week, credits an army of volunteer canvassers, who prioritized reaching out to people who did not have a history of voting.

“So often we have this catch-22 cycle where young people, low-income communities, renters never vote because campaigns don’t talk to them, and campaigns don’t talk to them because they never vote,” he said.

He focused on the cost of living, healthcare and fighting back against moneyed interests in Washington, issues he said resonated with residents who so often feel ignored by those in power.

It’s not “about left versus right; it’s really us versus them,” Villegas said. “Working families in the Central Valley and across this country who’ve been left behind by politicians who care more about power than people and who care more about catering to corporations than our communities.”

His populist and anti-establishment message apparently appealed to voters who felt squeezed by fuel prices and the effect tariffs have had on farms in the area. Many of Villegas’ supporters also were energized by outrage over how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been pursuing immigrants and terrorizing their community.

“People who used to support Trump don’t trust him anymore,” Navarro said in his Delano barbershop, adding that some of his relatives who previously backed Republicans switched sides to vote for Democrats.

Navarro, a 67-year-old Mexican-born U.S. citizen, said Valadao has done a poor job in office.

The sun sets over Highway 99 in Delano, a city in the congressional district where Central Valley voters ousted Republican Rep. David Valadao.

(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)

One of Valadao’s biggest vulnerabilities in the race was his vote in favor of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included steep cuts to Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor, known in California as Medi-Cal. The district has the highest proportion of Medi-Cal recipients in the state, with 67% of residents enrolled as of last year, according to the California Health Care Foundation.

Many residents also are worried, Navarro said, about the squads of ICE agents that have been appearing in the community to detain people. He said even American citizens and other legal U.S. residents with documents are afraid of being hauled away to detention centers.

He said one ICE team was spotted last week outside a Target store, and another by a high school.

“The streets are sometimes very empty because people are afraid to go out,” Navarro said. Since the raids began, he said, business at his shop has dropped about 50%.

Victor Salazar, a 46-year-old farmworker who was getting a haircut, agreed that ICE agents are liable to seize anyone “if they see you look Hispanic.” Despite being an American citizen, he fears being detained and will not go out if immigration agents are in the area.

Salazar works picking grapes, but lately his hours have been cut back. He says Trump’s tariffs, which have led to retaliatory measures by Canada and other countries, are hurting the farming business.

On top of that, Salazar said, high food prices are a struggle.

“We go to the store and everything is expensive,” he said. “Because of political decisions, we are the ones paying.”

Neftali Trinidad sells flowers on a street corner in Delano.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

Along with the strong head winds the party faced nationally, Republicans blame the loss on Proposition 50, which rejiggered the district lines to pick up more Democratic voters in response to Trump-ordered GOP gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Clayton Campbell, chair of the Kern County Republican Party. “There’s so many reasons that it was a tough environment for Republicans this time around, and Valadao was one of the victims.”

Villegas’ victory appears to rebuff the past strategy by Democrats of putting up moderate candidates to challenge Valadao. Earlier this year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee backed Jasmeet Bains, a moderate Assembly member and family doctor, over Villegas. She finished third in the primary.

Valadao was first elected to Congress in 2012 and reclaimed his seat in 2020 after losing in 2018. Because of redistricting, he served his last two terms in a different district. While in Congress, he has pushed for more water for large farms in the San Joaquin Valley, in line with Trump’s agenda.

But he also split from hard-line Republicans and Trump’s MAGA base with his support for providing a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country illegally. He was one of the last two House Republicans remaining in Congress who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Valadao has not commented publicly since the election. Some voters said the Republican dairy farmer, who lives in Hanford, had a strong record of delivering for the community.

“You’d talk to him and he’d get down to it. … A lot of people like him,” said Arthur Rodriguez, a 75-year-old retiree who worked at an ice cream plant and supports Trump.

Arturo Vitela of Bakersfield stopped for tacos during a ride through Delano on his Harley-Davidson.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

But others said any Republican associated with Trump was an extremely hard sell here, especially with the state of the economy and how ICE has been targeting Latinos.

“The kids that were brought up from immigrant parents came out and voted, tipped the elections,” said Arturo Vitela, a 64-year-old retired medical lab technician from Bakersfield who was out riding his Harley-Davidson with a friend.

Alexa Lopez, a 23-year-old in Delano who works at a clothing store renting dresses and tuxedos, said she was glad to see that young voters turned out in large numbers. On election night, she texted with friends as they celebrated the sweeping Democratic victories in Congress.

Alexa Lopez, at JFW Formal Wear in Delano, says young voters turned out in high numbers.

(Tomas Ovalle/For The Times)

She said Trump’s anti-immigrant crackdown was a top concern and she wouldn’t vote for anyone perceived as linked to the president.

“The ICE activity has had everyone scared, scared to leave their homes,” Lopez said.

She said people in the area have been feeling both afraid and angry, “knowing that we can’t let it go on like this, and we have to do something about it.”

Lopez said her father, who previously supported Trump, called her days before the election and asked: “We shouldn’t vote Republican, right?”

James reported from Delano and Nixon from Sacramento.

The wait until the next international break in March will undoubtedly feel like an eternity for Dewsbury-Hall.

But the Everton midfielder is no stranger to taking the long road to success, having experienced plenty of setbacks and detours throughout his career.

He did not make his Premier League debut for boyhood club Leicester City until the age of 22, having spent previous seasons gaining valuable experience out on loan in the English Football League with Luton Town and Blackpool.

Even when his opportunity to establish himself in the Foxes’ first team finally arrived, it came during a turbulent period for the club, which ultimately ended in relegation from the Premier League at the end of the following season.

After playing a starring role in Leicester’s Championship-winning campaign under Enzo Maresca, the midfielder soon followed the Italian to Stamford Bridge in a deal worth £30m.

However, Dewsbury-Hall struggled for regular game time during his only season at Chelsea, featuring mainly in cup competitions with limited opportunities in the Premier League.

It was only after his move to Everton last summer, at the age of 26, that he appeared to have finally found the right environment to reignite his career and showcase the qualities that made him once such a highly regarded attacking midfielder.

Since the start of last season, Dewsbury-Hall has scored 11 goals for Everton in the Premier League and provided seven assists.

“I’m really, really enjoying it,” said Dewsbury-Hall. “I’ve got a really good hybrid role in this team, where the gaffer is giving me the freedom to pop up all over the pitch.”

Tuchel said on Friday afternoon that Dewsbury-Hall had been “very close” to earning a place in his squad, having enjoyed “a very good season” with Everton so far.

“I’ve got the mentality,” added Dewsbury-Hall. “I’ll keep pushing and pushing and see what happens.”

KATIE Price is continuing to fuel rumours she has secretly got back together with her conman ex-husband, as she flashed her huge engagement ring again.

The couple have been estranged since the summer, with Katie, 48, telling The Sun that she had dumped Lee Andrews, 43, after becoming fed up with his lies.

But over the last few weeks the pair of them have been dropping clues that they have secretly reunited.

While her ex, Lee, has been sharing cryptic messages, Katie has been suggesting they are back together by putting her sparkling engagement ring back on her wedding finger.

The Sun reported last week that the TV star was spotted wearing the huge bling again, and in latest social media posts, the ring has remained firmly on her left hand.

In a video posted on Snapchat from Sunday morning, Katie can be seen flashing the huge diamond rock.

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Then in a new Instagram post of the star wearing a fur coat, the ring is in full view for all to see.

It comes after Lee has also dropped several clues he is back with his famous wife.

Last Friday, the former jailbird was spotted liking Katie’s post about her son Harvey, 24.

Then the next day, Lee posted a cryptic love poem, suggesting they were getting back together.

The Sun previously revealed that Katie ended their marriage via WhatsApp last month.

It came after she found out he had been lying to her and had just £2.22 in his bank account.

WASHINGTON — In September, just weeks before Americans were set to vote in this year’s midterm elections, a sudden panic over the dangers posed by artificial intelligence caught the White House off guard. A whistleblower had gained viral attention warning the technology could soon pose an existential threat.

President Trump was quick to dismiss concerns, evoking urgency in the U.S. race to achieve global dominance in superintelligence. He rejected calls to negotiate guardrails on the most advanced AI models with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, weeks later, during a prime opportunity to do so in Washington.

Privately, the president expressed concern that public hysteria over AI could jolt markets that have become excessively concentrated in AI-related stocks. He had already seen fresh polling that showed widespread bipartisan opposition to the boom in construction of AI data centers, a push by Trump that has cannibalized chips and energy from other sectors of the economy, driving up costs.

Now, on the campaign trail in the final days before the vote, Trump is vowing to expand a “golden age” of prosperity through the end of his presidency. But experts say his policies on AI have set the U.S. economy up for a period of tremendous risk over the next two years.

Some of the world’s leading financiers are sounding increasingly alarmed about an AI bubble. Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has warned that AI stocks have become detached from financial fundamentals, pushing markets to precarious highs. Ken Griffin, the world’s richest hedge fund owner, said last week that AI is “almost certainly” fueling a market bubble that could be on the verge of a burst.

Economists warn that Trump has overseen fiscal policy that would give the federal government fewer tools than it has had in the past to respond to a crisis.

“Trump could easily run into a financial crisis before his term is up,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economist at Harvard. “It is entirely plausible to have a 30% — or more — drop in the stock market, and in the context of an economy so dependent on AI, this in turn could easily lead to a recession and widespread financial distress.”

Spending on data center infrastructure last winter and spring accounted for nearly all U.S. economic growth, according to independent analyses. Without it, growth would have slowed to a mere fraction of a percentage point, leaving the economy nearly stagnant and flirting with recession.

The Nasdaq 100 has about 70% of its index weight in companies that depend on AI, from semiconductor manufacturers and Big Tech giants to cloud platforms and software providers. Anthropic, one of the top AI industry leaders, plans an initial public offering next month, while its chief rival, OpenAI, expects to go public next year.

From left, Chris Painter, president of the Model Evaluation and Threat Research, Marius Hobbhahn, CEO of Apollo Research, Paul Ohm, professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center, Kurt Gaudette, senior vice president of Dragos, and Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the AI Futures Project, are sworn in to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Disaster Management, District of Columbia, and Census hearing titled “Rogue AI: Securing the Homeland Against AI Agent Attacks,” in Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday, September 30, 2026.

(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“Because government finances are already strained, with the national debt on a patently unsustainable trajectory, there is no guarantee of a sharp drop in long-term borrowing rates for the government,” Rogoff continued. “So the options for bailing out the financial sector, or fighting recession, could be much more constrained than during the global financial crisis.”

While doubling down on the promise of an untested, frontier technology, Trump’s other economic policies may be hobbling its growth. Tariffs have raised the costs of imported chips, servers, networking equipment, metals and electrical components, and visa restrictions have tied the hands of industry leaders trying to secure the world’s best talent. Runaway federal deficits have driven long-term bond interest rates, adding pressure on AI firms already strapped with debt.

Servaas Storm, an economist closely following the AI sector at the Delft University of Technology, said the industry is already facing severe financial headwinds that could precipitate a panic.

Prices for energy, chips and minerals are driving up the cost of doing business, while early AI adopters such as Microsoft, Meta and Walmart are scaling back its use as employees spend too much time correcting errors, cleaning up low-quality output and addressing security lapses.

Slower adoption could further complicate the search for revenue, particularly for companies already struggling to monetize the technology. For now, hyperscalers are shouldering the cost of financing frontier AI labs that, as Storm put it, “do not have a credible path to profitability.”

“There is indeed an AI bubble in the stock market and in data center construction, which could pop rather soon, as rising debt loads and elevated interest rates could prove too much to sustain it,” Storm said. “That moment is not imminent, but it is approaching — and it will very likely happen before the end of Trump’s presidency.”

An economy already under duress from Trump’s other economic policies — from tariffs and tax cuts to the Iran war — could precipitate further pain, said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Leading AI companies are already running “day-after” drills in anticipation of an AI-related crisis within the next year, according to Axios.

Americans head into election day deeply pessimistic about the economy, with 77% rating it fair or poor, according to a Fox News poll. A separate CNBC survey found that just 34% approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 35% of Republicans disapprove — a record high within his own party.

Inflation has fallen sharply from its 9% peak in 2022, during a pandemic-era surge, reaching 2.9% by the end of Biden’s presidency. Under Trump, it has climbed once again to 3.7%, driven by rising energy, transportation and housing costs — among the top concerns for voters entering next month’s vote.

Persistent inflation has forced the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated, squeezing borrowers. And those rates — paired with high government spending and concerns over mounting deficits — have pressured the bond market, pushing 10-year Treasury yields to levels not seen since the early 2000s.

“Financial crises, by their nature, are virtually impossible to predict,” Duffie said, asked whether he shared concerns of a potential AI bubble.

“If we know we are going to be in a crisis soon,” he added, “markets advance the crisis to now.”

KENDALL Jenner has sparked further rumors she’s feuding with sisters after snubbing a second major family event this week.

After the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show snub earlier this week, Kendall, 30, has seemingly snubbed someone else in her famous family.

Last night, Kim Kardashian held a huge birthday bash to mark her 46th.

All of the SKIMS founder’s loved ones were in attendance, spotted as they attended the event.

But Kendall was nowhere to be seen, and fans have clocked it.

An eagle-eyed social media user on Reddit said: “@KendallJenner not going to Kim’s birthday…Really girl?”

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“Kendall must be fighting with Kylie and everyone, first she skips the VS show and now this,” noted one person in the comments.

“I think she just didn’t wanna do the pap walk,” said a second.

“There is no way Kendall is not seething at Kylie being in the show,” one person suspected in a popular Kardashian family Reddit forum at the time.

But Kendall did acknowledge her younger sister’s fashion show stint.

She reposted of Kylie strutting her stuff down the runway, writing: “My perfect baby sister.”

A statement was then shared with Page Six.

“Kendall thought Kylie absolutely killed it,” a source told the outlet.

“Even though Kylie has some runway experience, she still asked Kendall for a few tips ahead of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.”