Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has found himself embroiled in a scandal involving an alleged affair, a suspected Chinese spy, and some of America’s most closely guarded technology. Not exactly your garden-variety corporate indiscretion.

There’s a lot to worry about. Experts are concerned that Huang’s repeated calls to loosen restrictions on advanced chip exports to China may have been influenced by the relationship. The affair also raises questions about Nvidia’s dealings with Megaspeed, a Singapore-based customer led by Alice Huang. The Commerce Department began investigating Megaspeed last year, the New York Times reported, but transferred the probe to the Justice Department after Nvidia reached out.

One of the stranger twists in the still-unfolding scandal is that the Trump administration appears to have known about the relationship—and Alice Huang’s suspected ties to the Chinese government—for some time. Yet intelligence officials apparently never warned Jensen Huang, and Trump seems to be brushing off the scandal. Despite an FBI investigation, the president has called Nvidia’s CEO an “honorable guy” and says he believes Huang didn’t know Alice was a spy. Nvidia’s board, meanwhile, says it has “no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised” and has “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.”

But current and former government tech officials say the assurances from Trump and Nvidia’s board do little to dispel their concerns. “A sophisticated individual should not have fallen prey to these advances,” a senior government official who focuses on AI issues tells Fast Company .

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