GC Gordon Corera Covered terrorism, cyber security, and intelligence agencies as the BBC's security correspondent for two decades, stepping down from that role in November 2024.

“This is not espionage in the sense of going after deep intellectual property of a company, for instance, or classic national security secrets. It's about understanding the commercial direction and relationships of NVIDIA: who's it selling chips to, who might it be selling chips to, but also understanding Jensen himself and what his relationship with Donald Trump is, what he's lobbying for.”

The Rest Is Classified · Geopolitics & World Affairs · November 2026

Context

The hosts were setting out what the alleged Chinese operation was meant to achieve. Corera argues the target was commercial and policy insight and influence, not chip designs.

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Transcript

The Rest Is Classified Around 27:55 into the episode

Gordon Corera

…banking and kind of other commercial entities and kind of companies. So she obviously realized that TV reporting doesn't make that much money. So she moves around this kind of world and then becomes connected, doesn't she, to a network of companies and investors with links to the technology world.

David McCloskey

…recruited essentially to do two things. One, to collect intelligence on Jensen as part of a drive by the MSS to learn more about American AI chips. And then, this is the second part, to potentially influence Jensen and the company to push for its most advanced chips to be made available to China.

Gordon Corera

This is not espionage. The sense of going after deep intellectual property of a company, for instance, or classic national security secrets. It's about understanding the commercial direction relationships of NVIDIA. You know, who's it selling chips to, who might it be selling chips to, but also understanding Jensen himself and, you know, what his relationship with Donald

Speaker 4

Trump is, what he's lobbying for, understanding it, but then also potentially having an agent of influence who can affect what that policy is because you've got such an important individual. So you can see why this is potentially a very valuable place to have an agent, isn't it?

David McCloskey

Yes. And it is also a very fascinating case study in what is the definition of a secret these days. Because the NVIDIA board has released a statement, which I find to be somewhat preposterous. We can come back to this, saying that it has no reason to believe either the company's secrets or national…

Gordon Corera

That's not what they're after, though, is it?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from The Rest Is Classified

“Is he ever going to have credibility again as he lobbies to loosen, to sell more chips to China? He's completely had his legs kicked out from underneath him by these leaks. … Is there a political faction inside the White House or inside the government, China hawks, that don't want the Chinese to have access to this stuff and want to take Jensen down? And leaking this is a great way to do that.” — David McCloskey, The Rest Is Classified

“Regardless of whether it was a honey trap, at some point the MSS has a massive amount of leverage over Jensen Huang indirectly because he's having an affair with Alice. … The Chinese MSS has a very, very valuable secret that it has collected on Jensen Huang, and that is that he is having an affair.” — David McCloskey, The Rest Is Classified