Today’s briefing:
— The real Alice Huang
— Bukele flattens a gang
— World’s funniest embassy closure
Good morning {{first_name | Intriguer}}. This might be one of my favourite Intrigue editions, as we traipse through the evidence of whether Alice Huang (of Jensen Huang lover fame) was really a spy.
Without stealing our own thunder below, it all brings to mind an old rule of theatre: you don’t play a king by acting all regal. Rather, you play a king by surrounding yourself with extras who know how to bow and scrape.
The same logic applies to a spy’s legend. A cover story is only ever as strong as the colleagues who can later say “yep, she worked here”, but it seems some of Alice’s own former ‘employers’ missed the oldest stage direction in intelligence?
 | Managing Editor Jeremy Dicker |
✨ Heads-up this is our final briefing for the week but we’ll be back Monday!
Number of the day
800 million
That’s the World Bank’s projected job shortfall facing developing nations over the next 15 years, with 1.2 billion youths entering economies that are only on track to create 400 million jobs.
“Who the **** is Alice?”
“Who the **** is Alice” is a line from the hit 1977 Smokie song, btw. That’s Alice Huang, aka Huang Le.
Forget Tinder, Hinge, or CrossFit, dear Intriguers.
The modern path to true love is now as simple as securing $5B of the world's most advanced chips then helplessly falling for Nvidia's all-powerful nerd-CEO along the way. At least... that's what some might now have us believe, insisting there's zero evidence Alice Huang (Jensen's former paramour) was some kind of spy for China.
And... those claims are partly right! Sure, media outlets are now awash with anonymous US spooks arguing they placed Alice under electronic surveillance for a year and concluded she was working for (or at least with) a specialised "chips unit" within China's Ministry of State Security (MSS).
But until any of those smoking-gun transcripts spill out via congressional probes or determined whistle-blowers, we're left taking the word of the same anonymous types who insisted Saddam had WMDs. Even if transcripts do emerge, Beijing can dismiss them all as fakes. It’s already insisting this whole thing is another smear.
So then... that's that? Well no, dear Intriguer, that's not that, because here's a quick wrap of the four biggest red flags now publicly available, starting with...
👻 The résumé gaps
Filings on Simuwang (a premier private-equity database) suggest Alice started out as a journalist with state outlets like CCTV and Hunan TV, but there are zero by-lines in her name, a Hunan TV exec said he’d never heard of her, and a former CCTV anchor tweeted she did recognise the name, though recalled she was "not simple" (an intriguing line now completely scrubbed from China's internet).
Alice’s same Simuwang profile suggests she then pivoted to finance via stints at HSBC and state-owned CITIC (neither have commented) before emerging as a major shareholder and executive at Shanghai Hexi Investment, a private-equity shop founded by her then-husband (Kang Wei), who's now under criminal scrutiny.
So maybe that profile is legit, her ex-employers just have bad memories, and she was too junior a journalist to get a by-line. Or maybe that entire early career, dominated by stints with state-owned bodies who don’t remember her, was just a classic ghost resume: intel officers need a plausible cover or ‘legend’, and the easiest (though also most obvious) is generally via other state-controlled employers ("I'm just a diplomat / bureaucrat / state journalist"). Then there's...
💸 The overnight empire
From managing Hexi's investments in Shanghai, Alice suddenly emerged in control of the Singaporean subsidiary of an obscure China-based gaming firm called 7Road International, that rapidly rebranded to Megaspeed and secured the coveted 'Nvidia Cloud Partner' status within months (basically meaning Megaspeed got priority access to Nvidia's elite chips, just as DC severed China's access).
Under Alice’s control, Megaspeed then bought $5B-$7B (140-240k chips) in restricted H100s and H200s, routing them via various regional shell entities and server farms used by China's tech giants like Alibaba. When the US Commerce Department started investigating, it found ~50,000 of the firm's semiconductors had vanished. And while we're on Alibaba, Singapore's corporate filings suggest the $260B player served as both Megaspeed's lead financier and anchor client.
So maybe Alice is an astonishingly nimble entrepreneur leading a garage-to-unicorn firm that caught the AI lightning in a bottle right as global chip supply chains went wild (and just momentarily lost track of $2B in merch).
Or maybe turning an obscure gaming shell into a multi-billion-dollar chip pipeline for a sanctioned superpower requires precisely this kind of state-backed corporate engineering and financial plumbing?
Then there's...
🎭 The corporate shell games
As DC's export enforcers began sniffing around, Megaspeed's ownership suddenly transferred to Swiftdata, a newly minted Singaporean front. That helped Nvidia assure DC that this mysterious customer had no "equity" from China, though the wording left open the reality that the financing (and boss) still came from China.
And while we're splitting hairs, Singapore reportedly also questioned Alice; Beijing's propagandists have seized on Singapore's statement denying it had "investigated" her, but again, this might be a careful word-choice. Singapore has separately confirmed it’s investigating Megaspeed.
Either way, even after supposedly losing any role or equity in Megaspeed, Alice still kept openly presenting herself as its face.
So maybe this was all just standard corporate restructuring by a scrappy startup dodging regulatory scrutiny in a hostile geopolitical climate. Or maybe it's the behaviour of a classic cut-out: keep shuffling the shells and registry names while your proxy takes the regulatory meetings, and the chips just keep on flowing.
Then let's wrap with...
💨 The vanishing act
Some are now highlighting the fact Alice had zero qualms broadcasting her Jensen ties, publicly sharing pics of them together at high-end dinners, bars, and summits. Surely no spy would engage in this kind of digital peacocking, right?
Either way, Alice has now vanished, with her last publicly documented appearance being at Taipei's Computex (with Jensen) back in May 2025. She later registered two new companies in Hong Kong this past July-August, but all her usual contact methods (phone, WeChat, email) now run dead.
So maybe this is a sad tale of an embarrassed executive understandably lying low amid a career-wrecking tabloid scandal, just leaving her phone on silent while the world parses her old holiday pics with a guy she loved.
Or… maybe all the selfies were just part of the legend (a real spy wouldn't do that!), if not her MSS promotion application (look at my elite access!), while the disappearing act just signalled the end of a honeypot.
Intrigue’s Take
Part of the public debate around Alice centres around the misplaced belief that she’s either a card-carrying, code-named MSS intelligence officer, or a completely innocent civilian whose only sin was falling in love. It’s misplaced because the reality of modern intelligence (particularly in China) is there’s a full spectrum of options at play here, ranging from…
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Meanwhile, elsewhere…
🇨🇳 CHINA — Unstoppable exports.
China’s trade surplus has surpassed the $1T mark in the first ten months of the year, on track to break its full-year 2025 record of $1.2T. Exports remain the bright spot in an economy otherwise weighed down by weak demand and a grinding property crisis. (CNBC)
Comment: We’ve long argued China’s export-led model isn’t sustainable, given the way it forces capitals to either pull up the drawbridge or watch their own manufacturing base get hollowed out. But the world’s reliance on China is clearly still deeper than most like to admit, with no alternative hub yet able to match its mix of price, quality, and speed.
🇸🇻 EL SALVADOR — Cross-border crackdown.
President Bukele has announced that his military just levelled the HQ of Haiti’s notorious 400 Mawozo gang outside the capital of Port-au-Prince. (France 24)
Comment: The wild thing here is that Bukele literally requested (and quickly received) the gang HQ’s coordinates off a random user on X. There’s a long-running joke of netizens instead providing the coordinates for LinkedIn HQ (because LinkedIn sucks), but yes, Bukele appears to have flattened the actual gang HQ rather than a professional networking site. If he can restore the rule of law to Haiti (like he did in El Salvador), we’ll be the first to cheer. But Western diplomats are now quietly sweating that this could just be more about playing the “cool dictator” with helicopter gunships in a complete void of international resolve. He’s already lost four troops in Haiti, and we wonder at what point that number grows.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES — Impeachment blocked (for now).
House Republicans have blocked an impeachment push against Pentagon boss Pete Hegseth, brought by retiring GOP congressman Thomas Massie over abuse of power and an unauthorised war on Iran. (The Hill)
Comment: Even with new Dems taking their seats in January, this isn’t a threat to Petey Pete’s job (that’d require a two-thirds super-majority in the Senate), but it does raise the political costs for Trump’s continued backing of the former Fox host.
🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM — Suspected spy arrested.
British authorities have arrested a senior US Army official on suspicion he was spying for Russia. The 41-year-old senior soldier was serving at Imjin Barracks, the HQ for Nato's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps. (CNN)
Comment: The arrest of an active-duty US officer inside a top-tier NATO command hub on UK soil? That’s a nightmare scenario, right as Five Eyes intel partners try to assure citizens that they’re all as tight as ever.
🇺🇦 UKRAINE — Constructive but pointless?
President Zelensky has described as “constructive” the first day of US-Russia-Ukraine talks in Abu Dhabi, aimed at eventually ending the war by settling thorny issues like Ukraine giving up its own turf for peace, and the West giving more security guarantees in hopes Putin doesn’t try again. (BBC)
Comment: Despite the polite diplomatic readouts, it’s hard to see how these talks will yield a breakthrough beyond just the optics of “yes we also want peace”. Putin can’t pause such a disastrous war then still claim it was all worth it, while Ukraine sees no hope in surrendering even more land or trusting more (empty) Western promises. The latest talk-round might just produce another (bigger) prisoner swap, so everyone can claim a win.
🇧🇩 BANGLADESH — Comeback kid?
Disgraced ex-leader Sheikh Hasina is planning a surprise return home, two years after she fled to India amid a mass uprising against her rule. She faces a death sentence upon her return. (Guardian)
Comment: Ummm… why? This is a huge gamble on Hasina’s part: sensing the interim administration’s fragility, she’s clearly betting her inevitable arrest will galvanise her base and spark her return to power (assuming the courts don’t fast-track her execution first). And right on cue, pro-Hasina factions are now clashing with security forces across the country. For now, authorities are dismissing her demands for a passport and instead insisting she surrender to extradition, but that’s playing into her self-styling as a martyr.
🇸🇾 SYRIA — Money for mercenaries?
President Al-Sharaa is reportedly weighing whether to send hundreds of Syrian special forces to Saudi Arabia to help in the kingdom’s reignited war against Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis. It comes a month after Syria’s defence minister flagged it could join the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. (NYT $)
Comment: It’s a marriage of convenience, with Damascus needing hard cash and foreign investment to rebuild, while the Saudis need battle-hardened boots on the ground that aren’t Saudi. The timing is hardly accidental either, coming soon after the Saudis signed off on a $400M loan.
Extra Intrigue
Meanwhile in other worlds…
Science: Kids, eat your veggies. The fibre will help you flush out the microplastics in your gut.
History: Archivists have meticulously digitised the 12,000 fragments from Coventry’s medieval Cathedral, 86 years after Nazi bombings destroyed it.
Tech: Two-seater flying cars could launch in China as soon as next summer.
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Accidental meme of the day
Left, the original post from the Finnish Embassy in Canberra. Right, a response from the Finnish Embassy in London. Via Instagram.
Everyone, stop what you’re doing: the Finnish Embassy in Canberra was just closed for a day. We’re here for anyone affected by this upsetting development. 🙏
If you’re a little confused, allow us to fill you in.
On Monday, the Finnish diplomatic mission Down Under posted a pretty boring standard announcement about a temporary one-day closure.
But then the internet did what it does best: turn something mundane into a viral meme as folks quickly piled in, lamenting the seriousness of the brief pause:
“Is everything ok? Call if you need me”
“Devastated for the one guy in Adelaide who drove 1,200km to get his passport renewed today”
“Video’s not loading but I really hope the Embassy of Finland in Canberra is open on Tuesday, 10 November 2026”
As the announcement quickly racked up hundreds of millions of views, other Finnish missions around the world soon jumped in, quipping “for anyone affected by this closure, the Embassy of Finland in Prague will be open as usual tomorrow.” The embassy in London also posted a video urgently wondering why nobody at the Finnish embassy in Canberra would pick up the darn phone!
Then Finland’s own foreign minister (Elina Valtonen) got in on the act, sharing a phone call with Finland’s man Down Under, who explains (from the relaxing confines of a sauna) that they’re just having a lovely planning day.
The point? Maybe it’s just a testament to the sheer, beautiful randomness of algorithm-driven organic virality: teams everywhere try so hard for a hit, only for a literal “we will be closed tomorrow” announcement to then break the internet.
But kudos to the embassy team for leaning into the absurdity, and riding this wave all the way. Perhaps not a surprise for anyone familiar with Ambassador Haapea, who once won a foreign ministry award back home for his high-profile charity drive across Australia in a “sh!tbox” (and who, btw, Intrigue’s own Jeremy first met during a state visit by Finland’s then superstar prime minister, Sanna Marin).
Anyway, the embassy team has now delivered a tonne of beautiful free exposure for a small nation billing itself as the world’s happiest country. That’s millions of folks who now see that, aside from being efficient and polite, the Finns are also hilarious. Well played.
Today’s poll
It’s our last briefing for the week but we’ll be back in your inboxes with the results on Monday!
