The AI industry is still reeling from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s honeypot scandal, but some in the industry see it as a much bigger problem than one man.
The Chinese government has been active in economic espionage for decades, and with semiconductors at the heart of the AI boom, there is intense pressure to hack any company involved. At the same time, many of the executives who became rich thanks to the boom made themselves easy targets.
As CEO of investment intelligence firm Heron Intelligence, Nate Singer has a unique view of the problem. His company does corporate due diligence: essentially, making sure companies know the relevant details before making a big acquisition or hiring an executive. Although the Nvidia case is particularly serious, Singer says there are plenty of similar cases in the semiconductor industry that have remained under the radar.
“We have former employees talking about behavior at senior executive levels,” Singer told TechCrunch, saying that executives are “really crossing lines that shouldn’t be crossed.”
in The LinkedIn post went viralSinger detailed one case in which an executive’s wife showed up unexpectedly in the boardroom, “screaming at her husband and another executive at another company flying in the company jet with two young ladies (who also turned out to be state-sponsored actors).”
It’s a disturbing, but unfortunately common, story. Singer says he’s seen at least three reports of similar cases, and suspects many more have gone unreported.
“There’s so much more than this one woman,” Singer said. “They are an integral part of these companies.”
Semiconductor companies are already big targets for international trade secret theft. He was there Dozens of prosecutions Similar cases in recent years, incl An issue involving manufacturing powerhouse TSMC In 2007.
In 2017, four CEOs of… “Gulf region semiconductor equipment manufacturer” unnamed They were accused of stealing trade secrets for use at a competing company in China. According to the indictment, the technology in question “relates to the manufacture of large quantities of semiconductor chips for use in lighting and electronic devices, such as flat-screen televisions and smartphones.”
Any sexual elements in such cases rarely become public, in part because of the serious consequences for the executives and their companies. But according to Singer, the persistent threat has become something of an open secret in the industry.
“There are a lot of senior people in the industry who know this is happening, and are effectively turning a blind eye to it,” he told TechCrunch.
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