WASHINGTON — An alleged Chinese intelligence operation rarely reaches the American public through a story this intimate, or a business this consequential to global security.
A celebrated technology founder builds a trillion-dollar company and enjoys direct access to the Oval Office. A Chinese state-television journalist abruptly blossoms into a Shanghai financier who wins access to his company and his social circle. An affair, denied but suggested in social-media photographs, is finally acknowledged.
But before that, billions of dollars in advanced chips flow through the Shanghai financier’s fledgling business, acquired through a Caribbean-registered company, and allegedly onward to companies with supply-chain links to China’s defense industry.
Buried beneath the layers is the secret struggle between Washington and Beijing over frontier artificial-intelligence models—and the title of global hegemon.