Nvidia C.E.O. Admits Relationship With Suspected Chinese Spy, and Stephen Miller Takes the Reins

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, November 9th, here's what we're covering. The tech giant NVIDIA says it's opening an investigation into its CEO and co-founder, Jensen Wong, after he told the company that he had a romantic relationship with a business executive said to be a Chinese spy. This week, my colleagues reported that the woman, Alice Wong, no relation, had been flagged by US intelligence agencies as a Chinese agent. The Intel agency said that she'd been recruited to collect information about the NVIDIA CEO and potentially try to open up a path for the American company's most cutting-edge chips to be sold to China. The US government has long restricted sales like that, amid concerns about national security. It's unclear when Jensen Wong and Alice Wong first met, though in 2024, around the time they were photographed together at a bar in Taiwan, the data center company Miss Wong helped run, called Megaspeed, was starting a multi-billion dollar purchase of AI microchips. And last year, the Times learned that the US government was investigating that company for potentially helping China smuggle in restricted chips. And as US officials increasingly raised concerns about Alice Wong, her company and her close ties to NVIDIA, President Trump chose not to take any action, and he personally invited Jensen Wong to join him on a trip to China. The two have developed a close relationship with Trump seeing NVIDIA as crucial to keeping America's edge in the AI race and seeing its massive profits as central to the stock market success. In a statement released after Jensen Wong announced his affair, NVIDIA's board said it had no reason to believe the company's secrets had been compromised, and said that Wong would continue to lead NVIDIA while the investigation plays out. At the same time, lawmakers on Capitol Hill have asked Wong to voluntarily appear for a closed door meeting later this month, saying, quote, "It is vital Congress determines the extent to which U.S. national security has been placed at risk." At the White House, Suzy Wiles is out as Chief of Staff and Stephen Miller is in. On Friday, in the fallout from the midterms, President Trump announced the major shake-up for his team, elevating one of his most influential and controversial aides. Miller, most well-known for pushing his hard-line anti-immigration views, is one of the few staffers who served all through Trump's first term and came back for the second, a loyalty that resonated with Trump. My colleague, Zolan Kano Young's, who covers the Trump administration, says that even before Miller's promotion, many officials saw him as the most powerful person in the White House aside from the President. There are very few parts of the Trump agenda that Stephen Miller has not had some kind of influence on. He is the architect of the mass deportation campaign and the immigration agenda. But Stephen Miller's influence goes so beyond just immigration. He has also pushed Trump's lethal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean. He has helped use the powers of the federal government to target political opponents in universities, and he's already had some influence in Congress. Just earlier this year, he was the one pushing Republicans in Congress to resist compromises with Democrats. So President Trump's choice to name Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff signals that he is essentially doubling down on some of the very divisive policies that many voters rejected on Election Day. Meanwhile, an effort to push out another top Trump administration official is picking up speed. Well, Democrats vote in favor of that impeachment resolution. I'm a hard yes. The so-called Secretary of Defense has abused his power and engineered this reckless and costly war of choice in Iran. For the weekend, Hakeem Jeffries, the highest-ranking Democrat in the House, said for the first time that he plans to support a push to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. An impeachment resolution is expected to come up for a vote this week, brought forward by Republican Thomas Massey of Kentucky. Lawmakers and congressional aides have told the Times they think there's a solid chance the House will sign off on impeachment charges. But getting to an impeachment conviction would take two-thirds of the Senate, something that's unlikely to happen. Still, if Hegseth stays in his role as head of the Pentagon, he will face a new level of scrutiny in the coming months as a Democratic Congress is sworn in. Lawmakers plan to hold hearings and demand more information on a range of topics, from the war in Iran to the U.S. military's boat strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific. For his part, Hegseth has pushed back sharply against his critics. And President Trump said this weekend that he ordered the Justice Department to investigate anyone who was pushing for Hegseth's impeachment. In Israel this weekend, the country's president Isaac Herzog selected the opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to try and form a government. If Eisenkot can pull that off, it would clear the way for him to become the next Prime Minister on seating Benjamin Netanyahu. But the whole thing is going to be a very tricky numbers game. Last month's elections left no party with a clear majority in parliament, so Eisenkot will have to convince a number of other parties to join him in a coalition. And there's a lot of scenarios for how that could play out. For example, Eisenkot could try and join forces with the two Arab-led parties, but some of the right-wing forces in his block have said they would not support that. Or, Eisenkot could even join up with Netanyahu's party, though Eisenkot ran on a fierce campaign against him, saying Netanyahu had pushed Israel toward authoritarianism. The clock is already ticking. Eisenkot has six weeks to try and put together his coalition. If he fails, President Herzog can give two other candidates a shot. If both of them also fail to pull together a majority, Israel would be forced to hold new elections. And finally, this is your first time seeing the cyber truck? What is it like? It's like seeing a cartoon car. Like, we hardly knew ye. Some called you a space-aged doorstop. Some said you looked like an El Camino mated with a cheese grater. Some even called you a fascist toblorone. But today, we are gathered to say a do. Tesla has announced that it will stop production of its angular, norm-shattering, stainless steel origami shark of a car next year. The Texas factory that makes them was built to turn out a quarter million cyber trucks a year. But in the end, it produced only about a tenth of that. Initially, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, promised a future where bulletproof amphibious electric cyber trucks would roam the roads, capable of outrunning a sports car all for less than $40,000. The model that eventually rolled out to customers, though years later, offered fewer of the promised features for about twice the price. At the same time, Musk himself was becoming a very polarizing figure, and at the height of his time leading Doge, cyber trucks became extremely visible targets for graffiti four-letter words. Sales didn't exactly take off. It's possible the vehicle was just ahead of its time. There are some die-hard fans out there who love its futuristic design, and who are mourning the end of the cyber truck. It's also possible it was more vibes than functionality. In an interview with automotive news around the time the truck debuted, Musk said, "Customer research, I just wanted to make a futuristic battle tank." The cyber trucks sudden demise after Tesla sunk about $2 billion into development and production is being compared to the ultimate business school example of a flop, the Ford Edsel. But that's not really fair, because far more Edsels were sold. Those are the headlines. Today on the daily, more on what Stephen Miller's rise in the White House means for the future of the Trump administration. Trump is a vehicle for his own vision that he's had in some respects since he was a teenager, and so he has much more of a vision for what he wants to accomplish than Susie Wiles ever did. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow.