When New York Times reporters went to the address listed by a Chinese company called New Matrix, they did not find a data centre or even a busy office. They found what they described as "a hollow gray shell." Yet the U.S.

Commerce Department had authorized this company to buy some of Nvidia's most advanced chips. That discovery sits beside a second, more dramatic report. According to multiple media outlets, a memo circulated earlier this year, reportedly based on U.S.

intelligence, claimed that Alice Huang, an executive at the Singapore-based company Megaspeed, had been recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to spy on Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang. The Financial Times added that the memo also alleged a romantic relationship between the two. These are claims in a document, not proven facts, and no public evidence has confirmed them. Nvidia told the Times that Jensen Huang's contacts with Alice Huang were "not unusual," and that the company does not share classified information with customers.

Taken together, the stories point to a problem larger than any single person. Export controls assume that a licence tells you who the buyer really is. But if a licensed buyer can be an empty address, possibly a front for a blacklisted private equity firm, as reporters worry, the rules depend on paperwork that is easy to fake.