What did Donald Trump do today?

He defended a tech executive who had an affair with a suspected Chinese spy.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to an extramarital affair with a woman suspected by US intelligence officials to be a Chinese spy. The board of the chip manufacturer, a huge part of the AI industry, has launched an investigation. Congress is likely to follow suit shortly.

Any shakeup in the volatile AI sector, which many see as a bubble waiting to burst, is economically significant. But there are also serious national security concerns here: the company has secret government contracts that Huang would have been in a position to provide information about. 

It also appears that the woman he was having an affair with, Alice Huang (no relation), helped China acquire large numbers of export-restricted Nvidia chips. Some, though not necessarily all, of that transfer was done with Trump's approval, after Huang made a $25 million "donation" to Trump's ballroom project.

The New York Times has confirmed that Trump has known about Huang's situation since this past spring. It's not clear what, if anything, the Trump administration has done in the meantime, but Trump personally arranged for Huang to join him for a trip to China in May.

Asked about the crisis today, Trump insisted that Huang hadn't done anything wrong and that he would be welcome on an upcoming presidential trip to Asia. "I haven't heard that he's done anything wrong. He dealt with somebody but, you know, so does everybody else," Trump told reporters. He also said that Huang was a "fine person" who'd "done an amazing job for the country."

A likely reason for Trump shrugging this off is that he has a massive financial conflict of interest here. Since he returned to office and gained enormous power to regulate the industry—or more accurately, to block regulation of the industry—he's invested his own money heavily into it. The worse the news gets for Nvidia, the more the entire sector is at risk of a serious correction, and Trump's money and influence along with it. 

Why does this matter?

• "I haven't heard that he's done anything wrong" isn't an acceptable answer when national security is at stake and everyone is telling you that.
   
• Americans' economic and cybersecurity is more important than Donald Trump turning a profit on stock trades.