Good morning. It’s Thursday, October 29.
The New York Times reports that U.S. officials concluded an executive tied to suspected Nvidia chip diversions is a Chinese intelligence asset, and that she had a close relationship with Jensen Huang. Trump was reportedly briefed and chose not to act, which now puts the Nvidia chief at the center of a very uncomfortable question.
Today we are covering:
NYT reports U.S. officials see a Megaspeed executive close to Jensen Huang as a Chinese intelligence asset
Apple unveils the first OLED MacBook Pro, and the first Mac with a touchscreen, from $2,899
A leak of more than 41,000 Homeland Security employee records exposes undercover ICE agents
Google releases Gemini 4 Carbon, a cybersecurity-focused model open to vetted defenders first
Xreal launches Aura, a wired Android XR headset starting at $1,279
Let’s dive in
U.S. Officials Say Executive Close to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Was a Chinese Intelligence Asset
By Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman via The New York Times
U.S. officials have concluded that an executive of Megaspeed, a Singapore data center company, is a Chinese intelligence asset who passed information to Beijing, according to The New York Times, citing people briefed on classified intelligence. She had been investigated for possibly diverting advanced Nvidia AI chips to China.
Surveillance showed a close relationship between the executive, identified as Alice Huang or Huang Le, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, with meetings recorded in Taipei in June 2024 and May 2025. Megaspeed’s Malaysian unit bought at least $4.8 billion in advanced AI equipment with Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026.
Trump was reportedly briefed about a year ago and chose not to act, worried about disrupting Nvidia chip sales and the trade relationship with China. Nvidia says the interactions were “not unusual” and no trade secrets were shared; Megaspeed says it is cooperating, and the Chinese embassy called the claims “groundless smears.”
𝕏: Huge report out of the NYT today on Huang’s “close relationship” with a Chinese spy. Nvidia and Jensen Huang have repeatedly denied requests to testify before Congressional committees. I think that those requests will become subpoenas very, very soon… - Gregory C. Allen (@Gregory_C_Allen)
The OLED MacBook Pro Finally Arrives, and Yes, It Has a Touchscreen
By Kyle Barr via Gizmodo
Apple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, its first MacBook with an OLED screen and its first laptop with a touchscreen. The notch is gone, replaced by a Dynamic Island around the 12-megapixel webcam.
Apple claims up to 2,000 nits of brightness and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, plus a six-speaker system with 50% more bass. It runs the M5 Pro or M5 Max with up to 128GB of unified memory, and has three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot, and MagSafe.
The 14-inch M5 Pro starts at $2,899, and the 16-inch M5 Max reaches $4,799, with preorders open and sales starting November 6. Gizmodo calls the prices “pretty onerous” and notes the chips are the same ones Apple launched in March.
𝕏: We’re glowing with excitement over the new MacBook Pro. You’ve gotta touch it to believe it. - John Ternus (@johnternus)
The best way to reach new readers is through word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, it’ll create an easy-to-send, pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends.
The OLED MacBook Pro Finally Arrives, and Yes, It Has a Touchscreen
By Kyle Barr via Gizmodo
Apple announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, its first MacBook with an OLED screen and its first laptop with a touchscreen. The notch is gone, replaced by a Dynamic Island around the 12-megapixel webcam.
Apple claims up to 2,000 nits of brightness and a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio, plus a six-speaker system with 50% more bass. It runs the M5 Pro or M5 Max with up to 128GB of unified memory, and has three Thunderbolt 5 ports, HDMI, an SDXC slot, and MagSafe.
The 14-inch M5 Pro starts at $2,899, and the 16-inch M5 Max reaches $4,799, with preorders open and sales starting November 6. Gizmodo calls the prices “pretty onerous” and notes the chips are the same ones Apple launched in March.
𝕏: We’re glowing with excitement over the new MacBook Pro. You’ve gotta touch it to believe it. - John Ternus (@johnternus)
The best way to reach new readers is through word of mouth. If you click THIS LINK in your inbox, it’ll create an easy-to-send pre-written email you can just fire off to some friends.
Massive Leak Exposes 41,000 Homeland Security Workers, Including Undercover ICE Agents
By Dhruv Mehrotra via Wired
A leak of records on more than 41,000 Department of Homeland Security employees exposed names, offices, contact details, and assignments, including groups tied to undercover ICE agents. The dataset, called Icepick, was published by DDoSecrets on October 28.
A hacktivist group calling itself Department of Peace says the records came from an Okta single sign-on service used by DHS, which Okta denies. A site indexing the data lists 41,191 people and 55,603 internal groups, including 21,329 CBP records and 6,598 ICE records.
DHS says it is aware of a potential breach and working to resolve it, while the operators warn the data may contain errors, and Reuters verified six employees. It follows a claimed FBI data theft and a Pentagon personnel data breach in the past month.
𝕏: Hackers just EXPOSED more than 40,000 Homeland Security employees, including undercover agents, surveillance teams and intelligence officers. The leak, published by Distributed Denial of Secrets, covers staff from ICE, Border Protection, Homeland Security Investigations and more… - Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal)
Google launches Gemini 4 Carbon with a ‘significant leap’ in cybersecurity
By Emma Roth via The Verge
Google unveiled Gemini 4 Carbon, which it calls its strongest model, with state-of-the-art cybersecurity and long-horizon capabilities. It ranks first on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with 59 points.
It scores 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro for finding vulnerabilities, 54.8% on ExploitGym for exploitation, and 71.0% on CWE-bench for patching. Google says it more than doubles the success rate of secure code generation compared with Gemini 4 Argon.
Access starts with a subset of cybersecurity defenders and will widen to trusted partners through the Fairwind Program, before reaching developers and consumers. Introductory pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, rising to $4 and $20 later.
𝕏: I did say we’d be releasing our models periodically...introducing Gemini 4 Carbon, our next frontier model. Following Argon’s release just two weeks ago, Carbon shows the pace at which we’re pushing the frontier, it ranks #1 on the recently updated v5.0 of @ArtificialAnlys Intelligence Index at 59. It also leads across key cybersecurity evaluations scoring 88.2% on SEC-bench Pro for finding vulnerabilities, 54.8% on ExploitGym for exploitation, and 71.0% on CWE-bench for patching… - Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai)
Xreal Aura is a new wired headset powered by Android XR
By Ivan Mehta via TechCrunch
Xreal unveiled Aura at the Android Developer Summit, a wired headset running Android XR on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Reality Elite platform. It relies on a smartphone-like device for processing, so it looks closer to Meta’s glasses than to the Vision Pro.
It has a Sony Micro-OLED display at 1200p and 120Hz with a 95-degree field of view, weighs 95 grams, and uses Bose audio, with Gemini as an assistant. Launch apps include the NBA App for Android XR and Fallout: Factions, and a laptop or handheld console can plug in over USB-C as a virtual screen.
The 12GB model costs $1,279 and the 16GB model $1,499, with launch prices of $1,099 and $1,299 until December. Orders are open in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and South Korea, with shipping starting in mid-November.
𝕏: I’ve always believed that the endgame of spatial computing is something close to the holodeck on Star Trek – computing that feels limitless, immersive, and completely natural. When we started building Android XR, we knew the early chapters of that story would require bulky headsets. That was the price of admission for the technology at the time… - Sameer Samat (@ssamat)
Trending in AI
Today’s big AI theme: The cost and competition fallout of the AI boom, from memory prices squeezing Apple to Google’s push into AI search ads and claims that Chinese labs are copying OpenAI.
Apple’s iPhone Storage Upgrades Get Costlier as AI Drives Up Memory Chip Prices
Google expands AI Search ads globally as core ad growth slows
OpenAI’s Astra Model Becomes Top Distillation Target for China’s AI Labs
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