China denies spying on Nvidia boss

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1:11This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. We're recording this at 15 hours GMT on Monday the 9th of November. China dismisses claims it spied on US tech giant NVIDIA, following reports that chief executive Jensen Wong had a relationship with a suspected spy. We hear from inside the French drug gang recruiting teenagers to kill. And the UN climate summit in Turkey opens. Can it deliver where its predecessors failed? Also in this podcast... It's been eight years since I've spoken on this topic. Now everyone knows the truth. It's out there. A former Australian cricket star comes clean on the Sandpapergate scandal. Plus, how vibrating mattresses can help reduce the risk of Alzheimer's.

2:01He's the leather jacket-wearing tech boss who's been phoned by President Trump live on stage. But now NVIDIA chief Jensen Wong is facing questions about his judgement after reportedly being caught up in a honey trap scandal. Despite the previous denials, the 63-year-old tech boss has now admitted having an affair following reports he'd been in a relationship with a suspected Chinese spy. Alice Wong, no relation, was an executive at a Singapore-based firm called Megaspeed. Stephen Witt has written a book about NVIDIA. Jensen got played. He fell for it. I think Ms. Alice Wong is a woman who was running a big data center operation in Malaysia, and most of the chips that were shipped there were either diverted

2:43directly into China or used kind of illicitly and accessed by Chinese entities. It should have been obvious that this woman had some red flags about her. She had no business background. She had no computer science background. Megaspeed just kind of came out of nowhere to start building these data centers. And so Jensen should have been much more concerned. Where he faces a huge risk is, in fact, the looming congressional investigation. So the U.S. Congress, both the Republicans and the Democrats, are going to try and bring Jensen in front of Congress to testify. And there it may be revealed that, in fact, he knew what was going on in Megaspeed. Not only that, this woman that he's having an affair with

3:21appears to be an asset of Chinese intelligence. Jensen is one of the president's top tech advisors. So there's a big problem there if she's influencing him and using him as a cutout to manipulate Trump. That's a real risk. Both of those things could bring Jensen down. Of course, NVIDIA is going to protect Jensen. That's obvious. I mean, he's founded it. He's been the CEO for over 30 years. This is a very significant security breach. In addition, on top of the smuggling problem, it's a huge breach for Trump and his team. My impression is that it was actually inside the White House that this information originally leaked from. It looks like Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State, prepared this document and

3:59shared it with Trump. And then when Trump didn't do anything about it, it was leaked to the press. Investigative reporter Stephen Witt, the foreign ministry in Beijing, says it's a smear. I spoke to our security correspondent, Frank Gardner. If the allegations are true, how big a security risk is this? The potential for damage here works in both directions. As you heard there from Stephen Witt, there is the potential that she could have influenced upwards, as it were, via Jensen Huang to the White House itself, to President Trump's policy towards China. But there's also the far more serious potential threat that market-sensitive or technologically sensitive data could possibly have flown the other way to Beijing.

4:44There's no question that China has a huge interest in U.S. technology and all Western technology. Every country spies. And we are in a global race for supremacy when it comes to data, technology, AI, quantum computing. And China is right at the front lines of that race. So, Chen Sen Huang would have been an amazing target if it turns out that he was indeed targeted by a Chinese asset. What do we know about how China targets foreign executives? Well, they do it in a number of different ways. And I've no doubt China is going to deny every single bit of this. But, you know, they don't need to because Western countries also target people of interest. So, you know, it's not as if China is the only one doing this, but they just do it on a massive scale.

5:33The sort of node for all their espionage is something called the MSS, the Ministry of State Security, which deals with both external and domestic intelligence gathering and security. It's a kind of, if you imagine a kind of combination of MI6 and MI5 or CIA and FBI all rolled in together. And they do it in a number of ways. Part of it is through cyber, cyber espionage, which they're very good at. Some of it's human intelligence. Certainly when executives come to a country, and these days, most company executives are wise to this, they will either take a burner phone with them, or what they used to do was to take something called a Faraday glove, which is a electromagnetic proof glove that you pop your phone into so that it's not going to have the contents of its data

6:22sucked out of it, as it were. Other ways are sort of by inducements. Offers of come and speak at this conference, we'll pay you lots of money, and then it's built on from there. Our security correspondent, Frank Gardner. A BBC investigation has found that one of Europe's most powerful drug gangs is recruiting teenagers from across France to carry out murders and kidnappings. The so-called DZ Mafia won a bloody turf war against a rival group in Marseille in 2023, but it's now looking further afield for recruits. Officials say narcotics are flooding into France and amount to a threat to national security. This report from James Waterhouse in Marseille contains violence and strong language. A board game of passe-trappe in one of Marseille's poorest neighbourhoods.

7:12As children try to sling wooden pucks through a narrow gap, they're a generation surrounded by an enticing threat. These parts of the city are overshadowed by a network of around 90 drug-dealing zones, high-rise housing estates sealed off by powerful drug gangs. These parts of the city are overshadowed by a network of around 90 drug dealing zones, high-rise housing estates sealed off by powerful drug gangs. For their safety, we have altered the voices of the people we've met. I knew about the Cartier Nord and I asked them if I could be a lookout, so I started working for 60 euros a day, a teenager tells me. The Cateignan is the city's infamous northern district, cut off from trams, buses and often police control.

7:49At the end of the day, that's the only way to make money. Afterwards, it becomes an addiction, explains another. He's 12 years old. There seem to be two main concerns here for parents. Firstly, of complaining about the gangs. Most don't want to talk on camera. The second worry for people here is of their children's futures. Because if they chose to, they could wander a few hundred yards over to the deal point and make hundreds of euros a day from the age of 11, for example. After a bloody turf war, there is a dominant gang which rules the Cartier Nord, DZ Mafia. It is a world where often vulnerable teenage miners are lured from Marseille and across France with promises of easy money before being trapped in a world of drug dealing, violence and exploitation.

8:37It would take months to access a drug dealing zone where we finally meet someone who runs one. This is what you're presented with, three menus, one for cocaine, hashish and marijuana. When I was 13, I made about €3,000 per month. Now it's between €5,000 and €10,000 per month. Drugs can ruin lives and people die from violence on the streets that your gang perpetrates. Do you think about that? It destroys people. But they make their own choices. We've all made our own choices. We found miners are often enticed through DZ Mafia's most potent recruitment tool, social media. And if you scroll on your phone, they're very easy to find. Our soldiers are ready to move. There is work. Do not miss your train, reads this one.

9:31Another lists a number of roles, including being a driver, an assassin. This one says everyone will have access to housing and a meal allowance. Someone used to seeing these adverts is Celine Regnault, a local prosecutor. Over the years, we've seen a major shift, with younger minors becoming involved in much more serious crimes, including murders and unlawful confinements. Since 2024, police have arrested around 1,000 DZ Mafia members. 600 have been jailed, and one of them has agreed to speak to us from his prison cell. He says he was part of a hit squad and is waiting to go on trial for several murders. This interview is extremely rare. The assassinations that I'm charged with being involved in were quite shocking. Attempts in

10:22broad daylight, in traffic jams. It can range from going to hit a guy, slap him, to taking him in front of his mother and burning him up in the car. To burn someone alive or to execute them in front of their parents, that is a different kind of evil. I'm just trying to understand what was going through your mind. In fact, when you enter this environment, it's a trap. You no longer have control of what happens. There are other people who would have done that in my place and so on. I'm just another brick in the wall. In Marseille, the police are seeing successes, but for reasons beyond its port, it's a battle only becoming more arduous for officers rather than easier. France, they say, is uniquely placed, with the price of narcotics like cocaine dropping globally and the main importers to the country being French themselves. Drugs are flooding in, fuelling violence, straining

11:17the state and distorting the economy. In the middle is the widening exploitation of children. James Waterhouse reporting from Marseille. The COP31 UN Climate Summit is underway in Turkey, and the hosts have taken an unusual approach to get people excited about tackling global warming. Bring down the heat, make it drop. One earth, one chance, one shot. Stand together. A song called Bring Down the Heat, which comes after the World Meteorological Organisation released a report saying 2026 will be one of the four hottest years on record. This summit is focused on delivering on past promises, which many critics say have not been met. The head of the UN's climate change arm, Simon Steele, addressed this head on as he

12:05opened the summit. No COP is a silver bullet. No single conference can bridge the chasm between the science and reality. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. Every recent COP has delivered strides forward. This one must too. A climate solution step up creates a real chance for faster progress. This is what the era of implementation looks like. So let's get to work. So how likely is it that COP will be able to deliver this time? I asked our climate reporter Esme Stallard. Let's take a step back and look at how far we've come. You know, it was only about a decade ago that we were looking at warming about four degrees. That's now come down to about 2.8. Renewable energy is growing. The International Energy

13:01Association has said that in the next six years, we're expected to see that grow by another 60%. But as you say, we are still going to miss that crucial 1.5 target, where above that we're expected to see more severe impacts of climate change. Will we get concrete action at this summit? Well, we haven't seen as much progress as we would like. And that's been overshadowed by the Iran-US war, which is putting huge amounts of pressure on government's budgets, not being able to commit as much as maybe they would like to climate action, coupled with the fact the US isn't even present at these talks. As we've discussed before, Trump has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement. So what should we look out

13:38for? What would be a measure of success? So Turkey, who is co-hosting with Australia, has put a number of things on the table they would like to see. One of them is this electrification target. Currently, about a fifth of the world's energy comes from electricity. They want to see that increased to about 35 percent because, of course, electricity can be met with renewable energy rather than fossil fuels. But I think it is unlikely we'll get a new target. Many countries feel like COP after COP. We've got new, new targets and actually we should be focused on achieving those ones we've already set out. The one other thing, which we'll see probably for the first time, potentially in that final agreement is a mention

14:12of AI and data centres. There's a real discussion expected to play out as to whether it could hopefully help the revolution of green tech, make them more efficient, or whether AI could be another major source of emissions that countries are starting to worry about. Our climate reporter, Esme Stallard. Eight years after Australian cricket was rocked by the infamous Sandpapergate scandal, one of the players involved, David Warner, has broken his silence. The former vice-captain posted a video backing teammate Usman Khawaja, whose new book says the whole team knew about the ball tampering in the final 2018 test against South Africa. Hi everyone, it's been eight years since I've spoken on this topic

14:49and Uzi, I throw my full support behind you. I thank you for what you've done. It's 100% accurate what you've said. Now everyone knows the truth. It's out there. People wanted to know it, you've come out and said it. And now people are saying, why eight years on? Talking about selling a book. This is Usman's story. This is what Usman believes. Uzi wrote down every single thing from that day on. Uzi, thank you. Warner was suspended along with the then captain Steve Smith and batter Cameron Bancroft. Our Australia correspondent Simon Atkinson told us more. Khawaja came out and clarified some of those comments and he effectively said he thinks the whole team needs to take responsibility for the incident which he talked about in Cape Town in

15:382018 and it's problematic for cricket here in Australia because four of the bowlers who were involved in that game, including the captain, Pat Cummins, are still playing in the Australia team. Now, they put out a statement in 2021 denying that they knew that any foreign substance, was the phrase they used, was brought onto the pitch. And the idea of that sandpaper being brought on is to change the way the ball moves to give the bowlers an advantage. And they said at that time, you know, they wanted to draw a line under it. They wanted the rumour mongering to stop. But really, this has invited lots of speculation and scrutiny again on those players. And England are here in Australia. They're going to be playing a match in Perth at the end of this week.

16:20Another of the bowlers, Mitch Marsh, is going to have to face the press on Thursday and Cummins probably on Friday. So some real tough questions are going to be asked of the Australian captain as a result of what's come out of this. Khawaja has said that he isn't trying to throw anybody under the bus. He says he doesn't speak for anybody else, but he just is adamant that he feels that everybody who's in that team needs to share the blame for what happened, not just the three players, including David Warner, who were fined and suspended. Simon Atkinson. Still to come in this podcast... Authority reaches its highest meaning when it's exercised as service and when it puts its capacities in the service of what belongs to everyone.

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20:11Learn more at Betterment.com slash TLH dash terms. Paid client ad. Views may not be representative. See App Store and Google Play reviews. Learn more at Betterment.com slash ambassadors. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. Two years ago, the Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was overthrown in a violent student-led uprising. She fled to India, where she's been living in exile. Now it seems she wants to go home, even though she is facing the death penalty. She has requested a new passport and identity card. But the Bangladeshi authorities say she should be extradited. I asked our global affairs reporter Anbarasan Etirajan why Sheikha Sinha is looking to return now. She told a media interview a couple of months ago

20:55that she wants to surrender and face whatever comes her way when she returns to Bangladesh. Now, she has been living in the Indian capital for the past two years after she was forced out of the country following this violent uprising. Now, she faces the death penalty there back in Bangladesh for what the Bangladeshi courts say, crimes against humanity for hundreds of people killed during this uprising against her long rule, which many describe as an autocratic rule. And there has been also pressure on India for the last few years, because the current Bangladeshi administration, led by the new Prime Minister Tarek Rahman, he has been a bit reluctant to make any bilateral visit to Delhi, pointing out that Sheikh Hasina is still there.

21:46A lot of people are angry with her back in the country. So she should be extradited back because she's wanted by the Bangladeshi courts and the judicial authorities. And that is probably one of the reasons why she wants to go back, even though she forged very close ties with India during her probably about 20 year rule in different times. But it is also becoming a diplomatic issue. As you say, she faces the death penalty. What would her return mean for the situation in Bangladesh? That's a real worry for many people back in Bangladesh. Still, her party, Awami League, has considerable support among Bangladeshis. And they have also been holding minor hit-and-run protests for the past few weeks. So on the one

22:32side, you have people really angry, like student leaders who say that hundreds of people were killed by security forces when she was in power, when she was trying to suppress these protest movements. On the other hand, you also have the country's largest Islamist party, the Jamaat Islami. They are also very angry because some of their leaders were hanged during a rule because of the alleged crimes committed during the country's independence war. So there is a widespread anger. And also at the same time, our own party people, they want her to come back because many of them are in jail, many leaders are in prison for corruption charges. So it is going to create a very tense situation and that is a

23:11big worry for many people in Bangladesh. Do you think she will go back to Bangladesh? She's trying to make this move but she doesn't want to be extradited. But it all depends on whether the Bangladeshi government wants to give her a passport and an identity card, as she has requested. Global Affairs reporter Anbarasan Etirajan. Pope Leo has gained a reputation for speaking out about political as well as theological issues. He became the first pontiff to vote in the US elections. And now, on the latest stop of his South America tour, he's criticised the austerity measures followed by the Argentine president, Javier Millet, and even appeared to rebuke his aggressive style. Authority reaches its highest meaning when it's exercised as service, when it looks beyond the

23:59immediate, and when it puts its capacities in the service of what belongs to everyone. Those who exercise authority have a duty to act with prudence, to acknowledge the limits of the power entrusted to them, and to direct their decisions towards the good of the entire community. I asked our Latin America online editor, Vanessa Buschluter, how big a rebuke this was for Mr Millais. I think it was quite a pointed rebuke, but a carefully worded one. I think that key sentence was the economy must be at the service of the person and not the person at the service of the economy. That really erupted, the room there erupted in rapturous applause when he said that. And if you remember, Millet famously campaigned on a promise

24:45to take a chainsaw to the Argentine economy. And he also stressed that people who are drawing pensions, people who are drawing disability allowances, that those allowances should be cut as part of the chainsaw program. And that was something that the Pope criticized. He said that particular concern should be shown for those affected by illness and disability. Again, that drew applause. And so it was quite a tough pill to swallow for Mr Millais. Yeah, I mean, will the Argentine government listen to what the Pope has said? I think they will, because there hasn't really been a sign that they have been listening. Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a decision made in Congress to guarantee the funding of some

25:32of those disability programs that Millet had been ranting against. So he had been freezing these programs for years while he has been in power. And Congress and his party in Congress did a U-turn just a few weeks ago. And many of the observers in Argentine politics have said that that might have been because of the looming visit of the Pope and of the criticism that the Catholic Church had made against those chainsaw politics that Millet had proposed. Latin America's home of liberation theology. Will this kind of speaking out go down well amongst the people there? It goes down well with many who embrace that liberation theology, as you mentioned. But of course, there are also very conservative parts of the Catholic

26:16Church in Latin America. There's the Opus Dei group, and the Pope will be appealing to those who want to drive forward some change and some more politics that are embracing the poor more and especially during his visit to Peru he will be stressing those. Our Latin America Online Editor Vanessa Buschluter. Demand for copper and cobalt is growing as the world shifts towards cleaner energy and new technologies. These minerals power everything from electric vehicle batteries and solar panels to smartphones and data centres. Billions of dollars from the US, the EU and international lenders are being poured into a transport corridor linking the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola's Atlantic coast. But will it simply make it easier to ship Africa's

27:06minerals abroad? Or will it help create lasting prosperity along the way? Our reporter Akisa Wanderer travelled to Angola to find out. The sound of trains arriving from the port of Lobito is becoming increasingly familiar. They carry goods along a railway linking mineral-producing parts of Central Africa to the Atlantic coast. The route runs from the Democratic Republic of Congo across Angola to the port of Lobito. At its heart is the historic Benguela Railway, now being revived as part of the wider Lobito Corridor. The scale of operation is clear. I'm standing at the mineral terminal at the port of Lobito, and on the ground there's thousands of bags of sulfur. I can also see blue containers stacked three high

27:59from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then it will head out into the international markets. Nicolas Fournier, the chief executive of Lobito Atlantic Railway, is showing me around the warehouse. Workers are arranging stacks of copper cathodes, the refined metal ready for export. This copper is going to the US. So since we started in January 24, we have been at least more than doubling the volume. This year, we hope to achieve 200,000 tons of copper exported from DRC to the port of Lobito, a little bit less in terms of sulfur. The railway was built during Portuguese colonial rule and once played a major role in transporting minerals from Central Africa to the coast. Years of conflict left much of the line in ruins.

28:51It was rebuilt with Chinese financing and reopened in 2015. Now renewed investment from the US, Europe and other international partners is bringing fresh attention to the route. There are also plans to extend the corridor towards Zambia's Copper Belt. Copper and cobalt are used in electric vehicles, power networks and other technologies linked to the shift towards cleaner energy. More than $6 billion in investment has been linked to the wider corridor. But what does this renewed activity mean for the people who live alongside the railway? For some residents, the return of passenger services has made travelling between towns easier. For 27-year-old businessman Joachim Ambrosio Manuel Felipe,

29:40the corridor is also bringing more trade and movement between communities. The corridor has brought bringing more trade and movement between communities. Easier journeys and more movement between towns are tangible benefits, but the bigger economic prize is whether local businesses can grow as trade increases. Political risk analyst Wellington Muzengeza says that will take more than a railway passing through the country. The larger prize is Angolan firms developing capabilities in maintenance, engineering, warehousing, agricultural processing and other services. But Angola should measure success not only by what passes through its territory but what grows within its economy. That is also the ambition of the Angolan government.

30:34The country's foreign affairs minister, Tete Antonio, says the country wants to break the long-standing pattern in which Africa exports raw materials while much of the value is created elsewhere. If you export your raw material, you're exporting jobs, you're exporting even the knowledge. The knowledge will happen somewhere else because transformation is also a laboratory of knowledge. As trains continue carrying Africa's mineral wealth towards global markets, people living along the corridor are hoping opportunity travels with it. For them, in the years ahead, that may be the true measure of the Lobito Corridor's success. Akisa Wandera in Angola. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia.

31:24The cause isn't fully understood, but there are plenty of suggestions about how to reduce your risks. Penny Sarche from the New Scientist told us about some of the latest ones. My colleague Carissa Wong, all year really she's been reporting on all these quite insane sounding ways to try and boost the waste disposal system of the brain. And the one this week is a vibrating mattress. You lie on it for a period whilst also taking nitric oxide pills. I must stress, do not try this at home. But this is only the latest in a whole slew of findings, things like listening to pink noise, which is a bit like white noise, or breathing in carbon dioxide. These are all being explored as ways to make your brain

32:03basically pulse its glymphatic system more effectively, boost it, so that you drain, hopefully, harmful proteins and waste products out of the brain. And the one they're really interested in is amyloid beta, which is this Alzheimer's protein. The thing is, this science is still really new and we don't really have ways of really even knowing what's happening in the glymphatic system. The best thing we can do is measure what seems to end up in your blood and the rest of your body afterwards. So it's still quite crude, which is why you shouldn't try any of this at home, but they do see more of these brain proteins turning up in the blood after this kind of thing. But the big question is, OK, well, can we in any way use that

32:40to prevent or treat Alzheimer's? We don't know, but there's loads of excitement that we do have this brain waste disposal system. We do seem to be able to boost it. And now the hunt is really on to work out what actually does that. We do know that there are other things that you might be able to do that seem to potentially be good for your brain's waste disposal system. Maybe things like sauna and heat therapy might have some of their effects that way. Science journalist Penny Sarche. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk and you can see how we look by searching for the Global News Podcast on YouTube. This edition was mixed by Hannah Montgomery

33:20and produced by Nicky Verrico and Oliver Burlough. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. You unlock our best available rate and two welcome cocktails or craft mocktails on us. Plan your stay at Chaminade.com.