Let me catch you up with what’s happening.
Anonymous leakers spread tabloid narratives about one of America’s most successful men. Spies, blackmail, state secrets! The grain of truth is that the billionaire is not exactly chaste. But the ‘national security’ angle is entirely fabricated by a few anonymous sources misrepresenting the entirety of the Intelligence Community (IC), in order to force through domestic political outcomes.
I’m not talking about November 2026. I’m talking about November 2016 — Russiagate, an unhinged theory that President Trump was secretly working with Putin. These claims took exactly the form of a James Bond movie, alleging that Trump was sleeping with Russian prostitutes, or “honeypots”, that he had been blackmailed by Putin, that he was an agent of the Kremlin. Regardless of Trump’s policy merits, it is an objective fact that these claims were entirely false.
How Russigate took off was simple. Anonymous Intelligence Community leakers laundered false claims from political consultants Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele. That way, even though journalists were repeating lies, they could say they were simply repeating what the Intelligence Community told them. That didn’t mean the entire IC agreed, just that they had one politically weaponized source they could use to advance their narrative.
I’ve asked several intelocutors who believe that Alice Huang is a spy or asset what level of evidence they would expect from a credible claim. The smart ones have asked me the same question. While Russiagate turned out to be false, at the time, its proponents made specific falsifiable claims in order to build up credibility.
The Trump Organization maintained a secret communications channel with Russia’s Alfa Bank.
Carter Page secretly coordinated with senior Kremlin officials on behalf of Trump.
Sergei Millian was the source of the dossier’s central Trump–Russia conspiracy allegations.
Michael Cohen traveled to Prague to coordinate with Russian operatives.
These were all claims to be investigated. All of these were proven to be objectively false. See part 1 and 4 of the excellent Columbia Journalism Review series on Russiagate.
With the Jensen story, we do not even have these crumbs. The entire premise that Alice Huang is a Chinese spy is an article of faith, spread baselessly without providing specific allegations of how she spied on Jensen or others, let alone proof of those allegations.
Let me be clear about the distinction. Not only does the Alice Huang spy claim have absolutely zero evidence, like the Russiagate claims. Unlike the Russiagate claims, it does not even name specific allegations for which they could have evidence. The fact that the level of accusation does not even rise to the laughably low threshold of Russiagate shows that this is an odious fabrication, a lie that does not even bother to go through the motions of justifying that it could be true, let alone proving it is true.
The lesson these political operatives learned was to avoid trying to build up big lies by small, evidence-based claims. Just go for the sweeping lie and when anyone asks for evidence, call them a traitor.
Now, the broader IC has already overturned the most extreme claims made about Alice Huang, admitting there is “little evidence” and that claims were “premature”. But that is not enough. We need to call this what it is: a politically weaponized fabrication without even the most basic pretense of truth.
Russiagate failed. Donald Trump won in 2016. Despite being less credible than the Steele dossier, the Jensen allegations have succeeded, at least temporarily, in removing the CEO of the world’s most valuable company. It is a horrific moment for America.