Whether people like it or not, CEOs in strategic industries are in positions of trust. Like most positions of trust, governments do background checks/surveillance on you. For any of you who have held a security clearance and already know this: having affairs, in and of itself, isn’t an issue (bear with me, I’m not making a moral judgement). But private behavior that can be leaked is a point of leverage for competing actors.

Whether he smuggled the chips under coercion or not, someone or something within the US government would have eventually leaked this to limit the possibility of blackmail. The movement of that many GPUs may have simply expedited the release of the info.

(This of course ignores the 800lb gorilla: whatever kompromat Russia has on the Trump admin, but that’s a separate and much bigger problem)