WASHINGTON, Nov 11 — The scandal engulfing Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang could have its biggest consequences in Washington, where China hawks are seizing on the affair to push a hard line that had been put on the back burner under President Donald Trump.

Huang, who co-founded Nvidia and turned it into the world’s leading supplier of the processors that power artificial intelligence, admitted on Sunday to an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based Megaspeed whom US intelligence officials believe was working for Chinese intelligence.

Trump, who has relied on Huang as an adviser on AI, called him “an honorable guy” and said Huang told him he had no idea the woman was a spy.