There’s a 68% chance that Altman met with someone who got their degree in the US (if only one executive attended, otherwise chances are higher).
And the others probably also have little difficulty communicating in English or calculating the cost of 36 fabs in any currency, since that’s their business.
Much more likely they talked about 3-6 fabs, some other person laughed about 36 fabs for podcast guy, someone else overheard that and posted on Weibo. That made it to NYT eventually.