NYTimes is asking hard hitting questions such as "What does it mean to be a spy anyway?". There isn't going to be any litigation from the government. There will be a dog and a pony show though, which should provide sound bites to every opportunistic political hack on the hill.
If anybody had any doubts about the morality of Silicon Valley guys...
Jensen is a fantastic founder and what he achieved is nothing short of extraordinary. He should be celebrated for that.
However, there are 2 issues.
First, everything points to the fact that he knowingly evaded sales restriction to China on products that are considered crucial to national security. That's pretty much equivalent to leaking confidential info from Los Alamos during WW2...
Second, I like to think that US, despite all its challenges recently, is still a country of law. Nvidia is a public company. With great power comes great responsibility. He failed that responsibility. I really don't see why law shouldn't apply to him.
Government flip flopping on export restrictions costs him billions, of course he will try to side step them.
Also, can we please stop calling it national security? US wants to slow down Chinas AI progress, because we want the western companies to dominate the AI field.
Jensen just needs to go away. It's safe to say that he's been a net negative to society and he's only concerned with enriching himself to the detriment of everyone else.
> It's safe to say that he's been a net negative to society and he's only concerned with enriching himself to the detriment of everyone else.
"Safe to say"? Net negative to society? What are you talking about? The man is a builder. He's done a lot of good. I can point to a lot of people who are "net negatives to society," but somebody who started a high-tech manufacturing company from nothing is never that.
What exactly is the crime and how is Jensen himself implicated? Last I heard, he hasn't been indicted, and the notion that his Chinese paramour was a spy (i.e. in the employ of foreign intelligence services) was under a cloud of doubt.
I'd also venture that he's unlikely to be Federally indicted while Trump is still president, so for ~2.25 more years.
Prison enforced by whom? His buddies in the White House? In normal times I wouldn’t bat an eye at this comment, because you should be exactly right. We still aren’t in any sort of normal time yet.
His buddies in the White House just lost their majority in Congress, if you expect the next two years to be like the last two (domestically) you're in for a rude surprise.
Even if the allegations against Alice Huang are true, what reason did Jensen have at the time to suspect where those GPUs were headed? Nvidia has limited visibility into where GPUs end up after a sale. And I don't see why she would have told him.
I cannot support this if any of the espionage and smuggling claims are true. Just to make this explicit I don’t give two shits about any of the affair stuff.
See, there's only one of me. The same me that got married is the me that shows up at the office. And if I can't keep my vows to my wife, why do you expect me to do what I promised to at the office?
I claim that moral character actually matters in business.
Because relationship morality is highly subjective and various wildly between people and cultures. Half of what we consider to be acceptable in relationships in America are basically apocalyptic events in other cultures. It’s not even close to universal even within America, whereas professional mores are pretty universally accepted.
There is no moral subjectivity to a contract of marriage in the USA; infidelity is prohibited.
There is also no subjectivity or ambiguity to the prohibition of workplace relationships with those below one in the chain of command. Again, it's in the contract of employment.
You’d think he’d be focused on patching things up with his family but I guess they’re ok with what he’s done.
As someone who owns Nvidia stock and has worked for him, I regret all that has transpired but wish he would just sit on the bench for a while. Nvidia is facing serious challenges to its position right now and they need to be focused on a strategy for dealing with that, not perpetuating a cult of personality.
I have a lot of respect for Jensen and his accomplishments (albeit a lot less now), but find the efforts to reinstate him very cringe.
Didn't he resign? He wasn't fired, he voluntarily left the company. Probably with a little encouragement, but stll: he resigned as CEO and from the board.
And now he wants back in? His regrets ("I am deeply sorry") faded really quickly, apparently. He's changing his mind faster than he changes mistresses. I don't think impulsivity is the best trait of a former/current/future Nvidia CEO right now.
Better wait until all the skeletons have fallen out of the closet. The fallout isn't over yet.
> Didn't he resign? He wasn't fired, he voluntarily left the company.
There is no such thing at the CEO level. Any time a CEO "resigns" amidst scandal, they were actually fired. The "voluntary" nature of things is merely a thin veneer to allow people to feel like they are saving face.
China is following the "buy, build , bridge" strategy and wishes not to be prevented from following it:
1 Buy) To be able to buy or otherwise access latest GPUs/silicon for the training and development of their own models and strategic tasks they might want their models to assist them with.
2 Build) To be able to eventually design (with the help of 1) and manufacture their own world class GPUs/silicon, freeing themselves of geopolitical rivals interference in the supply chain.
There are a whole bunch of other policies and measures and pressures brought to bear to make 1, 2, and 3 happen, but those are the big pillars.
3 Bridge) While they are working to get to (2), they want to sanctions-proof compute wherever they can get it. To this end they have Chinese owned and operated companies build and lease facilities outside of strict US export control geographies.
No way this story is over. This was a move by the current admin to show they can make anyone bend the knee. Jensen was made an example of and he might be allowed to go back now that he's shown they can destroy anyone's life no matter how rich.
The capital class is taking notes now. This is what a fascist government does.
He's cooked. The trump admin is turning against him and making him the fall guy. They're a bunch of idiots but they have the power. Even if he doesn't end up in prison he'll be in court for ages.
> One Huang ally told the FT they were putting together a “war room” of Silicon Valley executives to lobby for the former Nvidia chief’s return and would try to garner support from the White House.
I wish I were those guys’ cocaine dealer. I’d be a trillionaire.
Unfortunately, modeling a comeback after Sam Altmans' comeback will never work.
Having the taint of spy allegations over you, will simply not disappear. And although some could (whether true or not) could say Huang is a firebrand of the type of Steve Jobs, the fact is the things that Huang has done that would give him that label (financial maneuvers), are extremely risky, and with a different president (coming soon!) could have easily been deemed illegal.
Its one thing to be a leader based on hard charging, or big ideas. Its another to lead with financial largess and creative financing (which is the nicest thing I could say in this case) to the brink of insolvency.
I make a point of never over-empathizing with the extremely wealthy. If I wanted to be judgemental I could blame Nvidia for the cryptobros running politics and the massive overhype of LLM and datacenter build outs.
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[ 0.55 ms ] story [ 66.0 ms ] threadnot trying to hate at all, just curious what this article is trying to achieve
When you go for the king, you better not miss.
How did he do it?
I haven't heard that any of the women he has been involved with are making legal threats.
After Nvidia bought it, Chinese export controls were relaxed. Maybe similar events will happen soon.
Uh, so I've heard.
Jensen is a fantastic founder and what he achieved is nothing short of extraordinary. He should be celebrated for that.
However, there are 2 issues.
First, everything points to the fact that he knowingly evaded sales restriction to China on products that are considered crucial to national security. That's pretty much equivalent to leaking confidential info from Los Alamos during WW2...
Second, I like to think that US, despite all its challenges recently, is still a country of law. Nvidia is a public company. With great power comes great responsibility. He failed that responsibility. I really don't see why law shouldn't apply to him.
If this was a cut and dried evasion of export controls we would have a very different situation.
The fact is that many disagree with their decision to make the chips more available, but people’s opinions are not laws.
No it's not.
So right now lots of conflicting information around.
Also, can we please stop calling it national security? US wants to slow down Chinas AI progress, because we want the western companies to dominate the AI field.
That statement sounds totally crazy. Los Alamos was manufacturing a bomb, during a war.
GPUs are not weapons (despite what the novlang says) and there is no war going on.
Upstanding citizens Musk and Sweeney (Epic Games is 48% owned by Tencent which still needs GPUs) support the initiative.
The bubble must go on!
"Safe to say"? Net negative to society? What are you talking about? The man is a builder. He's done a lot of good. I can point to a lot of people who are "net negatives to society," but somebody who started a high-tech manufacturing company from nothing is never that.
I'd also venture that he's unlikely to be Federally indicted while Trump is still president, so for ~2.25 more years.
See, there's only one of me. The same me that got married is the me that shows up at the office. And if I can't keep my vows to my wife, why do you expect me to do what I promised to at the office?
I claim that moral character actually matters in business.
I think you are wrong. They are not necessarily correlated.
There is also no subjectivity or ambiguity to the prohibition of workplace relationships with those below one in the chain of command. Again, it's in the contract of employment.
He was expected to be like the regular billionaire that enjoyed the pleasures of Little St. James.
As someone who owns Nvidia stock and has worked for him, I regret all that has transpired but wish he would just sit on the bench for a while. Nvidia is facing serious challenges to its position right now and they need to be focused on a strategy for dealing with that, not perpetuating a cult of personality.
I have a lot of respect for Jensen and his accomplishments (albeit a lot less now), but find the efforts to reinstate him very cringe.
So it was really Anthropic the source of this hit job on Huang.
I hope they do badly with their IPO for wanting to kill open-weight and Chinese competition.
I wish them bankruptcy. I already cancelled my Claude Code subscription.
And now he wants back in? His regrets ("I am deeply sorry") faded really quickly, apparently. He's changing his mind faster than he changes mistresses. I don't think impulsivity is the best trait of a former/current/future Nvidia CEO right now.
Better wait until all the skeletons have fallen out of the closet. The fallout isn't over yet.
There is no such thing at the CEO level. Any time a CEO "resigns" amidst scandal, they were actually fired. The "voluntary" nature of things is merely a thin veneer to allow people to feel like they are saving face.
There are a whole bunch of other policies and measures and pressures brought to bear to make 1, 2, and 3 happen, but those are the big pillars. 3 Bridge) While they are working to get to (2), they want to sanctions-proof compute wherever they can get it. To this end they have Chinese owned and operated companies build and lease facilities outside of strict US export control geographies.
The capital class is taking notes now. This is what a fascist government does.
I wish I were those guys’ cocaine dealer. I’d be a trillionaire.
Having the taint of spy allegations over you, will simply not disappear. And although some could (whether true or not) could say Huang is a firebrand of the type of Steve Jobs, the fact is the things that Huang has done that would give him that label (financial maneuvers), are extremely risky, and with a different president (coming soon!) could have easily been deemed illegal.
Its one thing to be a leader based on hard charging, or big ideas. Its another to lead with financial largess and creative financing (which is the nicest thing I could say in this case) to the brink of insolvency.
I make a point of never over-empathizing with the extremely wealthy. If I wanted to be judgemental I could blame Nvidia for the cryptobros running politics and the massive overhype of LLM and datacenter build outs.
And I wouldnt be far off...