Opinions on the affair and the public discourse aside, I have to say though that it is the first time in a long time that I see an apology letter written from a business person in the name of the company that actually admits wrongdoing and has accountability.
Usually they are more along the lines of fake apologies like "I'm sorry that you feel that way", or in this particular case I would imagine something like "I'm sorry that I was spied on, I was doing my best and nothing prepared me to deal with a foreign agent".
It's refreshing to see words like "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.".
Responsibility means taking consequences when you/your company failed or you took missteps. Too often I read of "taking full responsibility" as an empty phrase that invalidates said ownership of responsibility.
I feel like with all the stuff coming out and congress and Nvidia both looking into it, it was only a matter of time before the facts became public and he's getting ahead of it this way.
And honestly, we are all human and all of us make mistakes. Having an affair is usually something that should be resolved privately, in your personal life, not in public. The business context of this affair is clearly something he wasn’t aware of at the time and punishing him for being deceived seems extreme.
I'm all for having CEOs take responsibility. But unless it comes out that he actually leaked anything of substance than it really doesn't matter that he cheated on his wife from the business perspective.
One could certainly question his judgment. As CEO of Nvidia, he should have recognized that his position made him an exceptionally valuable target for foreign intelligence operations
Usually when emotions are involved, people don’t think rationally. I don’t think he should go around his life 24/7 on alert that anyone showing sexual or romantic interest is out to get him.
It could still be an issue if his wife divorces him, takes a significant portion of his stock and decides to sell it off. The NVIDIA board would have to consider that possibility.
There was always that risk, whether or not he had an affair. People get divorced for all kinds of reasons and you have no idea how she felt about their marriage before she learned of the affair. You also do not know how she feels about the affair, she might have some kind of private (i.e. none of your business) arrangement with him because she sees enough value in keeping the marriage intact.
Also keep in mind that divorce is not some formulaic thing. Most divorces are settled out of court and a hypothetical settlement could have terms that allow him to keep those shares in exchange for something else (e.g. maybe he agrees to pay her the cash value or agrees to a large and permanent alimony structure). I doubt the Nvidia board is worried about this issue considering the other, more immediate problems here (like the fact that his mistress is a Chinese spy).
The worst she can do is sell them off. And at something like 1.75% she would own that is not likely to damage them seriously. Besides firing him or not, he already has the stock so it would accomplish nothing.
Absurd, internet-only opinion. He's led Nvidia to a 4 trillion market cap and then cheated on his wife? Is it shitty, yea. Does it have literally anything to do with business? no
> Does it have literally anything to do with business?
Yes. The cheating is only a small part of it, although it does confirm he's a piece of trash and thereby throws into question his capability as a leader. More seriously, he potentially colluded with this person, an agent of a foreign government, to bypass export restrictions. The investigation that will follow exposes Nvidia very badly.
It could still be an issue if his wife divorces him, takes a significant portion of his stock and decides to sell it off. The NVIDIA board would have to consider that possibility.
But the knee jerk maximum-cancel for any offense is a problem. CEOs are not saints. Very few people are. If our standard for corporate leadership is not just to be good at business but also to be above reproach personally… who’s left?
It’s an unfortunate fact that humans are generally fallible and imperfect. Jack Welch cheated on his wife. Many other execs have. It sucks, but the world would not be better if there were a career death penalty for doing so.
> Jack Welch cheated on his wife. Many other execs have
Along with a lot of people who are not executives, and people who were not executives at the time and went on to become executives. Like it or not cheating is relatively common, our species is not strictly monogamous and the evidence can be found in male anatomy (read about it if you are interested, particularly in comparison to Chimpanzee and Gorilla anatomy).
I am not saying this as a defense of cheating; it is just a fact that people cheat on their spouses, regardless of the moral implications or how "never cool" it is.
Nobody is saying he can't retain most/all of hi billions and do something else. But, leading a multi-billion dollar business should come with some minimum expectation of morality. If for nothing else because being an immoral turd opens you to extortion.
I really don't get the sentiment that flying around the world to cavort with a Chinese spy is ok-ish. That's insane.
Who's morals exactly? There's a big difference between following the morals of a traditional religion and following the morals of some retards you happen to align with because of your pre-existing lived experiences. If it's the later—which it is, unless it's the former—then you haven't really become moral in any sense unless you're a Nietzchian.
Literally nobody would be left. This is big issue with our cultural moment right now. In the past, it was understood that all humans are fallible and worthy of forgiveness. The standards seem to be so unrealistic right now that it is making everyone miserable. This is not to say there should not be accountability. But there should also be proportionality and second chances.
If every C-level in the world is morally suspect, we have a bigger problem. Seriously, is your claim that being a bit iffy is a pre-requisite for the job? That's a pretty damning statement about capitalism if that's the claim.
I think I'm with ModernMech on this one. It's too easy, I think, to focus on the idea of CEOs being forced to resign as a "career death penalty" to the degree that we lose sight of how well-off the people we're talking about are. Jensen Huang's wealth is estimated at over $150 billion dollars. That's more than most corporations in America. If he never worked another day in his life, never earned another cent of interest on investments, lived to be 100, and spent $5M per day for the rest of his life, he would die being worth over $80B. I understand "death penalty" is metaphorical, that he probably wants to work, yadda yadda yadda, but goddamn, let's not pretend that is an actual penalty.
(For that matter, let's not pretend that if he resigned now he wouldn't be able to immediately pick up work again if he wanted to. Because, to reiterate, he is worth over $150 billion dollars. He could start a new company. He could start ten new companies. He could buy an island and build a secret underwater volcano lair to start a new career as a Bond villain. Assuming he doesn't have a secret underwater volcano lair already, of course.)
You might have picked a better example than the guy who systematically hollowed out the American institution that was GE by evangelizing cartoonishly corporatist short-term MBA culture then leaving when the bill came due and washing his hands of that destructive movement that he propelled to the forefront of American business. There are tons of great leaders who did hurtful things in their private lives. I don't think that Jack Welch is exemplary of that first criterion (unless you count a legacy of financial engineering and grinding employees into pulp as leadership).
They aren't saying "maximum cancel", they're just saying maybe this guy shouldn't be running one of the most consequential companies in the world when he's more interested in dopamine farming.
At the end of the day, asking a billionaire to resign his role, so he can sail off into the sunset on his yacht and have all the affairs he wants for the rest of his days isn't really on any scale of punishment or cancelling I'm familiar with.
Somehow we live in a world where with great power comes no responsibility or accountability, and it's quickly becoming too big of a problem to handle.
Hate to break it to you but cheating is far more common than anyone wants to admit. You probably know many people who cheated, or perhaps are currently cheating, on their spouse, and there is no reason you would be aware of it (it is not exactly something people share with their friends or family). If you are going to take the position that someone who has an affair cannot be trusted in any other context you are going to live a very paranoid and unproductive life.
A lot of people cheat on their wives and husbands and are still trustworthy. Bill Clinton didn't auction off the nuclear launch codes to prevent the Lewinsky scandal from becoming public. A person being unfaithful to their partner is in and of itself not a deathknell, so it's less of a risk to other aspects of that person's professional life than it might have been in decades past
Sorry do you make an oath to your partner or not? Cheating on someone after explicitly promising to be a faithful partner is as low as it gets and burns trust forever.
Good point. Most people do make oaths to our partners. "Till death do we part."
But then we culturally decided divorce doesn't count. "Till death do we part" became "Till death or major or minor inconvenience or whim do we part." Then culturally we decided that marrying an oath-breaker is just Tuesday.
Or we just culturally decided that a centuries-old tradition didn’t mean we had to forever put up with something we only later found out we’re unhappy with. Marriage should not be a life sentence nor an unbreakable commitment.
Funny things, the rules we make up to justify nonsensical behaviour.
OP only mentioned him cheating on his wife, so my comment was related to that: his infidelity to his wife
The entire scandal is a scandal to be sure. That he cheated on his wife with an intelligence operative and whatever happened beyond that is a problem and needs to be investigated and dealt with
But this thread was about him cheating on his wife full stop. He could have cheated with anyone else and it would not have been a problem. The cheating wasn't the problem, it was who he cheated with and what happened downstream
Heh, good example, because that was the primary justification for trying to remove him from office over that, and turns out not to be such a good reason.
The argument around the Clinton impeachment was that he had lied under oath. Yes, the circumstances of his relationship with Lewinsky were shocking and got all the press but the charges brought against him in the House was that he had lied in previous sworn testimony in a deposition where he said he hadn't cheated on his wife by having sex with anyone else
> Bill Clinton didn't auction off the nuclear launch codes to prevent the Lewinsky scandal from becoming public.
I mean... he did lie through his teeth to make it seem better, so not exactly trustworthy no. That he didn't sell the nuclear codes doesn't mean people trusted him after that.
The people who didn't trust him after that didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him. On the whole people didn't care about what he did with his dick and he ended his presidency just fine
Maybe that's many people, but I can think of at least myself who liked him before that and didn't trust him after, so I think there's more to it than you suggest. It also followed his wife around in her political life, and she was asked about it constantly, or is she in the category of "didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him"? To this day his affair and the lies thereafter are the top of what's talked about for his whole 8 years in office.
I suspect most folks like myself are simply not a fan of cancel culture. If he leaked secrets I would agree, he needs to leave. Cheating on his wife? It is not great at all. It is worthy of evaluating that person as a business partner but canceling them? No way. Humans have been cheating on each other since the beginning of recorded history.
I don’t know why so many people jump so easily to canceling someone.
Moral absolutism has shown itself to be largely incorrect.
I’m not religious at all, but one of our oldest texts in modern circulation says “let he without sin cast the first stone”- we’re all guilty of something after all, and while some poeple have no moral compass at all, some people rationalise ”a little” indecency or indiscretion.
I’m not defending him, but it doesn’t tell me he is not trustworthy in totality, its just distasteful and I don’t like it and I think this behaviour is worth some social punishment.
It's the least important part of it. Huang's conduct, and even the romantic affar, are not important.
The corruption in terms of PRC GPU import policy and Huang's relationship with the US administration are important.
This is not a prurient sexual scandal, it's a major corruption and infiltration scandal in one of the most important companies in the world. Huang personal travelled with the US President and advised him on regional strategy, and gave him tens of millions of millions of dollars in gifts.
Huang can handle it correctly and be as contrite as he wants but it won't take away the geopolitical impact created by the operation.
I’m so tired of the rote cynicism. If he doesn’t apologize, it proves a sociopath billionaire who cares for nobody. If he apologizes, it proves he’s a sociopath billionaire who cares for nobody. I’m reminded of Life of Brian.
We can’t know what he really thinks, but as apologies go, this is a good one. And it’s not healthy to see every piece of evidences as further proof of one’s own unshakable beliefs.
The PR agency writes what one of the world's most powerful CEOs tells them to write. They can strongly advise sounding sincere, but it's not their decision. I would venture that the reason so many corporate and celebrity apologies sound fake is simply because the client doesn't want to do a real one.
Sounding sincere doesn't mean they actually are, but it does mean they didn't let their ego get in the way of it, which is more than can be said about many who would be caught in a position like this, rich or not.
Not being facetious, but it is very possible that the person/people in the PR team who wrote it were familiar with similar situations or had a higher emotional intelligence.
So they are top-flight PR and crisis management companies that are terrible at emotional intelligence, and Huang just got lucky that rather than hiring one of the apparently-universally-incompetent companies, Nvidia hired the one good one, which nobody elsewhere thought to hire before?
And that’s a simpler answer than Huang actually wanting a more direct apology?
> Are you suggesting that so many other companies’ PR teams are simply incompetent
No.
I'm suggesting that a writers emotional intelligence and personal experience can show up in their writing. Especially, when the party they're writing for is receptive of the style/direction.
Including at your own job? Or does it apply only to other people?
I also see this behavior quite a lot in people that claim that meritocracy doesn’t exist in our society. But they never go far enough to end point where they admit they don’t deserve their own job.
I think it is proper to have compassion. It is ok to be sad for him as well as his family. That doesn't mean you absolve him of consequence.
If he was goofing around trying to juggle a bowling ball and it slipped and smashed the coffee table next to him, I could feel sorry for him. I'd still expect him to pay for the damage.
Doing stupid things with a bowling ball and cheating on your wife and family are not the same level error. I can still feel sorry for him in his mistake. And I can still expect him to pay for the damage. In this case, it isn't paying for a new coffee table. And it isn't just writing a public letter.
The levels of trust he has violated are deep. Not just for his wife and family. He has been smoozing the President of the U.S. to influence U.S. foreign policy towards China. Do we trust this was for the best interest of the U.S.? The world? So that his company could make more money? Or for his personal gratification?
I believe in second chances. I think he can work to rebuild trust. But rebuilding trust doesn't mean you start over with 100% trust. Put him back in the mail room and trust him with small things. Then trust him with increasingly important things as he earns that trust back. Maybe someday he might earn back enough trust to regain his current position. Ok, maybe don't restart him in the mail room. But don't restart him where he is.
--
All of the above is a mostly useless opinion. I am not on the board. I am not in any position to dictate anything about the situation. It is mostly none of my business. I just offer it as some food for thought for anyone trying to form their own philosophy. Consider compassion with consequences.
Uh, Do you feel sad for his family or sad for him, because I think he's a real POS. We men should lead by example. He's a leader, but behaves like a weak coward.
I've heard Bill Gates had two affairs. It's hard for me to be sympathetic for his actions. Jensen being targeted by a spy agency and fell for it could be a little more nuanced than that. I want to learn about what exactly happened. I'm not denying his failure in any case.
Bill Gates is a good example. If you’ve heard him talk about it it’s pretty clear he still loves his ex wife and would get back with her if he could. People make mistakes. People with that much money and power are dropped into situations most of us can’t imagine.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you.
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
That’s an odd take. The CCP was literally doing their job, just like US and other spy agencies also engage in espionage. Whether or not they “should” be doing so is a geopolitical debate that it’s easy to moralize about but difficult to change.
Huang had many responsibilities that he failed to live up to. Sure, he’s a victim of sorts, but he also failed everyone.
The GP isn't saying Jensen took the wrong action, he's saying that this is a carefully crafted message from a top PR firm, and that the posters saying how its "genuine and heartfelt, I can see he really cares" are just eating it up. Those lines will become advertising for the agency as they land the next big client, like book reviews, but for the "publicly vulnerable executive" PR package.
Its not that Jensen is wrong, its a good play, the GP is just saying how sad it is to watch people eating this up like they think Jensen cracked open his laptop and drafted a note, pushed it up to the public web site, then forwarded it to axios or something.
There were lots of people involved in a carefully crafted rollout, the wording of which has nothing to do with how Jensen or his family are handling this. We will never know how he personally feels or how any of this really played out behind closed doors. For all we know he and his wife are talking divorce and shouting it out and this piece is just crafted damage control.
I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I think both can be true at the same time: Jensen regretting genuinely what happened and taking responsibility, while the PR department also steered and approved the message.
GP's take seems to assume bad faith, regardless of the message. Mu question was aimed at finding out what GP would actually consider a "genuine" response in this situation.
> GP's take seems to assume bad faith, regardless of the message. Mu question was aimed at finding out what GP would actually consider a "genuine" response in this situation.
We have no way of knowing what he feels genuinely regardless of the words which doubtlessly were crafted by experts and approved by him. We do know his actions that caused this though. And the only real and verifiable thing will be future actions. Rest is fluff.
The problem is precisely that there is no reliable way to discern "genuine" from "competently synthesised".
Many social situations have this signalling problem -- in fact I would say it's the rule, and the exception is the case where it's rational to believe another person's signals because it's known to be costly to generate them.
<For all we know he and his wife are talking divorce and shouting it out and this piece is just crafted damage>
...just like Bill Gates and Bezos, both were found to be "foolin around" behind the backs of their spouses. A pic of a young Russian babe appears on the net with Gates. Money = power and corrupts most of us. But to Huang's credit, it likely was not he that "chased down" this Chinese spy. The Spy was the one coaxing him into an affair.
It's sort of like 1st degree versus 2nd degree. If you kill a person in cold blooded murder it is 1st degree, but if you have a good reason, or, are "lured" into the act, it's 2nd degree. I would argue for 2nd degree in this case.
What do you genuinely believe that a person looses if they choose empathy? And what does a person win if they choose the opposite?
Let's say there was a false apology. And a person here on HN fell for it. What exactly have they lost by falling for it? Let's say a person here on HN didn't fall for it. What exactly did they win?
People get to caught up in being right and "not being a sucker" that they forget if it's worth their time and worry. It seems people are most competitive when stakes are the lowest and there's nothing to gain.
His PR firm definitely does, this piece gives no indication of how Jensen is actually feeling or his EQ. I assure you he didn't draft this and push to a public website. There are literal investigations of national security implications, as well as billions on the line over this. This is the most strategic and controlled rollout of a story you will ever read. The wording is designed perfectly to minimize impact to stock:
1. take responsibility (by saying you take responsibility, hopefully there is no actual fallout from this).
2. Admit wrong doing (people hate someone who tries to cover up)
3. Talk about how much you love your family and how wonderful they are and you would never want to hurt them (relatable).
4. Write in a tone of sincere regret to avoid any public backlash (stock price depends on this).
Haha, wow, yeah I'm sure the reason for all this was that Jensen couldn't find a therapist. Aside from assuming he cheated for mental health reasons (not sure where you get that, maybe he just wanted some strange), the man could literally buy an entire therapy practice for his private use or just put one on $250k retainer to be available at all times. I would be surprised if they didn't have coaches / mental health professionals that attend to him all the time anyway.
Sometimes people cheat, especially when they have lots of offers, money, free time, travel, and time away from family. It feels good, and gives a sweet rush of dopamine, and is part of men's biological wiring and selected for over the eons.
It only feels good if the act of cheating is what get you off, which, then again, is another problem entirely.
And please, no, cheating is not part of “men’s biological wiring”. Not one is “wired to cheat”. It’s a choice. A conscious choice. We have enough will power to stop ourselves at any moment regardless of whatever bullshit “wiring” theory you might have. It was his choice and he chose poorly. Simple as that.
It always astounds me how billionaires (of all people) can be the stupidest people on Earth while also being the most powerful people on Earth.
Yes, crazy how ignoring the evidence for all of human history to support your theory means that otherwise the most rational, educated, successful people in the world are complete buffoons.
On the other hand if we are partially controlled by biological drives, it explains these patterns we repeatedly observe, despite the consequences. I posit Jensen is not among "the stupidest people on earth" but that the skills that allow him to head a trillion dollar company are separate from the have-an-affair part of his biology. Of course, you could be right, maybe Bezos, Gates, Juang, Clinton, and others are just really stupid.
See the TV series The Americans for a fictional depiction.
You know product ABC has ongoing yield problems from an outside source. Wait for moment when Person Z looks burnt out/stressed/etc and walk through emotional available "you can talk to me about anything" routine.
Don't pry about specific topic but wait until Person Z volunteers some vague conflict at work you know is the yield issue and try to gently redirect conversation using your insider knowledge Person Z isn't aware of to specific area you're interested in.
I'm being a bit weirded out to see, for this story (not just this thread), how the top comments are positive takes on Jensen.
He's a victim, he apologizes well, he's working with the board on this...
Is HN just this millionare-friendly? astroturfed?
Not that I expect a metaphorical lynching, but it's certainly a take when the news is "one of the most important roles in the US is potentially losing national secrets by absurd oversight".
No, you should be negative about him because he's exposing an industry to sexual blackmail and espionage in a position way too high to not know better.
I'm implying him being rich is making people blind to this fact.
He had an affair(into which he was lured by someone professional) and accepted his fault and responsibility. He did not poison people for profit and tried to hide it, so personally I see this more as a internal family issue for him and not so much the worlds buisness.
If he had stored an important password on a postit on his laptop, would you call that a private matter?
I'm personally not interested in the morals of cheating, but claiming this is a private issue is crazy, as is removing his agency and implying it was something done to him. You don't fall in a random's bed by stumbling.
> If he had stored an important password on a postit on his laptop, would you call that a private matter?
Whoa, whoa, who, whoa, whoa! You know the rules: no leaking next week’s headlines in advance. What kind of outfit do you think we’re running here?
I do agree though: regardless of whether the woman is a Chinese agent or not, and regardless of whether he knew or suspected (I doubt he did), this affair represents a serious lapse in judgement that has implications far beyond his personal life.
If you can be compromised personally, you can certainly be compromised professionally.
I suspect it won’t happen, because it would likely tank the stock, but really he should be thinking about resigning.
While I agree with the top level in this thread that it _is_ refreshing to see someone like Jensen taking responsibility for once, I disagree that we should absolve him of all wrong doings. This is also not just a personal matter. If this person was indeed a Chinese spy (I believe this is still not confirmed), then that can have big impact on NVDA. Naturally, it may also not have any impact, but regardless, if it is the former, it certainly is not an internal family issue.
"I disagree that we should absolve him of all wrong doings"
I did not. If there was more to it, leaked confidentials, blackmailed deals etc. then yes, he will be responsible. There is an investigation. But what is known, so far he "just" cheated on his wife. And this is what they have to deal with.
Whether it happened or not I don't think is relevant, the lack of judgment in opening himself to blackmail, etc., was a lapse in judgment that at least IMHO disqualifies him from leading one of the most valuable and strategically important companies on the planet.
For what it's worth, I believe the military would agree, that would lead to a pretty quick loss of security clearances.
The dude isn't running a McDonalds franchise, after all. Everyone is saying he "took responsibility". No, he admitted it after it was already public (which is no great act of courage), now the board needs to actually make him accountable. And unemployed.
I see a lot of comments like this, but I’m not sure people thinks he should’ve done. He cheated on his wife, that’s a bad thing. But let’s say he was single and got into bed with a spy, the situation wouldn’t be any better for I’m. So, what’s the actual criticism?
- he should’ve been more careful? How?
- he should never get into a romantic relationship because they could be a spy?
I think this is the wrong take. Being rich doesn’t suddenly reduce people’s humanity.
Assuming the spy angle to be true, He IS a victim as a target of a concentrated effort by a nation state to compromise him.
If all it took to compromise US national security was for a nation state to exploit the oldest backdoor in the human/male psyche, then I’d say there’s something wrong with the national security defense strategy.
Don’t blame the single point of failure, blame the design, maybe the designers.
It should never have been possible.
Having said that, Russia/China wouldn’t use this strategy unless it worked against most powerful men and their psyche.
Based on HN, a programmer who used company laptop for interview is total irresponsible unprofessional looser, no one should hire him. Whoever says something else is heavily downvoted.
CEO who gets honey-trapped by stripper agent ... is well meaning smartest person ever.
I don't know about HN being millionaire-friendly (it probably is), but right now it looks like prop 40 (one-off tax of 5% on billionaires) in California is about to fail. Make of that what you will.
Because Huang's decision to invest heavily in CUDA and GPGPU for years and support it across their entire consumer and enterprise product stack, before even crypto, was impressively prescient.
Say what you want about the Altmans who lucked into a rising tide, but Nvidia has been doing hard engineering, consistently delivered, strategically brilliantly for a couple decades now.
Plus, the primary risk here isn't that secrets were exposed but rather that Huang attempts to hide the thing and makes himself vulnerable to blackmail. The facts leaking (three letter agency off the record?) nuked that possibility.
It is rewriting history to think that this was prescience.
They lucked into being the available useful product when the transformer dropped. This was not some megabrain multi year preparation they had been doing.
Jensen did attempt to hide the affair. That's why it was an affair. Even now he does not mention the fact that he sold billions of dollars of chips to his girlfriend's shell company, violating export controls and creating a NatSec risk.
It's stockholder psychosis. Similar to AI psychosis. It's easy to convince the poor to defend you when you give them the illusion that their fortunes are riding with yours.
He is a billionaire and people here fall over themselves idolizing figures like him. You get the sense reading HN comments that they respect founders they don't know more than their own spouse or kids.
Responsibility is only mentioned in the context of who to contact regarding this. It’s basically do not bother my wife I cheated on, she only found out about it from the news like all of you.
Responsibility implies consequences and as far as I can tell there are none so far, other than minor embarrassment.
>the first time in a long time that I see an apology letter written from a business person in the name of the company that actually admits wrongdoing and has accountability
Yeah, but how often is a "business person" (a) clearly personally, entirely responsible for a mistake like this and (b) is a significant enough "business person" for such a public letter to even matter?
To put it another way, Huang's apologie is how someone in his position would address a situation like this. It's not very impressive to hear a CEO make a personable apology for making such a personal mistake. Like, how else would it read?
Like, it wasn't that long ago that Bill Gates' got called out for similar things and made a similar apology (https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-apologizes-to-founda...). Of course, Bill Gates isn't at the center of the world's entire economy while getting caught sleeping with a Chinese spy, so there wasn't as much scrutiny on him.
Look, Jensen got whatever he wanted, China got the GPUs it wanted - China also turned Jensen into a staunch advocate for selling GPUs to China - everything's good - everyone wins.
"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang challenged US export controls on advanced semiconductors, arguing that continued technology collaboration and access to the Chinese market are ultimately in America’s best interest. Speaking to reporters in South Korea this week, Huang described China as a “singular, vital, important, dynamic market, and nobody can replace that.” He asserted he would continue campaigning for full access to this market, stating he is "optimistic" that China will remain a key consumer of US chips."
Personally I think if she's a spy he is a victim. Who knows what his relationship with his wife is. It's none of the public's business.
The only newsworthy part of this is possibility he could've been blackmailed in the past about it and I assume this is what the investigation will be about.
He may be a victim, but note that he had to choose to participate.
To play devil's advocate here.. If she's a spy trained in psychological manipulation and seduction we'd be right to call him a victim instead of a participant since he'd be a target of those techniques applied to him. Maybe?
I would personally agree that it is possible he is a victim of advanced psy-op technology. I don't personally believe we have nearly as much 'choice' or 'free will' as NA culture of the past 40+ years has led most people to believe.
At a deeper level we do get to choose our overall environment and what kinds of things we are exposed to frequently, the recurring patterns of life can be consciously managed and shaped. But in the moment, we are more like an LLM doing a forward pass on next token. If a specific weight relating to refusal has been abliterated, it's not realistic to expect the next token to somehow still come out to refusal.
We can control our training better than we can control our inference.
We have ego-ideals and specific mental makeup that can be exploited if identified.
That can help explain what led to him deciding to cheat, but no it doesn't make him a victim. People have to be responsible for their actions rather than being labeled a victim of their own choices.
He's married... he made an oath, signed a social contract to another person, his wife, that he made the conscious choice to break.
Its clear his wealth generated a level of narcissism here that rose to a level that permitted him to invalidate the feelings of his wife, who, again, he made a vow to.
It does not matter if some hot chinese spy tried to get into his pants. He still let it happen. He his actions spoke for him: "I know i have a wife, but this chinese spy is so hot. I dont care about my wife anymore, but im going to keep this a secret from her because I know its wrong". For a loooooong time.
I'm personally so tired of excusing infidelity. He is a big boy. He can make big boy decisions.
What if she wasn't a trained spy but someone naturally gifted in psychological manipulation and seduction? No longer victim but participant? Even though the effect he faced was the same?
There are other ways to compromise a target that do not involve infidelity. These “techniques” just facilitate the process for an at least somewhat willing and/or interested target.
So, no, he’s not a victim, his existing personal potential for infidelity was exploited. It worked because he would have done the same thing if the right non-spy were to arrive on the scene. The spy takes advantage of that.
We just don’t know the story enough to judge. What if he was given benzos and was immediately blackmailed for example? This is a nation-state organized affair after all, not just a poorly judged night at the bar.
I have friends who as an adult one of the parents had an affair and and it was pretty tough for them, and the parent child relationship has never been the same again.
I don't know why you seem to be so against considering Jensen's children. Some people really value the commitments of marriage and see adultery as something very serious and damaging.
I don't consider his children because they are nepo-babies that were hired into Nvidia, make tens of millions of $$$, and stand to inherit billions. They will be fine.
There are so many other children in the world that deserve consideration before his (grown adult, very rich) children.
Jensen should be apologizing to Americans for compromising NatSec.
There's a tacit expectation that you don't use the privilege of doing business with/within a country to put the people you're doing business with at risk.
I disagree. Even as an adult I would be distraught if one of my parents decided to cheat on the other. Your children being adults doesn't mean you no longer have a responsibility towards them.
Then its time to grow up, people change, interests change, lifelong love and happy life together is and always was a fairytale. Once you are 20 and somewhat independent its time to relax your responsibility claims on your parents. They already spent a great deal of their so very limited life time on you, at least be grateful for that.
Of course people change, but there's a way to go about it that doesn't involve going behind your partners back and making national news coverage in the process. The fact you don't see that difference is bizarre.
The national new part is only because he is a CEO of the gigantic and strategic company, I was addressing the idea that parents are responsible to adult children in general.
>Then its time to grow up, people change, interests change, lifelong love and happy life together is and always was a fairytale.
If this is your attitude then you should just never get married in the first place. At the very least you owe it to a partner that expects a real commitment.
So, they are not allowed to be upset if daddy decided to cheat on their mommy after long marriage with some chinese honeypot? I hope you are not planning on start your own family any time soon
I believe parent post's point was that the children are allowed to be upset, but it's a bit rich for the internet to be clutching its pearls on behalf of them if they're adults.
"Think of the children" is a rhetorical appeal to pathos.
There's plenty to talk about here that doesn't require assuming how an adult is going to feel about another adult's behavior.
I think many of his defenders are very worried about the financial implications and are defending him to try and steer the conversation in a way that will minimize those implications.
> The only newsworthy part of this is possibility he could've been blackmailed in the past about it and I assume this is what the investigation will be about.
What ? If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted. Sorry, that's news worthy.
> If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted.
Not sure, if I follow. Are you saying that he has confidential papers just lying around his house? Or a computer (or other device) with confidential data without a strong password and an encrypted drive?
If any of this is true, I would say that this is actually a bigger problem, than the whole affair thing.
I'm just a humble software engineer and wouldn't let myself to handle any work related data so carelessly. Not sure, why a CEO of a huge multinational corporation would be held to lower standards.
Advanced security technology does nothing against the old attacks of "look over the person's shoulder while working in bed" and "your work is really interesting and important, please tell me more".
> "look over the person's shoulder while working in bed"
I don't know, maybe you're right. I, personally, am very uncomfortable (almost physically) if I know that someone is seeing my screen and I wouldn't be able to get any work done in such state. Maybe I'm just weird.
> "your work is really interesting and important, please tell me more"
This one is unrelated to physically being inside someone's house.
Actually non-advanced security technology can prevent that by locking the system / user entirely if they're using their work laptop or accessing company data like... emails while not in a secure location, e.g. the office.
Corporate security is a strong reason for leaving your work at work.
> Corporate security is a strong reason for leaving your work at work
Never met a tech executive who left work at work. Also never met an IT security team who had the juice to tell the CEO what he could and couldn't do on his corporate phone...
> Personally I think if she's a spy he is a victim. Who knows what his relationship with his wife is. It's none of the public's business.
This is an interesting take. I'm not sure I agree with it. I understand the principal: that she might have been being dishonest towards him, so he's a victim of lies.
Anyone who's worked in and around any high value, high risk or regulated areas has done the training courses on these sorts of risks though: specifically, people will lie to you to get information out of you.
Sure, on a personal level, consider him a victim if you want. On a professional level, this is him ignoring training, at great risk to the business.
There are just some things that as the head of one of the world's largest companies you can't do. If Jensen Huang doesn't realise the geo-political importance of his chips, then he shouldn't be in the job. But we know he does because he spends all his time hanging around the white house lobbying Trump to let him sell his chips to America's geopolitical rivals.
how is he a victim for choosing to cheat on his wife? Leave alone a possibility of the honeypot. Like he willingly was engaging in the relationships with that chinese women behind the back of his wife. How is he a victim now?
Your analogy would be good if Jensen was a sex addict who frequented brothels and China developed an asset at one of these brothels.
But these arent great analogies because you dont have to have sex with a spy to be a victim of a foreign intelligence operation.
The gambler goes to the casino to gamble. And Alice Huang was sent to meet Jensen Huang under normal business pretenses.
The analogy cant quite represent it but its more like the casino sent a dealer-in-disguise to the gambler on some plausible non-gambling pretenses to spy on him. So he's a victim of the casino's spy operation. Then he gambled. Except he's not a sex addict, as far as we know.
As I said, I’m not commenting on personal vices. I’m commenting on foreign intelligence operations because that’s the only question of legitimate public interest here, as opposed to prurient gossip.
The real joke is the sexism that says this is somehow uniquely a problem with men. Women do plenty of stupid things because they’re horny and/or lonely. That whole ‘little head’ thing seems like a bit of harmless cheek until you start looking at it in the broader context of sexism and gender roles, then it gets a lot more tedious.
I think the cheating is newsworthy as well, but separate: Lori likes to donate money and she would be a great target for donations if she leaves Jensen.
There's $50B at stake, so there's a huge incentive for foundations to ruin what's left of the family.
I don't know; at some point “don't put your dick in people from the Other Side” should be a pretty well known rule if you're someone important. She didn't even hide her nationality.
And while I usually wouldn't care if he cheated on his wife, because that's between him and his family, in this case, he was also incredibly dumb. This guy could have cheated on his wife with any number of women, but he chose to do it with a Chinese spy. I think having somebody who makes incredibly dumb decisions be the CEO of the world's most important company is definitely newsworthy.
"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser, but you are talking to someone who woke up next to a Chinese spy."
He may be a victim of espionage, but he isn't a victim of adultery. He knew what he was doing, a spy didn't make him take his pants off against his will.
Or she's not a spy and both are victims of more yellow peril shenanigans. Like a Chinese national spins up SG proxy to legally buy Nvidia cards. Jenson wants to legally sell Nvidia cards to China within export control limits. He hardly needs pussy as incentive to sell more hardware. Business people running billion dollar companies (megaspeed is) talking to domestic politicians isn't a fucking espionage, just like Jensen phoning Trump isn't. Like is PRC going to lock up any western businesses men that's ever been to the white house? It's just business as usual except useful idiots will by the yellow peril narrative that a moderately attractive Chinese MILF is a spy and business friend with benefits being used undermine Jensen for following letter / not spirit of law, aka customary fiduciary duty stuff.
>Is the "yellow peril", only Chinese or does it refer to all asians?
I mean, Shou Zi Chew was grilled by Congress for his "links" to the Chinese Communist Party, and made to state that Tiananmen Square 1989 was a massacre despite being born, raised in Singapore, and served the Singapore military.
Because he isn't from China. It's racial stereotyping that everyone that looks a certain way is a threat to America. It's dangerous especially when violent attacks on Asians in the United States have skyrocketed as a result of this kind of discourse.
Change the race and ethnicity and tell me that it's okay.
I don't see how or why whether someone "cheated" their spouse would be at all relevant for anything, or to anyone other than said spouses.
Caring about this, like if that was somehow important to fixate upon, is disgustingly sick.
Have some morals
It does have shade a light on someone's moral compass and violates trust in the individual. If you break promises given to your partner of choice then you are going to break any promise period. Especially since you only apologise after you've been found out.
> I don't see how or why whether someone "cheated" their spouse would be at all relevant for anything,
I am not talking about the news. But about the people defending the cheating.
The news are not that he cheated but he cheated "... with a Chinese spy". And the post is not even about the news but an official release from Nvidia!
I do not even know anymore what is your point? Are you just asking people to stop caring about what billionaires do? Are you trying to protect the image of a billionaire for some weird reason? I do not get how do you fail to just read the news or the actual press release from Nvidia.
> Defending a man cheating his wife because you probably have
...
> defend their depraved way of life.
How about it's none of our business what happens in other people's bedrooms. For all we know his wife was fine with it or maybe she wasn't. Either way, not my business.
He'll do exa tly what his pr company will tell him.
1. Admit guilt,
2. Apologise
3. Casually mention the thing most people are concerned about.
4. George Carlin script to follow...
Exactly. Downvotes on your comment just proves your point.
OC says Huang is a victim. For real?
Owner and CEO of a TOP 3 company by market cap.
At that point he's not a private person, his actions have global consequences (his wife, kids most likely still are private persons, that's true, but I don't know about them).
He's in an incredible position of power against the majority of world leaders, but he's apparently "a victim" in an eyes of HN oligarch apologetic crowd?! Because he was allegedly seduced by Chinese spy? What in the sinophobia and oligarchophilia is this?
If Huang wouldn't be of ultra-billionaire class and the woman would truly is a spy - he would be in prison for treason in a heart beat. I can bet - nothing will happen and by next Monday this all will be forgotten, washed by best PR firms he can buy.
"To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust."
I hope he told them in person. I don't understand why this is mentioned inside the NVIDIA press release.
Incredibly sad and demoralizing to see the rationalizations and excuses people are making for this behavior in the comments here (or for the likely lack of professional consequences). But I guess these are the times in which we live.
No excuses or rationalizations here, but: Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse? Seems like a private, family matter.
Of course, the spy aspect could be relevant from a professional perspective (depending on what actions he took or what he knew), but I'm guessing you're talking about him having an affair.
When they are the CEO of multi-trillion dollar, geopolitically important companies, and when we are talking about spies of geopolitical adversaries? Yes, absolutely.
In fact, the affair was less important. Even if they were just a very close but unromantic professional relationship it would be a serious scandal.
Most posters in HN don't think "poor corporations are the victims when they are hacked". They think "the corporations should be liable because they did not invest enough in security". This is morally the same.
It's not personal when you're in a certain role. You are not just representing your company, as a CEO you are practically embodying the company. It is the ultimate position, and it's compensated accordingly. If you want a personal life, resign from the job of CEO of the world's biggest and most strategically important company.
That is a very American take. I think there are other countries (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands) where there is a much stricter separation between the professional and private persona. Nvidia is american, and so is Jensen, so i guess it is OK to judge him by this standard. Just saying that different cultures judge this behavior differently.
Yeah you say that then your country elects a serial-cheater pedophile as president; I'm not sure you are so representative of your country customs as you think.
People who speed take reckless actions endangering others, therefore we should fire anybody who gets a speeding ticket. Thoughts?
Now take the same point and apply it to every other crime, misdemeanor, and breaking of rules. Should companies really operate based on that? Or should we maybe draw a boundary around professional life and only consider the professional life?
> No excuses or rationalizations here, but: Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse? Seems like a private, family matter.
It is not so clear, if this is about his character and can he be trusted. This is evidence that someone is capable for lying and doing something that might not be in line with company ethics either. I don't think we can assume from humans that "he lies only in his private life, but can be totally trusted on business side".
Espionage aside, let's not forget that he was having an affair with a customer company's executive. If that's not a massive professional fuckup I don't know what is.
To be fair he probably spends all of his "free" time working. As the founder and CEO of it there is no personal or professional life. It's all one life.
The "big deal" here isn't the affair - that happens all the time and if he were dating an employ or something boring like that we'd probably never even hear about it.
The problem is the spying and Chinese influence - which doesn't happen all the time and is a big deal because he runs the biggest chip company in the world at a time we're trying to keep that tech away from China.
Security clearance applications have a whole section asking about extra-marital affairs, money problems, and whatnot precisely because spys use those types of things to bribe, blackmail, and pressure people. It sounds like a cheesy Cold War spy movie - but it happens in real life, as we're seeing.
I’ve seen some wild opinions on HN. One that particularly lingers in my mind was a suggestion that we use immigrant women as incubators to solve the population crisis. Shockingly not downvoted into oblivion.
HN cares about money and tech. Don’t take morality or life advice from here.
Not sure these times are at all unique. If anything I imagine equivalent billionaires from the past were even greater philanderers. Hell, I was recently reading about Benjamin Guggenheim, who died on the Titanic and is known for "I played the game straight to the end and that no woman was left on board this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward. Tell her that my last thoughts will be of her and our girls" - and he was travelling with his mistress while those final words were recorded.
Agreed, and I'm not even that moralistic about the affair. It happens. This guy is in charge one of the most influential and important companies in the world. He owes the entire world a higher standard of conduct. Not for moral reasons, but for security, integrity, and consistency. If he's allowing himself to be influenced by China, the ramifications for Nvidia are staggering. If he wants some sex, use a hooker, or at least have an affair with NOT A SPY. Having an affair with a spy is unbelievable levels of incompetence, and calls into question his competence as a leader.
We're not going to do the complexity justice with our 2 comments, but..
My opinion is that - particularly with the wisdom of hindsight - it is right to say this is a serious lapse in judgement of Jensen. Especially given the potential security/strategic implications.
However to then make the jump to this saying something about his qualities of leadership is a big leap. His leadership record is exceptional: decades of foresight, strategic risk-taking, and execution. It seems wrong to allow one episode to outweigh three decades of evidence.
That's fair too. Perhaps on balance a little Chinese influence isn't worse than what he has accomplished. It just feels like one of those red lines for me. If he's willing to canoodle with spies from adversarial nations, what else is he doing exactly? And is he doing it on purpose or by accident?
I don't think that framing helps him. He's one of the most targeted people in the world for espionage. If the claim is he didn't know, to not check the background of a prominent Chinese national with which he was having an affair is gross incompetence.
Well, I'm also disappointed to see the holier-than-thou bias in such full display here too. If you're unfamiliar:
> It’s the well-documented bias in which people systematically overestimate how morally they would behave compared with others—especially in high-pressure or ambiguous situations—while underestimating the situational forces that actually shape behavior.
I'm sure we're all paragons of moral virtue here but the reality is that unless you've been personally targeted by a nation state and successfully resisted, then you're really just fantasizing. Yeah bro, I'm sure you would have effortlessly resisted the Chinese sex trap, right after you benched 1000, got that hole in one and beat Hamilton at qualifying. You're just that good.
For reference, one of the first things I was taught as a software engineer working in a highly secure industry long ago was that we should take psychological manipulation/seduction very seriously to avoid damaging the company and leaking national secrets. If I did something like this I would've lost my job at minimum and likely faced severe legal action.
Regardless of how much you think we can or cannot resist actions from a foreign nation state, the ultimate fact of the matter is that he failed and thus is no longer suited for his position. If I would face worse consequences for such an action, then I damn well expect someone who's paid far above my pay grade to represent a company to face some consequences as well.
Why do people virtuously out their own personal weaknesses on here with such glee? Then again, this is Hacker News, wouldn't expect many men on here to get much attention from the opposite sex. You're probably right.
Nor did I imply there was. I was talking of consequences when they came to light (doubly so when they materially impact one’s company and national security).
Read Anna Karenina sometime. Tolstoy shows both the aspect of a society in which rich men having affairs was considered the norm, and the destructive effect it has on people. (And also the double standard by which women were judged much more harshly than men for having affairs). And he also, by comparing the two main relationships in the book (Vronsky's affair with Anna, and Levin's marriage to Kitty), said "It doesn't have to be this way, you can have healthy relationships if you just reject society's advice to have affairs and instead stay faithful to your wife".
I didn't like the book when I first read it (mostly because I seriously dislike Anna, and the book naturally spends a lot of time being told from her POV), but in retrospect, it's brilliant. Tolstoy has, without a single bit of moralizing, presented one of the best arguments I've seen in literature for being faithful to one's spouse and not engaging in affairs.
P.S. I should add that I don't think Tolstoy was inventing the "rich men having affairs was considered normal" aspect for the purpose of the book. I think that was what Russian society was really like at the time, and he took that aspect of society and wrote a book criticizing it, highlighting the negative effects that that attitude would have on people.
I think that "rich men having affairs" has been considered normal for most of human history. Of course, in China there were official (and unofficial) concubines, and many cultures have accepted and endorsed polygamy.
I think it's more accurate to raise an eyebrow at the idea of powerful people not habitually having affairs (historically, most of which have been men in modern times).
Because power is an ability to do what one wants, and a lot of people want sex.
How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia? As much as he seems to have done a good job, he appears less integral than with some companies like Bezos/Amazon or Zuckerberg/Meta (whether these are/were or not is besides the point, they are seen as such).
I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.
As an Nvidian, I strongly disagree. I'm sure somehow the company would be fine in the long run without him, but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success. Not to minca words, I think he is a far more qualified and intelligent CEO than pretty much anyone in big tech. There's a reason Nvidia doesn't have to lay people off ever.
> until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement
What changed today?
Every major leader and CEO has obvious blind spots. They're geniuses at X but idiots at Y.
Look at all the great CEOs with ridiculous political views. It's fine: they do have vastly superior judgement, just not in areas where it doesn't directly affect their business.
For the NVDA CEO, it happens to be a woman. That puts him in probably the 80-90% of great leaders on whom that works.
Even ignoring the alleged spitting, shagging someone who works in a position of authority at a customer company if obviously a massive conflict of interest.
I don't think the second half what you're saying is true. He has had a good hand, yes, but I think what we're seeing is "simply" the effect of a successful company being run by one of its founders. There is always a kind of reversion to mean once a successful company moves away from founder control, and that hasn't happened for Nvidia.
> ...but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success.
Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?
While there's no doubt that this is not the majority of the company's revenue, it's also not an insignificant amount.
If you had to pin Nvidia's success on one thing, the honest answer would be "right technology, right time." Without AI...And the questions about how sustainable that market is are now being asked by the market.
They've been investing in CUDA and machine learning for a long time before the current wave of LLMs. It's absurd to say "right technology, right time" when they were the ones who helped develop it.
The technology was built for 3D graphics and video game processing. The company was very smart to recognize the opportunity that AI presented when AI researchers realized that gaming GPUs could vastly outperform CPUs for their workloads, but this was a "happy accident", not something Nvidia actually predicted, planned for or initially pushed.
Except it has been. There are people in multiple countries, including the US, Singapore and Taiwan, facing lengthy prison sentences for this. In the US in particular, violating export controls is a game you only play if you're looking for years of free federal accommodation.
He denied, implausibly, all knowledge about Supermicro. I don't think that is going to work this time.
The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. Again, this is something that Nvidia and Jensen has been investigated on repeatedly. If he knew that Megaspeed was a front for China, quite hard to deny given that Alice Huang seems to have brought Chinese execs to every meeting with Jensen then it is very bad. And yes, the stuff that Jensen would have said would have been very useful because, I assume, the inference is that he would have been helping them evade sanctions.
The very best case from here is that the board fires him.
Direct interaction, not in-person. And many more interaction with high level Russian and Chinese state actors. Huge investment from Chinese state banks and critical contracts for data collection.
> The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls.
This would have generated extra profit for Nvidia. So I doubt they'd care unless the US government chose to take legal action against Nvidia. And that's unlikely to happen under the current US administration.
A spy like this isn't looking for chip schematics, they're looking for strategy. Strategy that comes from the CEO. Ultimately the main thing a CEO brings is judgement, and this was extremely poor judgement.
Strategy changes all the time. It will change overnight with the election results. What matters most is the information underlying that strategy, like, if ASML was coming out with some very specific new thing that would tilt the industry - that would be key.
I don't care that he had an affair (none of my business; who knows the terms of his relationship with his wife; Americans / humans are far too moralizing in controlling sex) and, even if it was wrong in the context of his marriage, I don't think someone should be fired for that.
If he knew / suspected she was a spy, yes, absolutely. If she was given access to confidential information, yes, absolutely.
If he thought it was a romantic relationship, fine, that doesn't affect me / NVDA / America.
Obviously he should stop now that he knows! But if he didn't at the time, you know, I think I can still trust him to make computer chips.
I agree. Judgement on love affairs and judgement on chip strategy are completely unrelated categories of judgement.
"Bad judgement" is a tool used in political rhetoric used to blame someone when there's nothing of any substance to blame them for.
However, all of this changes if it turns out that he gave his lover's company any kind of preferential treatment or that she was involved in China related lobbying.
This is what the investigation will focus on in my opinion. If they find anything at all then he will have to resign.
Not knowing someone is a spy is extremely poor judgement? Telling his mistress all kinds of corporate secrets would be "extremely poor judgement" but at this point I see no evidence that this happened?
> There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
I think the practical implications matter a lot less than the PR and legal ones.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, the board may have to act.
Similarly, if the right governments start asking hard questions, the board may have to act.
This is likely going to be a slow-rolling shit show for a while. At the very least, it’s legitimate grounds for one or more congressional investigations, which may start here but could go anywhere.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, it is likely ppl are afraid he'll be replaced. If the board "act" by replacing him, the price is likely to dive more, not recover
I've interned at NVIDIA and my impression was, he is extremely vital to its past and ongoing success. I don't know about him personally and his character, but he knew how to foster a motivating work culture with a sense of excitement and purpose. Maybe Nvidia is now at a place where he could be replaced, but I don't think Nvidia would be where it is now without him.
My amateur opinion is not very? They made the best graphics cards had a share price of $10 and then graphics cards started selling extremely well because of the crypto currency craze and now AI.
I think these trends happened to them despite Huang.
What percent of nvidias success was due to vision, vs luck?
I made a boat load of money off of the Tesla IPO(and then holding for 12 years) but I only invested because I thought they wouldn't be a successful car company but would produce a bunch of patents that would be valuable when licensed to the big auto makers.
Obviously I got that wrong, but my investment still worked out - and I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
Although I'm still more of a "Voodoo person" myself, the "Riva128 guy" has shown bold vision and relentlessly fierce execution on top of it - consistently - since the early 90s..
The dude is 63, there has to be some kind of succession planning? Or is it just expected the company is one helicopter accident away from becoming completely doomed?
Navigating this political/diplomatic climate is key to Nvidia's success, and he appears to be driving that? In normal times maybe it would be different.
At the current state, maybe not much. He was integral to the journey, of course.
The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.
He's a vulnerable founder just like Steve Jobs was and he's also the closest to Jobs in terms of brilliance and impact in the current playing field.
He's been consistently showing up and proving himself over decades to be core to Nvidia's success - core as in leadership. I would look to sell my Nvidia shares without knowing him being at the helm.
What's this puritanical streak? Men in power have been having affairs from time immemorial. It's not great but it's also not original. The guy works for a corporation, not a church. Yawn.
I have seen and read this a lot over the years and I am starting to wonder may be it isn't Pat Gelsinger that called Nvidia lucky but people actually felt it that way naturally.
For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.
Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.
And for another note about comments elsewhere in the thread that Open AI is what brought up the current AI craze. Nvidia was already selling to OpenAI via introduction of Elon Musk in 2016.
I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.
I'm skeptical that he gets fired for this. The "Spy I loved" James bond style twist combined with his iconic leather jacket might actually come off as badass.
Not really. The key difference IMHO is not the CEO, it is that ATI/AMD always was the smaller underdog, while the established players Intel/NVIDIA get thrown money at them due to the "no one got fired for buying IBM" effect.
Not to sound too negative but IMO NVidia has largely been "right place, right time" and I don't think Huang has had much to do with it. NVidia made computer graphics cards and CUDA long ago; they just happened to be in the right place, twice, in quick succession: first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting. It's like they set up a general store that sells pickaxes and drills, then someone found gold in the mountain right next to them, and then the goldmine ran out but someone found oil right under them.
The one big thing I will given Huang credit for is not going all-in on blockchain and recognizing it as a bubble. NVidia never really pivoted from their core business/customers to support crypto miners, unlike what they're doing with AI.
There were a lot of computer graphics cards manufacturers back in the 90's. Nvidia survived amongst the whole pack of them. 3dfx, Matrox, S3, ATI, Cirrus. How much of that is soley due to Jenson vs outside factors outside of his control, only he really knows, but I think her deserves a bit more credit than right place right time. CUDA was a very expensive investment with zero guarantee of payoff. The market could have gone an entirely different way and Nvidia would have failed.
That's fair. NVidia's execution has been rock solid for as long as they've been around and Huang deserves credit for that. But I would say most of the reason they've 100x'd since 2017 has been external forces.
Yes the demand of comapnies for AI compute which Nvidia delivered. These are still the external forces which let it grow at 100% YoY despite >$200b in revenue.
Maybe the verb tense was unclear. NVidia currently boosts AI, for obvious reasons. But OpenAI was the company who did all of the legwork to make AI into an industry, with some minor support from NVidia. NVidia wouldn't have 10x'd since 2022 without OpenAI.
AI has been a (minor but existing) industry before OpenAI. E.g. Deepmind exists since 2010, 6 years before OpenAIs founding. Sure, OpenAI has contributed to it, in great deals, but Nvidia has always been there during the growth of AI. In 2012, AlexNet has been trained on GTX 580 GPUs, in 2016 AlphaGo used Nvidia GPUs, etc.
It's not that Musk is not smart, he's just erratic, and growing increasingly so. He is the Howard Hughes of our day. They will find his body in an expensive hotel room at some point, surrounded by bottles of his own urine.
I challenge anyone who says “Elon not so smart” to name a topic in his wheelhouse that you think you can discuss in more detail than him. Because I’m certain he’d run circles around all but experts, in rocketry, auto tech, power cells, and more.
I mean: dude is smart. Everyone just wants to deny him that because he’s now an anti-immigrationist and they can’t stand the thought of him being both awful and smarter than them.
He'd better. It would be a pretty severe embarrassment for a layman to know more than you about your own industry.
The trap he and many other smart idiots fall into is believing that having a high degree of expertise in one area qualifies you to speak authoritatively in unrelated areas. These days maybe you could call it Claude-smart: pairing situational brilliance with unwarranted confidence at other times. The really properly smart people I've met are good at tempering their statements with their degree of certainly based on their own qualifications.
Sure, I agree. My beef here is with people who insist he’s a dummy when it comes even to rocketry, etc. That he only just hired people, but otherwise is not himself any sort of expert. Just lucky (over and over and over, apparently).
Yeah, but in this case they also built the pickaxes and drills and did it better than any other pickaxe and drill builder. In your analogy, they are commodities and a shop like that can be set up by anyone. But in this case, that doesn't apply. And if you look at their sales composition, they never pivoted away from gaming, but data centers clearly became ludicrously more attractive in the AI era. But they were always very good at computing triangles, perhaps the best in the world. They were lucky that market forces made that computation very valuable but they were not lucky in their ability to build it.
I do agree! They execute extremely well and Huang deserves praise for that. I just don't see him as a visionary leader shaping the industry in the same way that e.g. Jobs was. In an alternate world where the NSA doesn't create bitcoin and OpenAI is never founded, NVidia would be a stable, reliable producer of consumer electronic parts.
how can you be sure though we wont find a good use of computing triangles in that alternative universe? that technology would always have abstract value, how it is impmemented will depend on market forces but you have to admit, they know how to go with the flow, maybe to an extent where it seems like they just keep getting lucky
These aren't all entirely drop-in replacements, there are some trade-offs involved, but there are many companies with alternatives that could take Nvidia's market if they stall.
It boggles my mind that you think Singapore and China are the same thing. Because why? Lots of ethnically Chinese people? Is Taiwan and China the same thing too then?
While I understand what you're saying, it's pretty well known that Singapore is a major gateway for Chinese espionage and theft of intellectual property and company secrets.
by the way - are we allowed to debate whether the alleged honeypot was in fact herself an intelligence agent of one sort or another, or was it just the (somewhat justified) background level of ‘she / her company is a Chinese national / has significant Chinese ownership whether private or public, and therefore subject to China’s version of our US national security letters.
I just was seeing very little advance-neutralizing of 1950s Red Scare talk in these comments.
Spooks from CIA must be aware of this for a long time. The only question now is why this information is leaked now? What is the distraction they are trying to create by leaking this now?
It just seems like a coordinated crack down on Nvidia's relationship China.
Consider that the leak destroys the legitimacy of Huang's lobbying efforts efforts against tighter chips controls to China. In parallel the NYT released yesterday their investigation into commerce dept approvals of h200 chips to Chinese entities that the NYT claims are ghost offices linked to Chinese military contractors [1]. Also consider that these events put Nvidia under long term congressional security oversight with an installed watch dog. Nvidia is losing it's autonomy to cut international deals. Seems like the CIA/permeant state is getting nervous about China again.
> Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has not only vouched for Megaspeed, but seems to have quite literally walked alongside Megaspeed at every step, while maintaining an uncomfortably close relationship with Megaspeed’s Alice Huang, a Chinese national. He was first spotted partying with Alice Huang in June 2024 – the same month the Apex/Alibaba pledge was filed. He then dined with Alice Huang in Taiwan in May 2025 - just weeks after the news of U.S. trade restrictions.
It could be just as simple as taking time to be confident. Or it could have been somebody wanted to use this as a bargaining chip and failed somehow... Who knows.
This "what distraction are they trying to make" line is ridiculous conspiracism. It's completely obvious that someone leaked it to the NY Times because they are alarmed that the admin is doing nothing about what is obviously a huge national security problem.
He has a close relationship with Trump, so this could be an internal Whitehouse play to hurt Trump, or, he might have "disappointed" Trump, so this could be punishment.
Alternatively this could be a Chinese play designed to sow dissent and disruption in the USA post the mid-terms.
Or, it could just be a rather trivial story about an over confident and all to human titan of industry making the kind of mess in his personal life that a lot of people end up making - watch any TV mini series for example after example.
How would personal trouble in Huang’s life hurt Trump? Compared to all the other things that Trump has done to hurt himself, culminating in the midterm results?
And China, really? What dissent is this going to cause? As for disruption, Nvidia essentially has a monopoly on what they do. Who the person in charge is, or what he’s doing, barely matters at this point.
> watch any TV mini series for example after example.
Spooks is a pretty knowing term to use. Not exactly a word the average person throws around. And yes, they likely knew long before now. Right after the midterms? Interesting timing. Seems the spooks are doing what spooks do.
They had to rename it to “MI-5” for the US market. The word doesn’t have the same connotations in the US as it does in the UK. One reason is that it was used as a racial slur in WWII and after the war.
It generally doesn't. People should stop reviving the negative connotation. Sure if someone is calling a black person a spook let's call them out but if that's not how it's being used let's not insist it's an inherently racist term. It's totally counter-productive.
Not what you are doing, and I understand that's why they renamed the show but they shouldn't have. While it can be used as a racial slur it doesn't generally have that connotation. I think if you directly asked most people they would either not know about the slur or say something like "I think its a racist term for some group or something." I had to look it up myself to be sure. We can choose to let that usage of the term die.
I think that's just a result of the term falling out of common use in the US. I'd expect 30 years ago "Spooks" would be a perfectly fine name for a TV show in the US. (I remember watching spy shows/movies and reading spy novels as a kid in the 80s/90s and hearing/reading that term.)
Take this with a grain of salt, but my guess is that the board on some level has to judge him as being so high performing that they would try to keep him as long as that doesn't cause too much PR damage to the company, or the deals get them in too much trouble with the government.
This is just a total guess, but I assume what a lot of the board want is for him to sell as much to China or indirect channels as he can get away with. So whatever these deals were that involved this woman, they probably want him to get those deals through it he can get away with it (although they wouldn't admit it).
I see this more or less as Huang doing his job. And relative to international expectations at that level of wealth, one public affair is probably not something most of the board (presumably largely male) is going to (privately) judge him for.
So if the board is investigating, I assume what they are trying to figure out is if the US government is going to do anything (probably not) or waiting to see if there is going to be some kind of public demand for him to be removed. Or it there is something likely to come out that will cause either of those things.
The board is investigating because the woman he had the affair with is a Chinese spy.
Neither the board nor the US government nor investors nor the average person gives a shit about a CEO having an affair as long it doesn't compromise his ability to do his job well.
What OP is implying is that the Board likely implicitly condoned any effort Jensen would take to make sales to China including making underhanded deals that look like honeypot operations but may as well have been a double honeypot operation. The implication is that the outcome of said affair was actually good for Nvidia. You imply that the interests of Nvidia and the US government and by extension the US public are aligned. That’s a citation-needed level assumption. Nvidia just wants to make money. The government hopefully has different interests.
The penalties for ITAR/EAR violations are severe so I suspect it's as ludicrous and incorrect a theory as one might suspect.
What is interesting is the woman appears to be extremely mid-looking.
If there is a lesson to be learned from all these extremely powerful men cheating on their wives with objectively ordinary women (e.g. Gates, Bezos, Tiger Woods) it's that the most beautiful woman in the world is worth about the same as the woman that works at McDonald's.
1. that is a bit inappropriate to just openly say "but that spy girl looks mid"
2. The goal of honey trapping is to gain trust from the target to do whatever you want to do, not to please them. They don't even have to have an actual physical contact. A "mid", unassuming, appearance is often appropriate for this purpose. This actually applies to actual assassins, 100x engineers, and millionaire landlords, too; they gain nothing from standing out, so they look mid. You may optionally look good, but your looks should not be the means by which you achieve your goals.
3. (Extension to 2.)A rich CEO having affairs with a "mid" woman for a true extramarital love is probably more damaging to their relationships than them just disappearing into a hotel room with a prostitute with a bottle in hand. The latter is probably more tolerable to those involved and to the public.
4. Forgot where I read this, some diplomat's essay or something, but allegedly, Russians will do what you want to be happening, starting with regular office staffs and moms, escalating to scantily dressed girls, to visibly gay dudes, at which point they accept that their operation had been too obvious and give up. So there is a chance, I guess, if you must have it???
I'm sorry but what is this vapid take on personal relationships and attraction? I don't get the point of anything beyond your first sentence. Can you explain?
Not the OP, but I was also curious about how the woman looked, i.e. if she was physically attractive or not. That's interesting from a "history of honey-potting"-perspective, good for the Chinese that they knew what moved this horny CEO's gears and that they were able to match it. As far as I know it was the Russians/Soviets who were experts at honey-potting, this is the first time when I read from the Chinese doing the same at such a high level.
These guys are so rich they can hire beautiful prostitutes whenever they want. Looks alone are dime-a-dozen, in the end it's personality that counts (the latter notably also holds true for non-gazillionaires).
Yeah, someone like Huang probably has beautiful women throwing themselves at him all the time and it's quite possible that he's taken many of them up on the offer already, it's just never come out before. A man who has access to such abundance of beautiful women may over time become more interested in things like personality, if he wasn't already more interested in personality before -- there are some men who care more about personality from the start.
From observation, it seems Starbucks/High-end coffee chains attract easier looking staff. At the end of the day, you are going to get the higher paying job, and the higher paying job can afford to select the easier looking ones.
Outside of your odd take on attraction, which is way more than looks alone...
There are memes that super-model looking women dating nerds are almost always spies of some sort. For this spy to have any chance at gaining real information she needed to have an actual relationship with Huang - which, see above, is more than looks alone.
Just to be clear, alleged spy, and working for a foreign government which wants to do a tremendous amount of incredibly profitable business with the company. Which he should be carefully weighing against the very real legal risks when the US government doesn't want that business to happen. And if he can't remain impartial, the board should be concerned about whether he can make the right decision for shareholders about that risk/profit.
Alleged Chinese spy unless I’m reading the article wrong? A Chinese intelligence asset could mean someone who just had CPC membership in college. Not that I’m saying Alice Huang isn’t a spy, I just would want more information before deciding.
She was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy.
Also, just to be clear here: the story is that Jensen was also going to Taiwan to meet with this person who was helping Alibaba evade sanctions, when Jensen met with this person Alibaba reps were always there, and in the US Jensen was making media appearances saying that sanctions on China had to be lifted.
Bear in mind that multiple people at Supermicro were charged for allegedly smuggling servers to China, and that the reason Megaspeed is being investigated is for effectively the same thing. Jensen denied he had anything to do with Supermicro, it is going to be much harder to say the same thing here.
I don't think the affair itself is necessarily related to the direction this will shortly take.
There is a huge difference between smugglers and spies though. Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else, you definitely don’t need a handler in zhongnanhai.
She is a CEO in Singapore, she avoids going to jail by obeying Singaporean law. I don’t know how American law would even apply to her, they definitely apply to Jensen though.
Certainly no government would ever encourage its own agents to engage in things like smuggling especially the smuggling of drugs to certain Global South nation states where the capital acquired from those operations end up funding pro-American paramilitaries who topple their local government. That would be totally bananas for any kind of republic.
Contra-ry to common conspiracy theories, I'm certain any government-led self-investigation into culpability in this vein was all very aboveboard and well-substantiated, and such incidents never ever happened.
USA, which is famous for engaging in several smuggling operations, like the Iran-Contra affair or the many cases when CIA was allegedly involved in drug trafficking.
And by dictionary definition once someone has been established as a smuggler, there’s technically no way they can also be labelled as spies, or engaging in espionage. Also, spies never smuggle, never. Spy’s honour! Yeah, that makes total sense.
Smugglers can be spies actually, it’s not an uncommon trope. Just not all smugglers are spies. Or were you just trying to setup some sort of straw man to knock down?
Chinese spy can mean everything from “sell us more GPUs to China or I leak our affair” (which I think NVDA would be very happy with - they’ve already admitted to chip diversion, and their senior execs have been arrested for the same) to trade secrets being given to Huawei.
IMHO, I’m speculating, but I think the affair could’ve happened first, and then the MSS got involved for access and blackmail.
There is, after all, statistically a high correlation with rich billionaires and infidelity…
1. Singapore is a well-known hub for the smuggling of Nvidia chips to China.
2. The company was originally set up as the subsidiary of a Chinese gaming company.
3. When the US added stricter export controls for Nvidia chips in 2023, it was spun off and ownership reportedly moved to a BVI shell company.
4. Later it was sold to a company that is apparently owned by one person who is believed to live in China.
5. The Singapore offices of the company and others he is an owner or director of show little activity and according to one report, the co-working space at the address listed for one didn't even have a record of the company.
6. Despite the fact that Megaspeed showed less than $6 million in cash at the end of 2023, it somehow became an Nvidia Cloud Partner and between 2024 and 2026 purchased $4.8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia chips, making it the top Nvidia chip buyer in ASEAN.
This company was on the radar of people in the industry well before this scandal because basically nobody had any idea who it was and where the money was coming from.
Thanks for the extensive write up! Every point except 6 (the acquisition) sounds very normal for Chinese companies. 6 million is worth a lot more in the Mainland, not many AI chips tho… mmmm
It's unfortunate how it's perfectly rational for a board to want their CEOs doing just enough fraud/backchanneling/cosying-up-to-suspect-world-leaders to maximize shareholder value, as long as they're not getting caught/... in ways that overall minimize shareholder value.
That's not unfortunate: that's the way the system is designed to work:
* Corps maximize shareholder value
* Govs make laws/penalties to avoid too much harm/risk by corps
* Press keeps everybody accountable
It's great when everybody's doing what they're supposed to do, which obviously isn't often enough.
Unfortunate is when corps are so in bed with gov that they don't bother innovating or growing, and when press is so in bed with gov that they might as well not exist at all.
Sure, if by high performing you mean fully assuming the lions share of risk when establishing monopoly via personal enmeshment with a corrupt political administration on the verge of sunset. His job for this board could very well be gone-rogue fall-guy. Doubly so when the regulatory bodies will be eagerly looking for those among the "thought you were one of the good ones" cohort of power.
I've never seen a more direct statement, with the right priorities, in such a case.
As always, recovery under stress is more telling than speed on the happy path.
The other name founders - Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs - fell into the guise of their own image propagating down their leadership chain; Huang seems to be actually leading, often by example. I'd expect his team to do ok without him, but believe only he could make some of the hard decisions, particularly now that their success is bounded by their customers'.
Unless they want to keep the focus on the affair on purpose. What if she just helped him circumvent the ban on selling Nvidia cards to China or, if you want to really push it, on selling Nvidia tech to China?
I feel uncomfortable asking in a thread like this but why would a CEO talk about his private life publically?
I know others have said this is a carefully written statement, but in my culture I would feel it would be rude not to keep it private? Sorry if this sounds autistic.
Mainly because the person he was having the affair with was a customer of the company and because they are reported to have possibly been a spy for the Chinese government. All of these things have a direct impact on the confidence of employees.
I’d imagine as with most big companies having a relationship with a customer is a big HR violation. So at least that aspect would have to be addressed.
I don't think it's too big to fail. There are multiple factors:
1. Jensen is a billionaire who doesn't really need to work. This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.
2. Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new competing company. This would cause NVIDIA a much bigger issue, 10000x bigger.
3. Also, this means Jensen would get to unload the stock at the peak. Democrats won and is about to be way more responsible than Trump. Cue Luo Pai from Enron.
4. Dating a customer isn't really a big deal. Did her company get a preferential price? Treatment? I'd guess that her company doesn't make a dent in NVIDIA's revenue.
5. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.
There are some things shareholders have to legitimately reckon with, that warrant a statement:
- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?
- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?
- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?
Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.
So that no one can extort him in private. Same happened with Bezos when his phone was hacked. He was the one who came forward to speak about what was shared by his phone.
> "Saudi experts – dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the crown prince and his inner circle."
It seems to be a combination of things
First off, hhe person he was having an affair with has ties to Chinese Spy agencies (not sure the ties, but either way, not a great look for someone trying to be deeply involved with America's government)
It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.
Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)
it's a public company, he's ceo, large implications for stock movements, corporate strategy, volatility if it goes to us govt intervention, divorce court, etc
Not exactly subtext but yes, it would be inappropriate. I'm noting that "inappropriate" != "impossible." Many of his peers have done exactly such a thing.
Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors, also, using 'girl' robs the woman of agency.
... only if she hates the word 'girl', I guess. Which we don't know. Personally, I know many grown women (30's, 40's+) who are perfectly alright with the word "girl". It is contextual, and often times cultural (i.e. your background).
No offense, but this is why it can often be pernicious to do drive-by virtue-signaling online.
> Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors
What does this even mean?... do you think what you're implying is exclusive to Americans? Honestly that's what it sounds like.
Most women who are okay with being called a girl are okay with it only in certain contexts. For example I don’t know any woman who is in her 30s or 40s who would be okay with being referred to as a girl in a professional context.
Because its already public information. In your culture would you pretend like it never happened even though everybody else knows about it and are making their own narratives.
I guess no one noticed because they all looked the same. I imagine Bezos in the wife store like "Oh yeah, I like exactly that look. Gimme another one of these!"
Everyone has some preferred types, but same body, different person is pretty creepy.
Generally speaking, it's normal to keep it private.
Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.
Because the purpose was to get leverage, and Intel. Once she couldn't gather passive Intel, they would use the affair as blackmail, ole school is the best school.
there are indications that he continued the affair even after being tipped off by the US intelligence agencies -- which would constitute treason. An apology would just be a first step to ward off serious charges, if there are serious charges levied. Not that anything would happen in the large scheme of things, given JH has bought off the orange turd.
I wrote in another thread here, this is extremely serious:
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.
It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
I came into some fair amount of power, and the CCP honey pot shenanigans got crazy. I didn't get in-person treatment, but the DMs were off the hook. A Cantonese businessman warned me, but I have to admit it could have worked if I had been in the wrong frame of mind.
They tried every persona: Sexy, shy, homely. Same sex. Confrontational. Open, but scared her overseers would punish her. Still get a ping now and then.
>A Cantonese businessman warned me, but I have to admit it could have worked if I had been in the wrong frame of mind.
Im curious more about that. He was just some regular businessman acquaintance with no special knowledge? Was he fairly accurate and specific in his predictions?
My first (well, metaphorically speaking) thought after reading the news was: how many attempts did it take? How many seductors and seductresses are out there? I can only assume the other major powers are playing similar games, given the history.
I don’t really understand what’s the issue with “cheating” his wife.
That’s his personal life and I fail to see why are we supposed to behave like some kind of religious zealots on marriage.
The best way to handle this should probably be to be upfront about it so that he could not be blackmailed. His only mistake was that he didn’t disclose it earlier when rumours surfaced
It's not about religion, it's about trust and keeping promises. Like it or not, the default understanding in a marital relationship in many places in the world is monogamy. Some people, of course, engage in other practices, after an explicit discussion, and agreement and understanding. But presumably Huang's wife believed she and her husband were in a monogamous relationship, and trusted Huang to keep it that way. That's the issue; religion is irrelevant. (And different religious practices have different things to say about monogamy vs. polyamory, and atheists decide for themselves if they want to be monogamists or polyamorists; religion need not be involved at all.)
But regardless, I think his infidelity is not his employees' business; IMO it's weird to bring it up in this way. The bit about his affair partner possibly(?) being a spy is the thing that actually matters to NVIDIA and NVIDIA employees, but he only dedicates a few sentences to it.
It's mostly a US thing, I've seen a huge divide about marriage between old Europe and the US that's due to influence of puritanism. Only 20% of men in the US cheat, that's a relatively low figure.
The moralists also conveniently ignore that the vast majority of men is not very attractive. Cheating would take a lot of effort for them. In contrast, I knew some men who were attractive enough they had to fend off women almost daily. For them, not cheating takes a lot of effort. The bottomline is that most of the 5/10 guys who say "I would never cheat" would do so the very next day if a 9/10 woman suddenly got interested in them, which is exactly what happened in this case.
Not at all defending his actions, but I am reminded of someone in an earlier thread predicting that there may be some political reasons for this to come out, and that we may see NVIDIA do favors for the US government some time soon. That doesn't seem to be the case, but an observation:
"I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American." sounds like the exact words one would say if one expects to be threatened of being un-patriotic and therefore cancelled in the right-wing sense. In fact it sounds like something you would hear on South Park, it's a bit ridiculous. As others have pointed out in here, affair or not, the spy label is very much up to US government opinion.
I heard a guy I respect say “there’s a short list of things people will ruin their lives for.”
I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
It's not going to ruin his life. At worst he will lose $100 bil and maybe if it's really bad, he will get kicked out of Nvidia. He will still have $100 bil and can do whatever he wants at that point.
If he loses his family over it, it will ruin his life. There’s more to life than money. I hope for your sake that you don’t really believe this morally bankrupt concept.
Allegedly he was assaulted by a spy and wasn't able to deflect that assault. Who knows what techniques they use, wouldn't be surprised if they can sprinkle something in a drink that switches off half the frontal cortex.
He is the the tech CEO most aligned with the current government’s optimism towards the AI build out and also its key orchestrator. What are the odds he will be held to any real punishment ?
Spy is rather easy to define though, and it hardly depends on what the State Department decides (although of course, they can call anybody a spy, for political or other reasons, I agree on that).
I don't know why this is being downvoted. The federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack that they themselves have not recruited. It is entrapment, and it is legal in most cases. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but even mainstream media has covered this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment...
It is perfectly reasonable to suspect similar claims of catching "spies".
Your article doesn't support your claim that the 'federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack'. And a lot of that was highly motivated reporting itself by people like Glenn Greenwald who was basically denying that things like ISIS were real threats at all in 2014 and then went full victim blaming for things like Charlie Hebdo the year after (it was harder after the Bataclan).
Will you next claim that the police have never really prevented a murder?
I gave a link as a reference of how the Federal government operates. I did not think that I needed a whole bibliography to prove something that is very easily verifiable.
Not only that you think the reporting is not reliable because of the reporter without pointing out what is wrong with the actual report.
These are all the cases that had some investigative reporter poking, or the jury/judge seeing through the bullshit. Here is initial reporting on recent cases. The "Iranian Agent" sent to "Assassinate Donald Trump"(emphasis mine):
>Asif Merchant traveled to New York in June for the purpose of meeting with men he thought he was recruiting to carry out the killings, even paying a $5,000 advance to two would-be assassins who were actually undercover law enforcement officers, federal officials said
The woman arrested for "plotting to bomb the NY state capital":
>According to the criminal complaint, an FBI confidential source drove Bowie to the Home Depot in Rensselaer and gave her $200 to buy bomb parts. It’s not clear if they told her what items to buy.
I hope all of these sources are of sound character by your standards. Now I would ask you; can you give me an example of the FBI catching a terrorist that:
a) They did not recruit, or
b) Did not provide materials, or
c) did not provide the target
AS for the police in the US, they are indeed very bad at preventing crime. Though that is due to multiple reasons, mostly policy related, rather than institutional malfeasance like the FBI.
Sometimes, it's the humiliation that comes from the public finding out and putting a spotlight on it that is the kicker; not the random side piece(s) (ex: Bill & Melinda Gates).
I agree, though.
___
edit: Funny enough, there's a House of Cards scene that goes over this exact scenario. Francis is sleeping with Zoe the reporter (they're both using each other for the perks/their own agendas). When Claire finds out, her response is something like "you know you must not embarrass me (publicly) with this", which Francis already knew because he would never do that to Claire... she doesn't say those exact words, but that was the vibe.
Humans are complex creatures. Plenty of men and women who have loving families and genuinely love their spouses cheat on them and destroy their lives/families. It just takes a moment of weakness. Stay vigilant.
Love and sexual attraction is totally different thing. As long as you get married Male usually lose interest and sexual attraction on female and want to try new things.
That happens to me too and its like both biological and mental.
It's not really a moment when the moment is stretched over months and years, but yes we are all human and all make mistakes. That does not absolve us of the consequences.
Way to minimize cheating. Describing it as a “moment of weakness” makes it sounds like it’s a minute of lapse of judgement, meanwhile we’re talking about pre-mediated, long-term cheating.
I have zero sympathy for this guy, generally speaking. But this is one of those very few things where what you have said is the socially "correct" thing, and actually is probably healthy to believe, but is factually wrong.
Lamentably, people don't have cartoon emotions. Life would be so much easier if they did.
That is not an automatic fact. Humans are very emotionally complex creatures. And Jensen didn't call his secretary and say "can you pencil in 'humiliating my wife and kids around 4PM'? You can? Great, thanks".
He has full agency over his actions, so yes, it's an automatic fact. He knew what he was doing and he knew what the effects would be on his wife. He knew what would happen when this came out. If you're saying he DIDN'T know what would happen, then you're saying he's extremely stupid. I haven't seen any evidence that he is even a little bit stupid.
Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?
If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?
This seems like an emotionally compromised perspective (which is very, very normal, and I am not insulting you).
It is, of course, not an automatic fact. The context here is emotions, so it makes no sense to point only to agency as proof of an emotional "fact". Such a thing doesn't even exist.
All he had to do was say no and keep his dick in his pants. Use some judgement, think about your wife and kids (oh yeah and all that national security bullshit). The man with all his money and power can't say no, that's what's absurd.
The question is how long took and if he was happy with his family.
It's easy for a professional with china backend to play with your feelings, much easier if you have normal family life or worse.
Is the woman likable it's just a matter of times. (Independent of the gender)
If this happens within a week, I would agree, if this happens within months the gender you like can makes your heart jump if you are I a very long term relationship.
> But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.
The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.
One can't help but think of Sergey Brin who famously had an affair with an underling on Google Glass, Amanda Rosenberg [1]. This of course blew up his life and he divorced Anne Wojcicki in ~2014. Of course he got married again and divorced again with another expensive divorce (although neither was in the realm of the cost of Jeff Bezos's divorce).
I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.
For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.
So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.
If there are any billionaires out there who are too alienated by their inability to wait in line at the airport: don’t worry, you can give me the money. It’ll be a burden, but one I think I can handle.
The airport was just an example. You simply can't do normal people things.
I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.
That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.
> I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza.
Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.
It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.
Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.
If you’re that rich but you can’t live a normal life, and you aren’t willing to restructure things to prioritize your life, you’re obviously making a choice in favour of continuing to accumulate wealth or power.
With regards the "What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth?" question, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, as the billionaires accrue more influence than ever before. And I think that's the keyword - 'influence'. After a point, wealth doesn't buy you more things, it buys you power, which is seductive. It goes far beyond making your family comfortable and doing right by your company, employees and shareholders; it becomes a means to lever the world. Yes, some of this drive is about being apart from the real world and possibly an element of personal sociopathy (corporations are famously sociopathic entities, too, which probably rubs off on the C-suite execs), but hedonistic adaptation (we're very good at getting used to things, even vast wealth) and wanting to change the world are (I imagine) very addictive. I imagine it even goes some way to assuaging the embarrassment of The Leader of the Free World calling you his AI Expert...sorry, 'SI' Expert.
And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.
Related: the market cap of the stock market is basically a conversion factor between currency (for daily purchases) and power (being in charge of all the world's companies). When the market crashes after an election, we shouldn't think of it as "$3T of wealth wiped out", it should be "power gap between normal people and billionaires decreases" (it takes fewer normal people to buy a billionaire's position).
The last paragraph of my comment basically calls these billionaires sociopaths because you have to be to enrich yourself off the backs of making millions of people poor. How is that a defense of billionaires?
My point is that the "prize" isn't even worth it. It doesn't make you happy. Actually there's one way it seems to make them happy: by enjoying the suffering of others and having the power to influence people and even governments. But to what end?
Reading comprehension is fine. It’s your writing comprehension.
>So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
You’re saying here that they’re “starved” of the human contact most of us take for granted (for example in standing around an airport and being squeezed into economy). This is thus a cause for heart-bleeding.
Ingvar Kamprad flew economy and drove an old Volvo. Being extremely wealthy doesn’t have to come with this kind of isolation. If Sergei Brin was flying economy, most of the plane wouldn’t realise who he was and the few who did would be like “oh look it’s Sergei Brin, weird.”
Honestly a terrible way to deflect responsibility. If you're finding your judgement impaired take a breather, the opportunity is usually not going to disappear right away.
I received this authoritatively from a famous divorce lawyer of my city/country that “feeling” bad usually happens only when young children are involved — or marriage is young and love was involved in the marriage (this is an arranged marriage country, so that part is different from USA). Other than that if a huge parting sum of money is involved that sense of liberation outweighs everything else. In fact if anything else, it’s an overwhelming sense of relief.
He wasn’t photographed in a romantic context as far as I know, and he just signed the upper part of a woman’s chest with tons of cameras around, clearly a marketing ploy rather than him trying to enter into a relationship with her.
I could not access the article (or I did not want to pay), hence the question.
Given the celebrity status of Jensen, it seemed unlikely that scandalous photos of him would be publicly distributed and it not already have been a huge story.
It is possible the scandalous pictures (not just him walking in front of her or sitting next to her) were already floating around, and I am not up-to-date on celebrity scandals, and the wife was already planning a divorce, as you claim.
But without those photos, it could be the wife is finding out about the affair just now.
I still have not seen the pictures you are referring to, but I’m not that interested to look for them either.
And there’s cheating on your wife and having the feds write up intelligence reports about it, the Financial Times running an article about it and having to send a public admission to every single employee at your company including your two kids who you employ there.
Did you ask yourself how his wife would not know this was happening? They were seen in public in intimate settings.
Don't kid yourself about the reason he wrote the letter. He's only writing this because of national security optics and buries it in a shit sandwich format.
This video of Lex Friedman and Jensen hanging out and drinking in Taiwan came out 3 weeks ago. Jensen and his wife seem pretty happy together in it. So today’s news is genuinely new news or they’d already gone over it and sorted it out. Jensen seems to do a lot of booze fuelled entertaining…
> I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.
Now we have to re-evaluate all his statements in favor of selling to China. For example, we want China to build on "our stack". On the face of it, that seems correct. If China has multiple stacks to pick from why wouldn't we want them to pick our stack? But do they have such a choice?
I was curious, so I researched it (aka prompted ChatGPT). SFO-PVG was established in 2000, long before Apple offshored all of their manufacturing to China. An article from the time describes it being something that was in demand among Silicon Valley in general[1] rather than Apple particularly. In 2019, United revealed that Apple does spend $35 million/yr on that single route, averaging 50 seats/day[2], so I suppose that's the source of the legend.
Another is the pretense of overcoming Chinese resistance. China sent a cute spy to bang the CEO of Nvidia, but they simultaneously set a "strict limit" on import of Nvidia chips. How does that make sense? It makes sense if the purpose of the "strict limit" is so that any sale of H200 to China can be seen as overcoming Chinese restrictions. Anything that is against the Chinese government's resistance must be good for the US, right?
It could be that they wanted design information and other details from him, and were going to use those to build up domestic manufacturing alongside import restrictions.
It's hard to say from the outside what the goals would be - pushing him in certain directions, extracting intel, etc.
In parts of Asia it is "expected" that a successful politician or businessman will have a "second family". I'm thinking the spying part (Huang is from Taiwan and was possibly leaking info to China) is considered worse than the cheating part by everyone involved.
You literally have cities in China that are called "second wife villages"(二奶村) where politicians and rich people have their mistresses that are located close to ports/airports for quick access on "work trips". In Shenzhen for example its the Luohu (罗湖) and Futian (福田) districts that are for this purpose.
Don't make it sound like Japan either. It's just not possible where no family with a connection to someone powerful would be satisfied hidden away in a rural village. When caught by a tabloid, your career ends completely, not really excepted behavior.
There is no way he would have known that the woman was a spy. Also we can't know if the allegations are true or not either until proven somehow. The woman was from Singapore. Singapore has denied it. but lets assume that she was a spy so why hasn't she been charged yet? Where is she? The chips apparently went to Malaysia .. is there a proof that they were moved to China? There are claims that their clouds were used by the Chinese. Something doesn't add up here.
Malaysia doesnt even show up in the graph of owners but obviously has imported some chips.. were they illegal ones.. who knows. How much relative power does this malaysia have? If it did, wouldnt show up in the graph?
The most interesting part might be that this is coming out so publicly.
Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.
Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ...
Jensen/Nvidia has not been playing ball with other parts of the AI industry and the administration, pushing heavily against export bans and promoting open source models/companies , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.
This is conspiracy theory territory, of course, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an intentional leak.
remember, the only evidence of any criminal activity here is the leak of this story, which is a felony unless directly authorized by a classified executive order.
> The close relationship between the president and Mr. Huang has impeded efforts to clamp down on Nvidia’s chip sales abroad, current and former U.S. officials said.
> This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance
the most likely scenario here is that the faction that supports export bans leaked the initial story to try to blackmail Huang into dropping his support for free trade, he refused, so they released the package to damage him as much as possible. likely route, based on the named sources, is senate or house intel agency staffers, using elected officials and classified briefings as cover.
NY Times, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman would identify this as being firmly located in the anti-Trump faction, so unless it is some super devious reverse play, which seems unlikely for Trump, it is a criminal leak.
I suspect that the "intention" behind the leak isn't really about Jensen or Nvidia, but is just more administration infighting - Jensen is just collateral damage.
Consider the timing of the reporting - the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th - just enough time after mid-terms. Consider that follow up reporting clearly identifying Rubio as the author of the in-administration warning memo.
JD and Rubio (and who knows who else) are clearly trying to find ways to distance themselves from Trump without being completely cut to pieces, now that it's completely clear that the Trump brand is toxic.
If you're a spy you can be whatever they want you to be. You like abstract geometry? Oh my god I have a PHD in abstract geometry. Would you like to come back to my room and read my thesis? You're so funny! People don't normally get my abstract geometry references!
As an Nvidian - Jensen is the single most important part of Nvidia.
Speaking personally I couldn't care less about this particular lapse in judgement because every example if have seen in professional circumstances his judgement has been stellar.
It sucks for his family life but that shouldn't become our business and should remain private.
If she really is a spy that might suck a bit for our relationship with the US government for a short period but it's not something that can't be managed and overcome.
It's not a nothing burger but if it results in Jensen leaving Nvidia that would be a travesty IMO. We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake, especially one that should in any other circumstance not become public.
It's obviously not irrelevant for two reasons, one practical one moral. The practical one is that you don't need to 'spill' secrets to a spy. Having one around you in private means you can be bugged, blackmailed, have your means of communication compromised and so on. It makes you vulnerable by definition.
Secondly if he's willing to lie to his wife and family he's obviously willing to lie to anyone for much less. It tells you something about the character of a person, how can anyone trust a cheater?
Arguably, cheating is now a normal every day part of society. Approximate 2/3rds of people have been cheated on in USA. Much higher in Asia. The sex industry in asia is absolutely massive and it’s primarily for married men. In Japan, only 65% of people say cheating is morally wrong.
But it’s usually don’t ask don’t tell, not explicit lying.
To give a specific example, I’m currently traveling in Vietnam, and an entire floor of my allegedly “5-star” hotel (the most expensive in the city) is reserved for prostitution. This is a smaller city with almost no foreign tourists. The rest of the hotel operates as normal, with a fancy breakfast served everyday 6-9am.
its not really about his private life its about whteher he was manipulated into it wihtout his knowledge. Psychological manipulation is a thing and if they got him to do this what else happened?
> A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.
I'm not sure what actual letters like this are supposed to achieve (besides protecting his ass I mean). Are employees supposed to stand beside their fallen leader, are they supposed to go about their business differently? Anybody having affairs with subordinates can't be trusted to make good judgement calls with respect to internal leadership / delegation, at least it wouldn't seem so to me.
It sounds like your problem lies more in his mistake, not in coming clean about it. Him being the one to do that takes any influence the woman had over him away.
Is Jensen most likely on his way out? I think yes, more interesting times ahead and will his exit eventually help in reducing Nvidia's dominance which might be a desirable result though there're quite a few conditions to be met so that it indeed is one.
I hope it’s apparent to everyone that the natsec state (whether CIA or FBI for its domestic counterintel mandate) had to actively engage in ‘conspiracy theorizing’ in order to determine whatever exposure Jensen had, which seems to be bearing out to some as-yet-unknown degree. Worth keeping in mind next time you’re feeling shy about expressing your own latest conspiracy theorizing.
If you're the CIA, wouldn't you want to plant employees, or 'hire' employees at major firms like this? I guess I assume they do already. Probably each major corporation has 10-50+ employees getting kick backs from the government.
Most large US companies if they want to have the government as a client, have special rooms with employees with security clearances that work mostly on projects that the CEO and even their line managers do not know what they are. HR also have a special employees or a private section that deal with these people. There is some deniability also: the managers can tell the truth under oath and say they have no knowledge about the projects!
It's part of normal business operations not some secret illegal shady kick backs operation within some kind of spy movie.
There's no need to secretly infiltrate a company when the company is working happily with you. People underestimate how close big business and 3 letter agencies actually are in many cases.
The US intelligence agencies would have a hard time planting employees in US firms while remaining within the bounds of FISA. They certainly have assets inside major Chinese firms though, of course.
Why do you doubt that? And who do you suppose wants to work for the CIA in this aspect, when the job description is pushing pencils as an intern at a tech company trying to get sad old men to have sex with them?
It doesn't quite work like that. You don't go off and find some super smart person who can easily get a job at Nvidia and tell them "Hey you, go work for this company". You find someone who already works at Nvidia, and you bump into them at their kids' little league game, and you get chatting and build a rapport and over time you build trust and before you know, you've got a trusted source inside Nvidia. They don't even need to know they're a plant. And then, if you really do need something more than information you can go further. But you start with someone already at the company and you target them, rather than the other way around.
And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".
They do, according to Jonna Mendez, but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary. This causes some contention since they are paid far less than salaried employees and get no equity, so it leads to high turnover
> but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary
Technically, they collect the company salary, and then the CIA reduces their pay by the same amount. (They have to be indistinguishable from ordinary employee, including to payroll.)
At one point, they couldn't keep any excess if the company pay was higher. Now, they're apparently allowed to keep an amount that doesn't significantly exceed comparable federal pay.
From the context, I believe the question was about infiltrating _American_ companies. If Mendez has made that claim, do you happen to know where she said it?
She gave 2 fireside chat style events at the commonwealth club of California and it was at one of those. They’re on YouTube, how I found them. There is other press coverage though.
Infiltrated is not necessarily the right word. Company executives know, but few other employees do
Apart from his direct family, who cares? Why is this an issue? It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.
The leader of the central company in the AI boom was compromised by a spy from the US’s biggest adversary while US and Chinese companies are in an AI arms race.
We have a sitting president who freely shares state secrets with dictators upon request. This seems rather high effort when they could’ve just asked nicely no? </s>
It isn't whataboutism if it's directly relevant to the point at hand (as opposed to attempting to distract from it). The question posed effectively amounted to "why is this particularly noteworthy compared to everything else of a vaguely similar nature that's been going on".
I know you are trying to make some point for your political team but if you look up what a fiduciary is then you will see why this would be a good thing and a way to avoid other legal issues. But I know, OMB and all that!
You misunderstood what I meant, obviously the newspapers all cover these things when they become public. The difference is that this time, it’s an intelligence agency that went public with it (or someone leaked it from there), the spying angle is quite unique.
Probably more like the administration, given how they were briefed more than a year ago.
There’s been recent power spats (JD Vance’s tweet, Susie being replaced by Steve Bannon, and probably more infighting).
As much as I want to believe there’s greater 4D chess and motivation, I assign a modest probability to someone going “fuck it”, opening a massive short on NVDA, and then leaking it just for the love of insider trading. Rather than anything strategic or real.
I'm a shareholder, and the fact that both the US government and Nvidia itself is going to investigate him is very, very bad. So yes, I care about it a lot because I'm probably going to lose a lot of money tomorrow!
Why does it matter that one of the key leaders of our aI strategy was having an affair with a Chinese spy while advising the president on our policy of selling chips to China?
Integrity matters for maintaining corporate secrets. Someone who is having an extramarital affair is a target for blackmail. Most of getting a security clearance is not lying.
> It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.
He admitted to the affair. No one has admitted to being a pedo. Much less forgivable.
And how long has US government known that she is a spy and only watched and not investigated?
There could be only 2 options:
1. There is no national security issue -> all a nothing burger
2. US government looked the other way -> THE REAL SCANDAL HERE
I suspect nothing will change at Nvidia although Jensen does not have any sort of "super shares" so he can easily be deposed by the board if they really want to. But why would they.
The political move was to wait until after the midterms for this to come out, because data centers/AI has such a negative public perception. Turns out waiting didn’t help
The Ethan one is especially shocking because his whole shtick is being the "better man" compared to all the people he reacts to and sues. Throwing it all away just to doink a coworker is pretty out there
love this comment. the ceo of one of the most influential companies in the world gets caught sleeping with a spy of a rival hegemonic nation state during a period of intense technological, political, and economical change, and OP is like "pfft nothing to see here". amazing
Rich Americans don't face consequences. Unless he spilled secrets that would put Nvidia's competitive advantage in jeopardy he'll probably be required to attend some mandatory government/corporate seminar on espionage for a couple of weeks and then things will go back to business as usual.
When the money is this big, all ethics go out the window.
> Andy Byron, the chief executive of New York-based tech company Astronomer, has resigned from his role after he was spotted embracing an employee at a Coldplay concert, according to a statement shared with CNN on Saturday.
> Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired in November 2019 after it was discovered he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a subordinate, breaching company rules that prohibit managers from dating employees they oversee. Easterbrook admitted the relationship, calling it a mistake, and stepped down. Initially, he left with a $40 million severance package.
What other consequences do you want? Jail? Infidelity is not a crime in the US.
For sure he has excellent PR and comms advisors. He gets credit, I guess, for taking their advice, but none for betraying his wife and family. It speaks volumes that so much of the leadership class in American tech and business is so morally compromised.
All you have to do to moot 100% of that massive adversarial effort is to decide (ahead of time) to not be a POS and keep your dick behind your zipper. Not deciding that and sticking to it makes you a garbage husband and a dangerous and unreliable CEO.
Crisis communications is a real field. Most companies aren't prepared for it in advance and do it poorly as a result, but there are specialist consultants who are good at getting it right (source: close friend who did this kind of work for many years - it is not a pretty business, and often involves significant human failings).
I don't mean to belittle the letter, but Jensen's PR firm undoubtedly helped with the letter and undoubtedly had advisors who specialize in this.
Or, you know, you could be a stand up person and be genuinely contrite.
He's a big time CEO and his company is impacted by how well he handles it. So of course there are PR/crisis people around. They specialize in making psychopaths look human.
But leaders are where they are because they make good decisions - their character does matter. Calling in the image-fixer types to clean up your mistakes is easy mode.
Yes, total failure on many counts. But when called to answer for it, you can respond like a flawed human or you can have a pr crisis firm present you as a bland corporate robot who says things like “if anyone was offended I apologize” or “we’re going to investigate how this happened.”
I think his answer was solid and seemed genuine. Doesn’t mean I think he’s got good judgment generally, but at least this was not a shitty thing to say.
As apologies go it’s skillfully done. But it’s almost entirely about his personal failings (the affair), and it leaves plenty of room for a slow-walked board investigation that will end with a report designed to look thorough while concluding nothing.
Even if he didn’t know she was an intelligence asset, it’s hard to believe he didn’t at least suspect Megaspeed was a conduit to China. If you read the press reports, there were a ton of red flags.
Nvidia has also said he’ll stay on as CEO while the investigation runs. I can’t think of many CEOs who would survive this, let alone without taking any time off.
Its all calculated down to the pretend patriot lines near the end even though he's constantly looking for ways to bypass export restrictions to sell to china.
Probably he had to have an affair with that woman to give the CCP some leverage over him. Powerful financial entities nowadays won't allow you to have any opportunities unless they have have leverage over you.
Maybe he had to do it in order to be allowed to make sales in China.
I think I may have lost some big opportunities myself when I was in crypto because I was faithful to my wife. Powerful people need people who they can control. They need kompromat.
It's actually called espionage.
Take a read of the UK cops infiltrating animal rights groups.
When jo blo cops get the protesters they are investigating pregnant....who can only guess what goes on with the people at the pres's table.
If you think last week's selloff in AI stocks was solely about the democrats winning a majority you're naive.
This was most certainly known about last week and front-run by insiders(maybe NVDA insiders, more likely Trump insiders, but we will probably never know).
I can't believe the naivete of people in this thread taking a well crafted statement to be a definite representation of how he feels. How the hell would you know? It feels direct and authentic? Yes, that is why the personal crisis management agencies are paid a load of money - to make things seems genuine.
The only thing verifiable so far is what he did.
Watch what he does in coming days, not what he says today.
And with one letter, Jensen ceases to be a blackmail target candidate.
Author David Brin has been outspoken lately about politicians taking active measures at neutralizing the effects of blackmail, (which Jensen’s activity happens to match), in pointing to an older post of Brin’s:
https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-hero-might-escape...
(i don’t recommend reading directly as it is verbose, but summarize with AI)
How did they met? If it was a spy operation, then it will be an interesting case study to learn how the spy agency managed to connect these two without raising suspicion, and the information can serve as a warning/education.
This is all very distressing, but I say:
Let he who has not built the linchpin company of the industry the entire global economy is levered to and not risked it all in an extramarital affair with a chi-com honeypot cast the first stone!
Given what we have seen happen at Supermicro, for example, CEO smuggling NVIDIA chips to China, it seems unlikely that no one at NVIDIA suspected a thing. Why wouldn't they want to bolster their China business?
An "exposure" of affair[1] could very well be the best coverup: "couldn't control my dick" is the ultimate plausible deniability. Timing also makes sense. Better open an investigation and get it closed while this Congress is still in power, as the next one is going to be more in bed in LLM companies than hardware.
[1]: The other party is overtly a customer, not some random individual.
This reminds me of President Clinton's apology to his wife and the nation, except in this case, it's a letter so we can't be sure he even wrote it himself or feels the sentiment expressed therein. In any case, it matters not to the price of GPUs.
This is a strong worded letter from a person with balls.
Yet this person immediately demonstrated political obedience before trump, calling AI "super intelligence" immediately when trump renamed it and multiple times in his twitter.
Mr. Rizzo has maintained that Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were “not unusual” and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers.
he will only have to deal with the embarrassment of figuring out how to spend his golden parachute money. IF he gets ousted, which is not a guarantee at all.
If he had moved the Nvidia HQ to France it might have reached the back-pages in the news but nobody would have cared.
It’s interesting how overall virtue signalling is presented as important whereas the bubble shaped valuation of Nvidia and built upon bubble valuations of major clients is not considered important enough for related statements or actions.
I listened to Jensen give a rousing speech extolling the benefits of hard, important work that you enjoy at a university more than a decade ago now. It wasn’t until many years later that I’d realized he’d shamelessly lifted the idea from Daniel Pink’s Drive (worth the read btw). I’m now wondering if his comments that his brains were what attracted his wife to him and him to his wife were perhaps less than honest as well.
I agree with the first part, inasmuch as volatility in one's personal life affects one's professional conduct and ability. The two cannot be entirely separated, but there are definitely varying scales of inter-connectivity.
Common sense and judgement fluctuate. Humans, you know, we're prone to entirely unpredictable moments of emotional weakness. Maybe we're hungry, maybe we're tired, maybe the missus or the kids have been sick, maybe we just don't want to face leg-day after 12-hours of strategising. As per the attack and defense argument: A defender only needs to be wrong once.
I actually don’t have anything derogatory to say about Jensen.
But bonus instructive irony points if (de-facto gpu-based) LLMs were used by the malicious actors to psych-profile him to probe for which of the many character vulnerabilities we all share assortment of that he would be more receptive to.
Anyone else think that they’re only making this public not because it happened but because he’s tried to go against Trump and releasing this is payback/coercion
no. this is a national security failure, and reflects poorly on the administration considering there's reporting they've known for months and still had huang in close proximity to the white house.
china has to resort to honeypots because they have few legitimate political tools to influence decisions of an american company. not so for Trump et al - there are much more effective ways for the president to coerce a ceo than telling the world they let a potentially compromised individual help make policy decisions lol
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me.
Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA's Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company, and I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy."
People reading the nvida article will be wondering what is suspected. Probably why this article is trending as well as the original.
Whether tabloid, or completely inaccurate, Nvida make reference to it and that there is an independent investigation. It is reasonable for people to wonder what it is about.
I disagree. Giving NVIDIA / Huang the stage and a microphone is begging for disinformation. Legitimate reporters can provide context, important information omitted by NVIDIA/Huang, and fact-checking.
Strongly disagree with changing it to that URL. This the kinda news you don't want to get from an involved primary source... that page is missing a crucial detail (the national security concern mentioned is espionage) and could just disappear whenever it becomes convenient to get the news cycle on the next thing. It will almost certainly be a 404 Not Found by the time 3 years have passed.
If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you are going to be the target of all the secret services of all powerful countries. Period.
It is their job. You take decisions that are worth billions, you influence people that take decisions that are worth billions, and affect their countries.
They are going to study you for years. Your personality type and that of the people around you. Your weaknesses. Your problems and that of your family.
They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
> If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you
In that case, you also have access to practically every resource on the planet to run a background check on the person of your interest. He didn't do it; that implies a lack of judgment, so he fell short of what's expected of him.
Jensen fell for convenience, or was blindsided by some trait of her personality. Otherwise, executives use escort services all the time.
Hold on, you also have China finding a person that does not have anything that shows up in a background check which they could execute with even more resources.
That trail may not have existed beforehand. You can't find breadcrumbs before they're laid. Perhaps it was her notifying her handlers of her success that was noticed.
I was very surprised to learn that he decided to stay back while the rest of Trump delegation returned back from their China state visit. The plot is clear now.
It's a cat and mouse game. Obviously, the adversary will in turn do everything in their power to make it look natural and get past that kind of defensiveness.
Perhaps as far as to say, the only suspicious thing about the perfect agent would be the lack of anything to be suspicious of.
Yeah, you don't need to go that deep. Look through histories, myths, folklore from all around the world. Powerful men have mistresses. Regular men have mistresses. Powerful women go through several husbands. Regular women, too. The institution of marriage exists to counteract the natural human tendency to be "unfaithful". No one needs to make excuses, they need to accept the fact that this kind of thing happens and update their expectations.
I say this as someone who's family was torn apart by an affair, by a failure to update expectations. Well, that was the excuse; the issues were deeper, the affair was a focus-sink and an excuse not to address them. I wonder if that's the case here, too.
(I should make clear that I think Jensen Huang sucks for other reasons.)
>The institution of marriage exists to counteract the natural human tendency to be "unfaithful". No one needs to make excuses, they need to accept the fact that this kind of thing happens and update their expectations.
fair observation and sad society’s current script still demands it be posted under anon throwaway account.
> Jensen and Kim calculated that, for men in their first year of marriage, the divorce rate is 96 percent higher for Oscar nominees and 205 percent higher for winners
When men suddenly get more attention from women, they're more likely to cheat. Interestingly, women who earn Oscars are more likely to keep their husbands than other actresses.
Rich people who can’t help themselves to whatever they want/see because they are too powerful/rich and have lost perspective. They think they can do whatever they want with impunity because most of the time they can. Then once in a while there are actual repercussions and someone wants us to be sympathetic? Get outta here
Lol, don't take out your anger for not being rich at random people on the internet. Affairs are common across diverse economic profiles of people, not just the rich. All that anger for nothing.
Rich people, lol.
I think this tale's been told cross income net worth strata for something on the order of eons (or all of human history if you really want to know).
There’s a 100% chance the dude was so hornt up that he didn’t care if he slept with a spy or whatever. Inventing a universe where he lost at Six Dimensional Sex Chess is what somebody would do for an AO3 story
A plausible reason would be that he was not looking to have an affair but rather was actively seduced. Someone not looking to have an affair would not use a matchmaking service.
lol I am not the richest man, not even close and nothing physical happened. But I once got into a parasocial relationship after decades of monogamy and no dalliances. Never planned for it, and in hindsight years later don't know what happened. And it was so cathartic.
No. Never spent money on these sites. Public website/app. You could read any comments publicly too. Never even DMed, until ... Some things just happen, quite randomly. No more details.
Remember that in the above scenario the seducer is an agent for hire (or she's doing it for patriotic or other reasons), not genuinely in love with the rich exec. Honest matchmaking can't guarantee the same experience in every instance.
Obviously the exec could have paid for the same service himself, but that wouldn't be called matchmaking (and it's not what most people seek).
> It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
This is really not true. Spies are just people, there aren't that many of them, and they don't come "customized". The overlap of effective spies and "the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world" is very close to zero.
What you are describing is conspiracy-theory thinking or the kind of stuff you see in James Bond movies. Not real life.
Obviously spies exist, like here, but she's just... a normal woman who has a job as a spy and tried to seduce him and succeeded. He may have turned down five others who failed miserably in their attempts.
And sure they try to put together a psychological profile of the person, but that's also not really rocket science, and it's going to be pretty basic stuff. "Your weaknesses" is not going to be that exciting. Maybe he's really into expensive wines. It's not like he has a secret gambling addiction.
So let's just keep this reality-based and not fantasy-based.
> The overlap of effective spies and "the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world" is very close to zero.
The overlap doesn’t have to be that great. The spies are also not random you don’t get random spies matching with random CEOs. They just have to have enough available agents and enough info on the target, physical proximity, and other factors to attempt something to work out. In many cases it’s not something that will be in the news either. It will be just a failed attempt, or just an affair.
A nerd thinking a woman is into them...that is the fantasy...No she did not happen to bump into you in the elevator, and no she is not there to attend the same AWS conference that you... and oh no... she does NOT happen to like the same SciFi you do ...and no ...you are not ohh so funny...
Again, this isn't some low-level clerk that just needs a handjob or some Grindr kompromat--this is the CEO of the second largest company in the world by market cap.
Is it the assertion was that they'll do research on you (which is why having a gambling problem, large debts, or lying during a clearance interview is an issue)?
Is it the assertion that they'll pick a very pretty woman instead of some plain-looking one (which is why historically the NKVD recruited from theater and ballet schools)?
The "Hollywood fantasy" is real, it just happens in a vanishingly small set of cases.
What if we maybe built legal and financial practices that prevented such a concentration of power and wealth that these honey pots would not be viable.
While the dynamic for the physical security of the rich and powerful has changed a bit due to drones, up until recently it was neigh impossible for the common person to threaten the physical security of someone like this, or for nation-states to do so without being noticed.
That meant that the only way to attack these people was a soft attack in the form of social interactions or social media and as such it's always struck me as extremely foolish for these kinds of people to let themselves be preyed upon in this manner.
Like they have teams of people who keep them physically safe, but not mentally safe, so in the age of social media a motivated attacker can, with enough cleverness[0][1] directly reach the mind of someone who otherwise couldn't be reached.
Why does that happen?
I think it's not so much because they're juicy targets that entities with unlimited resources can meticulously target like you describe but because people like Jensen Huang or Bill Gates are very technically competent they probably lack the social skills so they're too often the Michael Scott to the Todd Packer in situations like this[2] and when a hint of opportunity to be sexually promiscuous is presented to them they seize on it without thinking of the consequences.
Think of the married blue collar dudes who pick up bored divorcees at some dive sports bar after watching the big game and then drive home drunk, juggling multiple mistresses and a family life with relative ease for years.
A manager like Jensen Huang may be able to handle multiple business units but he can't manage a single mistress handling his unit because that just isn't his skill set.
Maybe. Or maybe the point of acquiring outsize money and power to many people is to unshackle their experience of the world, and to impose their philosophy on it. Physical security is one thing; I reckon most aren't signing up to be brainwashed for the good of the company (beyond WUSA or whatever).
A drone is a pretty extreme measure. A mistress is a very long term plan with long term ROI if not discovered and comes with the ability to influence decisions. It is far more valuable than being able to murder random people.
Agreed. The drone comment as an aside just to head-off people saying "Well actually people aren't so physically secure anymore..."
The point I'm trying to make is that people at this level can and often do have absolute physical security but have almost comical[0] lapses in psychological/mental security that lead to the kinds of things that you're describing.
The severity of this issue makes me wonder why it seemingly isn't accounted for appropriately in security threat modelling. You'd think that that the handlers for a dweeb like Huang or Gates would take the appropriate steps to mitigate the threat, if only by adopting harm-reduction principles and getting their CEO an in-house honey pot to proactively fend off external threats.
This reminds me of Ralph Klein, the former Premier of Alberta affectionality. / derisively referred to as 'King Ralph'[0] who had a reputation for drinking and gambling. On the one hand it apparently made him exceptionally accessible to the electorate because you could saddle up to him at his regular drinking spots and give him a piece of your mind but on the other hand it lead to situations like this:
> Public opinion regarding Klein's alcohol consumption reached a boiling point in December 2001 when he visited the Herb Jamieson Centre, a 249-bed homeless shelter in Edmonton while intoxicated. An argument ensued between Klein and homeless men sleeping in the hallway who were denied a bed because they had been drinking.[153] During the argument Klein told the men to get a job, which was rebuked by some of the men who stated they had jobs but could still not afford housing.[154] An argumentative Klein was shuffled out of the centre while he tossed money at a homeless man on the way out.[154][155] According to biographer Don Martin, Klein continued with his normal schedule in the following days, and when rumors of the event began to pop-up amongst the media, Klein was unable to remember the event.[154] After the event Klein called a press conference and emotionally acknowledged he had an alcohol problem and pledged to curb or stop his drinking. He called alcohol "the devil" and an "awful beast", but did not go as far as acknowledging he suffered from alcoholism.[156] Klein admitted to being intoxicated at many moments in his life, visibly during his 2001 general election party, a month earlier when he introduced former US President Bill Clinton, and at the public memorial for Calgary sportscasting legend Ed Whalen.[154]
As I understand it Klein had a security guard / handler whose job was to keep the public safe from Klein as much as it was to keep Klein safe from the public but apparently he wasn't able to dissuade Klein from drunkenly throwing money at a homeless person and telling him to get a job that night.
I would imagine that it is an interesting dynamic being the handler for a person with a lot of power, there's an interesting level of self-awareness needed by the person in power where they have to understand that they are wilfully giving some of that power up to a person that they can trust to make these judgment calls when needed and give them the feeling that they can do so when needed without long-term consequences to their personal lives.
A way to do that is to pay them well enough so that they don't depend on you to feed their family so that they can always choose to be the person that has to put their foot down and tell you what you need to hear when you need to hear it even if you don't want to hear it in that moment.
But at the end of the day it comes down to the ability of the CEO to wilfully give personal power to another person, and time and time again that seems to be single largest failing of the people in these positions -- they just can't do that.
> They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
I heard stories of the CIA doing a class with new State Department employees, or ones at a certain level, that among other things involved the instructor "rating" everyone ("You're a 4, you're a 6, you're a 5..."), with the point being "If a woman comes up to you at a bar, and she's a 9 or a 10, she's either an escort or a foreign asset, and your safest assumption is the latter."
Sorry for the newly created anonymous account to comment.
This is true.
Those of us working on classified programs get briefed on this sort of stuff and this is exactly what they tell us.
These operatives are highly trained, research their targets extensively, and are very good at their jobs. Once they get leverage over their targets they're most of the way there. Sex, money, fame, are all very enticing to some people and once the leverage is established most people will do anything to keep it going and keep it private.
Huang's coming forward and publicly admitting the affair effectively zeroes out the leverage. It's probably the best thing he could do once the full gravity of the situation came out.
I don't know if high-level leadership at every company with export-restricted products gets the security briefings they should. I bet Mr. Huang and the rest of the leadership team at Nvidia is getting it now.
It's... really not that hard. All you have to do is be content with what you have, and not go lusting after new opportunities. Although granted, anyone who can pull that off probably isn't going to be a multibillionaire CEO, because that's the kind of personality selected against among CEOs.
But if you're married, with kids, and you're willing to throw that away to chase someone else, I'd argue you have a serious personality flaw going on there.
Even if someone else is initiating it, you still have the power to say no. Especially if you're rich enough to be able to do things like apply for restraining orders or else to keep them away.
Jensen wasn't an innocent victim, he was still an active, voluntary participant.
Yes, but more or less in the same sense that drug addicts have the power to say "no".
It's not that easy to rebuff approaches from women you're very attracted to; it's much easier to avoid having the opportunity come up in the first place. I think at the very least the moral judgment should be accompanied by some empathy.
May be a better analogy is simply not any drugs, but a well funded and researched unique drug that is specifically designed for the target.
I am going to guess Jensen isn't even looking for beauty, although that is certainly part of the deal. But someone who is also business savvy, understands technology, smart and somehow well connected to AI as well as a business partner in some sense.
And perhaps it is worth pointing out the obvious, this isn't a simple beauty trap, it is a pys-op.
Although there is part of that thinks. Could Jensen knew of this all along. And it was just a way to get business going.
No, it means you apply a modicum of common sense, commensurate with your risk/exposure. While it might seem the opposite of romantic you have your security people check them out.
I'm not going to disagree with you--I've said multiple times in the past (not sure if I've said it here) that I don't think it's possible to be both ethical and a billionaire.
But that's not really a defense of the behavior, and it's perhaps a sign that we should stop valorizing billionaires.
Yet there are plenty of billionaires who do not, at least publicly, have tragic relationships. Steve Jobs? Warren Buffet? Gavin Newsom (for the past 20 years)?
Look at recent and current tech CEOs. Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg sure…but Amodie, Altman, Cook, Nadella seem to be in stable relationships, and stable in general.
No, not all men think with their dicks. Huang’s martial fidelity is below average.
True, but we’re talking about him being manipulated by intelligence or a gold-digger, then betrayed. His relationship troubles with Chrisann Brennan happened before he got famous, and it doesn’t seem like she manipulated him, rather his obsession with work and rudeness put her off (which is the opposite of “thinking with his dick” too). Then he had a seemingly-healthy relationship for over 20 years.
This doesn’t read “groomed by intelligence agencies” to me. He had relationship troubles, but they were before Apple blew up. He met Laurene Powell in 1989 and they stayed together until his death in 2011.
I also don’t think it’s an excuse that he was particularly attractive, since plenty of other men on this list are less so. Buffet married a 60-year old woman in his 70s, if he cared about looks he could’ve dated a 20-year old.
I'll give you Jobs, now that he's passed away and we have a lot of the dirt on him. But everyone else, we really don't know about.
Also, (just kind of pointing this out as a relevant factor, not really trying to insult the others), but Steve Jobs is tall and good looking. The guy would have gotten plenty of women with just a guitar and not a nickel to his name. I'm thinking Musk and Gates were very likely not in that league as far as raw attractiveness.
Ronald Reagan did have a bit of old school 1950s era scandal about him - a twice married Hollywood actor type whose kids from the second marriage didn't even know they had brothers and sisters from another mother until their early teens(? not sure on timing).
Small beer stuff today, titillating gossip for some.
What a load of bollocks. You make it sound like Jensen was some kind of victim here and had no choice. Please let's not normalize moral failings and weaknesses (especially of powerful people).
I think their whole point is that he had many choices and he should’ve known this was a risk.
He chose to start a business, stay in charge, grow it to its current state. He chose to meet politicians and world leaders and get involved in global affairs. Those choices, as lucky as he’s been, have put a target on his back.
He chose to talk to these women. He chose to have the affair. He chose those actions. He should have known the prior choices (be a major and visible CEO) would lead to a world where future choices (have affair with random women) may be complicated.
He is no victim to anything but his own ego and foolishness. Taking no moral stance of having an affair, he should have known better because he had made his choices already.
We should have known he was a security risk years ago: https://nypost.com/2026/11/08/tech/jensen-huang-ceo-of-4-5t-... (“Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang autographs a woman’s (she is confirmed not the alleged spy) bra at the Computex trade show in Taipei, June 4, 2024.”).
We’re all pretending that these people can’t afford NDAs, background checks or other people to manage these situations. What you’re saying is true and exactly the reason billionaires have an inner circle that manages all this. NFL players with a fraction of the money these people have manage that better. If you’re Jensen, there really ain’t that many excuses you can make.
i have, it's too early to speculate on what measures have or haven't been taken. i just singled out the point about NDAs because that is ridiculous to bring up when talking about espionage
I've been thinking about this issue a lot in terms of the influence on the US government. The NKVD then KGB coined the term "kompromat" for compromising material.
If you join a 3 letter agency or the military or probably many government departments and contractors, you'll have to go through a background check. The more sensitive the information you have access to, the more extensive the background check. The particular employer won't necessarily care what skeletons are in your closet. They're concerned with your ability to be blackmailed or bribed. So if you get in a lot of debt, you can lose your security clearance. Some of the most successful spies have recruited with a relative pittance of money in comparison to the damage they can do.
But there's one exception to all this: if you an elected politician, you don't need to go through any of this. The FBI can't disqualify you. Even if you're in the executive, the FBI might disqualify you but the president can overrule that. Case in point: Jared Kushner [1].
There are a bunch of politicians and senior staff who are DL (ie secretly gay). There's a running joke that Grindr has an outage every time the RNC Convention is in town (eg [2]). The ownership of and access to Grindr's platform and data is actually a national security concern.
And then there's the Jeffrey Epstein of it all.
So while things like honeypots have existed and will continue to exist (as might be the case here with NVidia), you might find yourself asking "how do these powerful people fall for this stuff or end up having dirt?" whereas I think you should be asking "do these people become powerful and/or rich because they're compromised or can be compromised?"
Someone who is compromised is on the team and won't rat you out. It's mutually assured destruction.
I'm really not sure what we do about it. Ideally politicians should be able to pass security clearance background checks but that's a moral hazard as the agency, whose head is a political appointee, could effectively veto certain candidates. This has the hallmarks of the J. Edgar Hoover years.
A system intentionally filtering out people with integrity who aren't compromised is a sobering and depressing thought.
A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery ended up losing the money when the girl they were into at high school flies themselves at them, has their kids, then goes back to the dude they were with before with the kids and child support, and this is relatively small fry and without any possible gov involvement.
The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves.
Agreed. If we’re talking inconvenient truths, I see far, far more husbands being useless married (and particularly parental) partners than I do wives. And I say this as a man.
I’m assuming “initiated by” is an objective legal term for filing the divorce. which ironically is probably oppositely correlated to fault in divorces, i.e if the husband cheats, the wife files for divorce, and it was the husband’s ‘fault’ as they breaches the marital contract
The figure comes from interview data of post-divorce couples regarding motives for divorce (and a few other questions, i.e. regret etc). It's not literal paperwork filing data.
In fairness, it seems like everyone is a startup founder. I can't tell you the number of CV's and resumes I've seen that have CEO of something I've never heard of on them.
Just saying that being a startup founder is not particularly rare or special the past twenty years. You don't even have to do particularly well with your startup. People probably get targeted for a measly 750K exit. I think on HN we get a twisted opinion of what is big money to most people.
This is how you know this is a male dominated forum: women would not be remotely surprised and in fact tend to be the only ones warning of it when it is about to happen.
And let’s face it, nerds are especially vulnerable.
That remind me of founder of a really good, Realtime NoSQL Database .. RethinkDB .
And his wisdom that he hard earned still reminds me not to repeat his mistake..
~Don't Hire a Hot young girl before you have product market fit.
This sounds incredibly unlikely to happen to multiple people a person knows but “significant proportion” is vague enough for it to still be true even it’s just one. But, I think people are misreading that you’re suggesting these were honey traps rather than just high school crushes taking advantage of men they ignored earlier in life when they become rich and then abandoning them once they no longer are.
>That principle works for anyone with means to seize.
Believing that is the first step to a compromise. This principle works for anyone period.
Just think everyone should consider the possibility that no one really needs the head of R&D. For good intelligence agencies, the guy who does low level IT will do nicely thank you very much.
No one, man or woman, grows closer to being a 10 as they age. So if you work for some of these critical companies and your perfect man or woman shows up, you should be on your guard.
> So if you work for some of these critical companies and your perfect man or woman shows up, you should be on your guard.
TBH if I was higher up the chain of command, I'd actually give less fucks. If I have a mortgage I cannot afford to lose job or money so I'm on guard because I'm one failed marriage away from homelessness. But if I have ten million dollars to my name, and a Chinese spy shows up then what exactly do I have to lose? If the company kicks me out then good riddance, I can already retire to perfect comfort and nobody can take away the memory of spending a year with a 10/10 partner.
If you know for a fact they are a spy, are we sure that they are the ones doing the finessing? can’t you just feed them false intel and develop a syncretic religion between their confucianism(or communism/ maoism) and my catholicism such that they don’t know who is brainwashing who?
Not my experience in SF. About the worst sin they’ve committed is moving to Walnut Creek to get a big house - which is admittedly fairly criminal an act.
This reads like someone with zero familiarity with divorces or people in general.
- anyone with enough money to be targeted like this has enough money to get a prenup.
- most states do 50-50 custody these days unless one parent gives up their rights. So any child support would be decent, but not life-changing. Doubly so if the guy is rich enough to be targeted, in which case he's also rich enough to hire a good lawyer. The woman in this scenario has less money, so she can't get as strong a lawyer unless she's gambling that he'll have to pay her legal fees.
- With 50-50 custody the woman can't fly out of state to raise the kids, the court frowns on uprooting them from their hometown / school system.
The only way this makes sense is if the guy relinquishes all his rights to the kid, in which case he's hardly a hero either.
This isn't even considering the ridiculous notion that this woman has a man on the side just waiting for her to get knocked up with some millionaire's child.
> A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery ended up losing the money when the girl they were into at high school flies themselves at them, has their kids, then goes back to the dude they were with before with the kids and child support
What in the world are you talking about? Most successful people you know get honeypotted by their high school crush? I don't know anybody like that. How did you determine it was a honeypot and not just a regular divorce?
> The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves
I guess that with AO3 being down people have to turn to HN to post their sick fantasies. This sounds like something straight outta Andrew Tate’s fear mongering playbook. If your worldview is such that you thought that anyone would believe this nonsense story then I’d hate to know what else you believe.
The divorce rate could be 99% without GP's situation ever happening. This stat says nothing by itself.
Even if the situation really did happen multiple times, it's entirely possible that something else caused the divorces, e.g. people who came to money like this could turn out to be bad parents/partners on average. I mean, seems like there's plenty of examples of riches frying people's brains right now...
You say “mostly initiated by the woman” like it proves something about women maliciously ending marriages to make off with their husbands’ earnings. Have you met men? Many are eminently divorcible. A lot of people have bad relationships that should’ve never started, and it’s not surprising that it falls to the woman to eventually call it quits.
They're patriotic women in both cases; in the former case, by stealing industrial secrets, in this case, doing their duty to help decentralize their nations' wealth though the family court system, thus helping to solve the wealth inequality crisis.
This is kind of necessary with AI taking over jobs. If the situation gets worse, poor chad men will have to find themselves a rich mistress (or client) to support them financially. It might become the biggest non-tech industry. There will be entire teams of people working on just one rich tech guy's wife and competing against other teams to seduce her. The last remnant of a free market.
> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
I think most normal people have tried Doritos at some point, which are the flavour-equivalent of what you’re describing here. It’s food designed to satisfy your human needs and desires.
I don't know... I mean I'm just a CEO of a one man company and even I get suspicious when a woman is too nice to me. Surely, with more responsibility you should get even more paranoid
> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
She’s a woman, not a sweet from Willy Wonka’s factory. If you find yourself thinking “wow, she couldn’t be more perfect, it’s like she’s too good to be true” then perhaps as the CEO of a billion dollar company with national security concerns you should consider hey, maybe she is too good to be true? Maybe look into that?
All else aside, if you find yourself being tempted, you make sure she isn’t around you. The CEO compensation more than makes up for your sacrifice.
I think the point is you have a nation-state adversary with millions of dollars and many teams of people working around the clock for years to figure out how to make you say yes. Including not crafting a persona who is too perfect, because that would obviously arouse suspicions.
Obviously the target has agency, I don't deny that, but it seems blindingly shortsighted to think it's as simple as "be suspicious of supermodels who are into you".
I don’t even know that suspicion needs to come into it. Don’t have affairs that are connected to your job as a billion dollar CEO. She wasn’t a barista he met at a coffee shop one morning, she was a professional connection with ties to the industry. It’s not too much to ask people earning insane amounts of money to avoid mixing work and pleasure.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I love my wife and wouldn't cheat on her, even if a nation state tried to craft some kind of "ideal woman." It's a bit alarming so many people on this thread are treating it like a foregone conclusion that all men are doomed to cheat on their wives if given the right hair color and conversation topics.
Well to be fair, you haven't been put in that situation so it's hard to say how you would act. I'm sure many people who have affairs believed, 3 months prior, that they would never be the type to have an affair.
> Maybe I'm just weird, but I love my wife and wouldn't cheat on her
I agree with you, but, brain chemistry is weird, and "wouldn't cheat on them" is easier said than done and requires a lot of discipline in the heat of the moment when the situation arises and your own hind-brain and hormones are fighting you. A blasé attitude won't prepare you foe the sucker-punch.
I've seen grown people with multi-decade relationships throw it away because they got a tiny bit of extra-marital romantic attention, and the thrill regressed them to teenagers. In the majority if cases the cheaters' amors weren't interested in a long-term relationships.
That's a valid and measured take, but most of the comments in here are not talking about the affair in such terms. They are mostly painting Jensen as some kind of innocent child who was manipulated with Jedi Mind Tricks, when there's no reason to think her approach was anything but blunt.
I don't even care that much about what Jensen did, I don't even know what his marriage is like. It wouldn't bother me if he stayed on Nvidia. But people are defending him in a way that comes off less like "we can all make a dumb mistake on the wrong day" and more like "all men want secretly to ditch their wives, and his mistake was doing it with a spy."
It could be a matter of personality. Some people are happy with what they have, while others are fundamentally unhappy. Unusually successful people tend to be of the latter type.
Lol. Jensen Hueng's case was likely figured out in a smoke filled room somewhere in the bowels of some intelligence agency in China, agents passing around pictures of Jensen while puffing on cigarettes. One them tosses a picture on the table and just says 'he always wears that leather jacket'. The others nod, and one them sucks in the air while shaking the ashes into an ashtray, 'We have a few candidates in mind'.
All of this makes sense assuming you aren't married. An affair is still an affair. If it was just about finding the perfect partner, he should have gotten a divorce first.
Sure, so its a given that they will fall to such tricks? If that's the case, may be don't develop a one person cult of personality and power. They're paid enough to look out for precisely for these things so that they don't make mistakes that'll ruin 100s of people's lives, yet they don't have such concerns when making stupid decisions. He is not designing chips, burning midnight oil on trying to figure out how to dissipate enough heat to get best performance from the chip, the kind of problems that actually are consequential. He is the pizza guy, yet cant do that well.
But somehow, it is his company that he brought to that point, and also why would he care for being spied on by a country or another? There is nothing that said that he had to swear fidelity to the US.
Few companies can afford to be disloyal to their government for any reasonable amount of time. Not easy to see in the West because most government are quite closely lobbied, but it's important to be aware of. Nvidia is of strategic importance and has been part of the USA's sanctions regime against its so-called near-peer adversaries for quite some time.
The feds tried to disrupt the civil rights movement by faking a bunch of correspondence that made it seem like they were all cheating on their wives. They thought it would work because it worked on the commies in the 30s-50s. It didn't really do shit because their wives all already assumed they were from the get go.
Makes you wonder if this is why Elon just doesn’t stay attached to one person.
But another reason why as someone of such a high caliber you should never be alone with other women. Always have a bodyguard or something, surely you can afford someone…
This is likely a reason that they use escort services (like those provided by a certain "hung" pimp), and they tend to marry very high-profile folks. It's not about having a "trophy spouse," but having someone that can't really leverage you.
It's something someone I know that they suggested after observing so many people who have affairs, and it always stemmed from private settings where a married person and an unmarried (sometimes married, but less likely) person wound up having an affair usually emotional vulnerabilities or business was involved.
I doubt this was even that sophisticated. These types of people live on deception and extracting benefits for themselves. Pretty woman walks up of course it's theirs for the taking. My God hasn't musk been paying women to birth his children? These people are more or less ill. That's why they are CEOs at high power companies.
I wonder if this was all planned out. Perhaps NVIDIA can't spearheaded by someone unimportant and dispensable like Jensen Huang. Watch him get replaced by someone from a very specific ethnoreligion.
Unlike a "regular" affair. The spy may have used many tactics available to her including knowing all his weaknesses, having the ability to manipulate his relationship with his wife by her state hacking the phones etc. With enough resources you can probably manipulate anyone to cheat or at least 99% of the population.
Essentially all CEOs of big companies have affairs and employ prostitutes. There are very few if any exceptions. Some hide their behavior better than others, some feel no need to do so. It's how 50+ heterosexual men behave if they have the resources to do so, and these guys have the resources to do so.
The consequence of this for security is twofold. First, compromising someone with sex is both much cheaper than compromising someone with direct payments of money and much easier to hide in an operational sense. Second, this is particularly so when the married mark's image (even sincere mentality) is one of rectitude and hard work and so forth.
I feel like every thing requires a tin foil hat now. Is this some last ditch ploy to stimulate noncompetitive regulation from the US government? I find it more difficult to trust anything these people say everyday.
Just to be clear, this was probably already happening, but I can imagine the board being like "hmmmmm..... opportunity?" Then we see titles with "Chinese spy" plastered onto every major news network. Seems a little convenient to me.
Pangram says that this letter is partially AI-generated. Hilariously, it's the part where he's sorry that he cheated on his wife that's AI-generated, while the part about cooperating with the investigation and affirming his love of America is real.
That's unfair. Most people are helpless against trained mind-tricksters; anyone could fall into that trap. Don't tell me you have never wondered how soldiers returning from war stop having panic attacks and soiling their clothes after seeing a qualified shrink, who does nothing more than talk. Words alone can heal, convince and mislead you. We have no idea what that woman used to lure him. He's not some random guy from Ohio who cheats with a stripper, he's a high-value target. We're talking about Hitman 3 (videogame) level espionage here.
sounds like an easy buy, if it wasnt already way expensive.
i guess we'll actually find out if he gave away useful nvidia secrets in years from now, but by then the tech might not matter all that much to Nvidia.
he was cheating on his wife before now, and Nvidia was doing just fine
I guess that’s one good thing about the whole “sex cult” thing, that everyone in it is more or less immune to sexual blackmail. The trade-off being susceptibility to in-group sexual manipulation. Not sure if that’s better or worse tbh.
robots for now will lack the status danger and thrill of a human partner - it's not typically about the physicality of a relationship, but actually power differentials, status, movement
Opinions on the affair and the public discourse aside, I have to say though that it is the first time in a long time that I see an apology letter written from a business person in the name of the company that actually admits wrongdoing and has accountability.
Usually they are more along the lines of fake apologies like "I'm sorry that you feel that way", or in this particular case I would imagine something like "I'm sorry that I was spied on, I was doing my best and nothing prepared me to deal with a foreign agent".
It's refreshing to see words like "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.".
Responsibility means taking consequences when you/your company failed or you took missteps. Too often I read of "taking full responsibility" as an empty phrase that invalidates said ownership of responsibility.
I feel like with all the stuff coming out and congress and Nvidia both looking into it, it was only a matter of time before the facts became public and he's getting ahead of it this way.
Words are still empty without actions. He chose not to take any.
What action would you have him take?
And honestly, we are all human and all of us make mistakes. Having an affair is usually something that should be resolved privately, in your personal life, not in public. The business context of this affair is clearly something he wasn’t aware of at the time and punishing him for being deceived seems extreme.
He should resign. He's proven himself an unreliable leader.
Unreliable by having an affair? How does that translate to not being a good CEO?
Seems like NVIDIA is doing great to me.
Stock is down 12% over the year
And up 580% over five years.
Yeah, but now all of those circular financing deals have even more "Why would I lie to you?" vibes. Incompetent?- no. Dishonest?- yes.
I'm all for having CEOs take responsibility. But unless it comes out that he actually leaked anything of substance than it really doesn't matter that he cheated on his wife from the business perspective.
One could certainly question his judgment. As CEO of Nvidia, he should have recognized that his position made him an exceptionally valuable target for foreign intelligence operations
Usually when emotions are involved, people don’t think rationally. I don’t think he should go around his life 24/7 on alert that anyone showing sexual or romantic interest is out to get him.
It could still be an issue if his wife divorces him, takes a significant portion of his stock and decides to sell it off. The NVIDIA board would have to consider that possibility.
There was always that risk, whether or not he had an affair. People get divorced for all kinds of reasons and you have no idea how she felt about their marriage before she learned of the affair. You also do not know how she feels about the affair, she might have some kind of private (i.e. none of your business) arrangement with him because she sees enough value in keeping the marriage intact.
Also keep in mind that divorce is not some formulaic thing. Most divorces are settled out of court and a hypothetical settlement could have terms that allow him to keep those shares in exchange for something else (e.g. maybe he agrees to pay her the cash value or agrees to a large and permanent alimony structure). I doubt the Nvidia board is worried about this issue considering the other, more immediate problems here (like the fact that his mistress is a Chinese spy).
How would firing him make any difference. He’s already got the stock.
The worst she can do is sell them off. And at something like 1.75% she would own that is not likely to damage them seriously. Besides firing him or not, he already has the stock so it would accomplish nothing.
Absurd, internet-only opinion. He's led Nvidia to a 4 trillion market cap and then cheated on his wife? Is it shitty, yea. Does it have literally anything to do with business? no
> Does it have literally anything to do with business?
Yes. The cheating is only a small part of it, although it does confirm he's a piece of trash and thereby throws into question his capability as a leader. More seriously, he potentially colluded with this person, an agent of a foreign government, to bypass export restrictions. The investigation that will follow exposes Nvidia very badly.
It could still be an issue if his wife divorces him, takes a significant portion of his stock and decides to sell it off. The NVIDIA board would have to consider that possibility.
Are we talking about what is optimal for NVDA shareholders or what a genuine demonstration of "taking responsibility" might look like?
Nothing short of ritual seppuku will satisfy the righteous hackernews commenter.
I am pretty sure he was aware that she was an Nvidia costumer even if he was not aware of her alleged status as a Chineese spy.
Resign. Bro cheated on his wife. You trust him? I don’t.
Edit: lol people would down vote this. Cheating is cool if you’re a billionaire!
Cheating is never cool. It’s awful.
But the knee jerk maximum-cancel for any offense is a problem. CEOs are not saints. Very few people are. If our standard for corporate leadership is not just to be good at business but also to be above reproach personally… who’s left?
It’s an unfortunate fact that humans are generally fallible and imperfect. Jack Welch cheated on his wife. Many other execs have. It sucks, but the world would not be better if there were a career death penalty for doing so.
> Jack Welch cheated on his wife. Many other execs have
Along with a lot of people who are not executives, and people who were not executives at the time and went on to become executives. Like it or not cheating is relatively common, our species is not strictly monogamous and the evidence can be found in male anatomy (read about it if you are interested, particularly in comparison to Chimpanzee and Gorilla anatomy).
I am not saying this as a defense of cheating; it is just a fact that people cheat on their spouses, regardless of the moral implications or how "never cool" it is.
Career death penalty is a bit hyperbolic, no?
Nobody is saying he can't retain most/all of hi billions and do something else. But, leading a multi-billion dollar business should come with some minimum expectation of morality. If for nothing else because being an immoral turd opens you to extortion.
I really don't get the sentiment that flying around the world to cavort with a Chinese spy is ok-ish. That's insane.
>Career death penalty is a bit hyperbolic, no?
"He could just leave nVidia, the company he built btw., and build another 4 trillion company before he dies."
Yes it would. I follow the moral not the rich.
Who's morals exactly? There's a big difference between following the morals of a traditional religion and following the morals of some retards you happen to align with because of your pre-existing lived experiences. If it's the later—which it is, unless it's the former—then you haven't really become moral in any sense unless you're a Nietzchian.
Literally nobody would be left. This is big issue with our cultural moment right now. In the past, it was understood that all humans are fallible and worthy of forgiveness. The standards seem to be so unrealistic right now that it is making everyone miserable. This is not to say there should not be accountability. But there should also be proportionality and second chances.
Literally nobody would be left.
If every C-level in the world is morally suspect, we have a bigger problem. Seriously, is your claim that being a bit iffy is a pre-requisite for the job? That's a pretty damning statement about capitalism if that's the claim.
The children would be left.
Moral degeneracy from the top down. At least in the past there was some appearance of statesmanship.
Appearance is all it was, don’t be hypocritical.
I think I'm with ModernMech on this one. It's too easy, I think, to focus on the idea of CEOs being forced to resign as a "career death penalty" to the degree that we lose sight of how well-off the people we're talking about are. Jensen Huang's wealth is estimated at over $150 billion dollars. That's more than most corporations in America. If he never worked another day in his life, never earned another cent of interest on investments, lived to be 100, and spent $5M per day for the rest of his life, he would die being worth over $80B. I understand "death penalty" is metaphorical, that he probably wants to work, yadda yadda yadda, but goddamn, let's not pretend that is an actual penalty.
(For that matter, let's not pretend that if he resigned now he wouldn't be able to immediately pick up work again if he wanted to. Because, to reiterate, he is worth over $150 billion dollars. He could start a new company. He could start ten new companies. He could buy an island and build a secret underwater volcano lair to start a new career as a Bond villain. Assuming he doesn't have a secret underwater volcano lair already, of course.)
> CEOs are not saints.
I concur, but...
> Jack Welch
You might have picked a better example than the guy who systematically hollowed out the American institution that was GE by evangelizing cartoonishly corporatist short-term MBA culture then leaving when the bill came due and washing his hands of that destructive movement that he propelled to the forefront of American business. There are tons of great leaders who did hurtful things in their private lives. I don't think that Jack Welch is exemplary of that first criterion (unless you count a legacy of financial engineering and grinding employees into pulp as leadership).
> maximum-cancel for any offense
They aren't saying "maximum cancel", they're just saying maybe this guy shouldn't be running one of the most consequential companies in the world when he's more interested in dopamine farming.
At the end of the day, asking a billionaire to resign his role, so he can sail off into the sunset on his yacht and have all the affairs he wants for the rest of his days isn't really on any scale of punishment or cancelling I'm familiar with.
Somehow we live in a world where with great power comes no responsibility or accountability, and it's quickly becoming too big of a problem to handle.
Hate to break it to you but cheating is far more common than anyone wants to admit. You probably know many people who cheated, or perhaps are currently cheating, on their spouse, and there is no reason you would be aware of it (it is not exactly something people share with their friends or family). If you are going to take the position that someone who has an affair cannot be trusted in any other context you are going to live a very paranoid and unproductive life.
A lot of people cheat on their wives and husbands and are still trustworthy. Bill Clinton didn't auction off the nuclear launch codes to prevent the Lewinsky scandal from becoming public. A person being unfaithful to their partner is in and of itself not a deathknell, so it's less of a risk to other aspects of that person's professional life than it might have been in decades past
Sorry do you make an oath to your partner or not? Cheating on someone after explicitly promising to be a faithful partner is as low as it gets and burns trust forever.
Don't confuse your own religious views with those of everyone else. Probably your first mistake.
I have no idea what oath or commitments he made with his wife
And I don’t look to CEOs for moral guidance and leadership. Ever.
I might evaluate someone’s good sense before investing, and this was bad decision-making, but it’s hardly the whole of his career.
Good point. Most people do make oaths to our partners. "Till death do we part."
But then we culturally decided divorce doesn't count. "Till death do we part" became "Till death or major or minor inconvenience or whim do we part." Then culturally we decided that marrying an oath-breaker is just Tuesday.
Or we just culturally decided that a centuries-old tradition didn’t mean we had to forever put up with something we only later found out we’re unhappy with. Marriage should not be a life sentence nor an unbreakable commitment.
Funny things, the rules we make up to justify nonsensical behaviour.
He cheated on his wife with a Chinese spy and sold her millions of chips which were routed directly to his Chinese competitors via her shell company.
The second part of that is a problem, for sure. The first part IMO is irrelevant
The first part explains why the second part happened, it's wholly relevent.
OP only mentioned him cheating on his wife, so my comment was related to that: his infidelity to his wife
The entire scandal is a scandal to be sure. That he cheated on his wife with an intelligence operative and whatever happened beyond that is a problem and needs to be investigated and dealt with
But this thread was about him cheating on his wife full stop. He could have cheated with anyone else and it would not have been a problem. The cheating wasn't the problem, it was who he cheated with and what happened downstream
He mixed his business and personal lives himself, not us.
Heh, good example, because that was the primary justification for trying to remove him from office over that, and turns out not to be such a good reason.
The argument around the Clinton impeachment was that he had lied under oath. Yes, the circumstances of his relationship with Lewinsky were shocking and got all the press but the charges brought against him in the House was that he had lied in previous sworn testimony in a deposition where he said he hadn't cheated on his wife by having sex with anyone else
> Bill Clinton didn't auction off the nuclear launch codes to prevent the Lewinsky scandal from becoming public.
I mean... he did lie through his teeth to make it seem better, so not exactly trustworthy no. That he didn't sell the nuclear codes doesn't mean people trusted him after that.
The people who didn't trust him after that didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him. On the whole people didn't care about what he did with his dick and he ended his presidency just fine
Maybe that's many people, but I can think of at least myself who liked him before that and didn't trust him after, so I think there's more to it than you suggest. It also followed his wife around in her political life, and she was asked about it constantly, or is she in the category of "didn't trust him before and would never have trusted or liked him"? To this day his affair and the lies thereafter are the top of what's talked about for his whole 8 years in office.
I suspect most folks like myself are simply not a fan of cancel culture. If he leaked secrets I would agree, he needs to leave. Cheating on his wife? It is not great at all. It is worthy of evaluating that person as a business partner but canceling them? No way. Humans have been cheating on each other since the beginning of recorded history.
I don’t know why so many people jump so easily to canceling someone.
Most people do not consider a persons marriage status when choosing if they do biz with them.
When did we fall back to religious level purity requirements in persons personal life in order to interact / do biz with them?
If your co-worker cheats on his/her partner should they be fired from their job?
I feel you. It is a sign of poor judgement and a lack of integrity.
I will credit him the consideration that she is a state actor probably extensively trained in how to leverage men's weaknesses and fool them.
So anyone that has an affair should be fired on the spot?
Moral absolutism has shown itself to be largely incorrect.
I’m not religious at all, but one of our oldest texts in modern circulation says “let he without sin cast the first stone”- we’re all guilty of something after all, and while some poeple have no moral compass at all, some people rationalise ”a little” indecency or indiscretion.
I’m not defending him, but it doesn’t tell me he is not trustworthy in totality, its just distasteful and I don’t like it and I think this behaviour is worth some social punishment.
Did you trust him before he cheated on his wife?
Don't worry. The blanket downvoting of anything not pro-Huang/Nvidia sends its own kind of message.
Man you've lost the plot. No one is condoning cheating but relationships are complicated things.
How is billionaire related? Its such an unoriginal complaint.
Billionaires get a free pass for their bad behavior because they’re such great “business leaders” or whatever.
That's lazy complaining - replace billionaire with person in power (cultural, religious, cult leader, political) its the same thing.
I would argue that he's not a hall pass given the coverage.
I agree that those in power too often abuse it. If you can’t wield your power for good than society should strip it from you.
Yes as you can see everyone is turning a blind eye to this.
And no one said a word about the affairs of Bill Gates, or Sergei Brin, or Donald Trump or Arnold Schwarzenegger, …
But when my neighbor Jim Regular cheated on his wife, it was on the front page of the New York Times.
Or was it perhaps not actually like that at all?
Why would a private, personal decision matter for his role as CEO?
If it does, where do you draw the line? What personal moral failing deserves to be fired for and which do not?
Why not execute him while you're at it.
No thanks I’ll just shame him and the people who excuse moral depravity.
So because he was tricked he must resign ?
Who among us can say that we haven't accidentally slept with a Chinese corporate spy at some point?
Happens to the best of us, really.
Fool me once shame on you… fool me won’t get fooled again.
It's the least important part of it. Huang's conduct, and even the romantic affar, are not important.
The corruption in terms of PRC GPU import policy and Huang's relationship with the US administration are important.
This is not a prurient sexual scandal, it's a major corruption and infiltration scandal in one of the most important companies in the world. Huang personal travelled with the US President and advised him on regional strategy, and gave him tens of millions of millions of dollars in gifts.
Huang can handle it correctly and be as contrite as he wants but it won't take away the geopolitical impact created by the operation.
I felt the same way. I can see his remorse and genuine care for his family which makes me feel a bit sad.
They're just words, brother. Don't get fooled by anything a CEO says. They say whatever people want to hear.
I’m so tired of the rote cynicism. If he doesn’t apologize, it proves a sociopath billionaire who cares for nobody. If he apologizes, it proves he’s a sociopath billionaire who cares for nobody. I’m reminded of Life of Brian.
We can’t know what he really thinks, but as apologies go, this is a good one. And it’s not healthy to see every piece of evidences as further proof of one’s own unshakable beliefs.
It's entirely logically consistent: these are just words, any combination of them doesn't change that.
When people say that the implication is they expect to see some action beyond issuing a statement.
...you do realise that every word of this would have been written by a top-flight crisis management PR agency?
He would have presumably signed off on it, but refusing to do, or questioning their judgement, would look very bad to the board.
The PR agency writes what one of the world's most powerful CEOs tells them to write. They can strongly advise sounding sincere, but it's not their decision. I would venture that the reason so many corporate and celebrity apologies sound fake is simply because the client doesn't want to do a real one.
Sounding sincere doesn't mean they actually are, but it does mean they didn't let their ego get in the way of it, which is more than can be said about many who would be caught in a position like this, rich or not.
That doesn't explain why other similar letters, written with similar PR resources, always fail to meaningfully apologize.
Not being facetious, but it is very possible that the person/people in the PR team who wrote it were familiar with similar situations or had a higher emotional intelligence.
So they are top-flight PR and crisis management companies that are terrible at emotional intelligence, and Huang just got lucky that rather than hiring one of the apparently-universally-incompetent companies, Nvidia hired the one good one, which nobody elsewhere thought to hire before?
And that’s a simpler answer than Huang actually wanting a more direct apology?
> And that’s a simpler answer than Huang actually wanting a more direct apology
I never said that. Both things can be true at the same time.
Are you suggesting that so many other companies’ PR teams are simply incompetent?
> Are you suggesting that so many other companies’ PR teams are simply incompetent
No.
I'm suggesting that a writers emotional intelligence and personal experience can show up in their writing. Especially, when the party they're writing for is receptive of the style/direction.
yeah. most people i see anywhere are incompetent.
Including at your own job? Or does it apply only to other people?
I also see this behavior quite a lot in people that claim that meritocracy doesn’t exist in our society. But they never go far enough to end point where they admit they don’t deserve their own job.
I assume in those cases that's because they're up against constraints about what they can say without incurring legal liability.
Well, usually the source of information isn't U.S. intelligence agencies via the NYT
So said every adulterer ever, after the event ... fuck that bullshit.
I'm not saying crucify him. We all make mistakes. But he doesn't deserve your sadness. His family does.
He made a horrible mistake which should serve as a cautionary tale and reminder to us ... that's all.
And the spy angle, and how that's being defended? Nauseating ...
I think it is proper to have compassion. It is ok to be sad for him as well as his family. That doesn't mean you absolve him of consequence.
If he was goofing around trying to juggle a bowling ball and it slipped and smashed the coffee table next to him, I could feel sorry for him. I'd still expect him to pay for the damage.
Doing stupid things with a bowling ball and cheating on your wife and family are not the same level error. I can still feel sorry for him in his mistake. And I can still expect him to pay for the damage. In this case, it isn't paying for a new coffee table. And it isn't just writing a public letter.
The levels of trust he has violated are deep. Not just for his wife and family. He has been smoozing the President of the U.S. to influence U.S. foreign policy towards China. Do we trust this was for the best interest of the U.S.? The world? So that his company could make more money? Or for his personal gratification?
I believe in second chances. I think he can work to rebuild trust. But rebuilding trust doesn't mean you start over with 100% trust. Put him back in the mail room and trust him with small things. Then trust him with increasingly important things as he earns that trust back. Maybe someday he might earn back enough trust to regain his current position. Ok, maybe don't restart him in the mail room. But don't restart him where he is.
--
All of the above is a mostly useless opinion. I am not on the board. I am not in any position to dictate anything about the situation. It is mostly none of my business. I just offer it as some food for thought for anyone trying to form their own philosophy. Consider compassion with consequences.
Uh, Do you feel sad for his family or sad for him, because I think he's a real POS. We men should lead by example. He's a leader, but behaves like a weak coward.
It's not hard to keep it zipped up in the pants.
I've heard Bill Gates had two affairs. It's hard for me to be sympathetic for his actions. Jensen being targeted by a spy agency and fell for it could be a little more nuanced than that. I want to learn about what exactly happened. I'm not denying his failure in any case.
Bill Gates is a good example. If you’ve heard him talk about it it’s pretty clear he still loves his ex wife and would get back with her if he could. People make mistakes. People with that much money and power are dropped into situations most of us can’t imagine.
I agree he is a real POS. But this “we, the men” discourse is insane to hear/read in the 21st century.
you sound sheltered. Everyone is tested with that which could possibly take them out.
You rather confirm the OP's point.
Mr Huang was tested, and failed that test.
He was weak when he should have led.
I've said before. He doesn't deserve crucifixion, but he doesn't deserve your/a defence.
Save your words for his family.
Rando's leaping to the defence of an adulterer is a lame look.
Judge not, lest ye be judged.
And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.
What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you.
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
I judge and I expect others to judge me. Like a normal person. But you do you.
It’s interesting the lengths people here go to blame the victim, but not the Chinese CCP.
You know, the ones that actually did the spying.
That’s an odd take. The CCP was literally doing their job, just like US and other spy agencies also engage in espionage. Whether or not they “should” be doing so is a geopolitical debate that it’s easy to moralize about but difficult to change.
Huang had many responsibilities that he failed to live up to. Sure, he’s a victim of sorts, but he also failed everyone.
Cheating is not "being tested", no one made him fuck a spy.
They played you like a fiddle. Your comment will end up on some PR agency's pitch deck.
It's so depressing to see people eat this up.
Curious what you think would be the 'correct' course of action in such a scenario
The GP isn't saying Jensen took the wrong action, he's saying that this is a carefully crafted message from a top PR firm, and that the posters saying how its "genuine and heartfelt, I can see he really cares" are just eating it up. Those lines will become advertising for the agency as they land the next big client, like book reviews, but for the "publicly vulnerable executive" PR package.
Its not that Jensen is wrong, its a good play, the GP is just saying how sad it is to watch people eating this up like they think Jensen cracked open his laptop and drafted a note, pushed it up to the public web site, then forwarded it to axios or something.
There were lots of people involved in a carefully crafted rollout, the wording of which has nothing to do with how Jensen or his family are handling this. We will never know how he personally feels or how any of this really played out behind closed doors. For all we know he and his wife are talking divorce and shouting it out and this piece is just crafted damage control.
I can definitely see where you're coming from, but I think both can be true at the same time: Jensen regretting genuinely what happened and taking responsibility, while the PR department also steered and approved the message.
GP's take seems to assume bad faith, regardless of the message. Mu question was aimed at finding out what GP would actually consider a "genuine" response in this situation.
> GP's take seems to assume bad faith, regardless of the message. Mu question was aimed at finding out what GP would actually consider a "genuine" response in this situation.
We have no way of knowing what he feels genuinely regardless of the words which doubtlessly were crafted by experts and approved by him. We do know his actions that caused this though. And the only real and verifiable thing will be future actions. Rest is fluff.
The problem is precisely that there is no reliable way to discern "genuine" from "competently synthesised".
Many social situations have this signalling problem -- in fact I would say it's the rule, and the exception is the case where it's rational to believe another person's signals because it's known to be costly to generate them.
"The most important thing in show business is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made"
<For all we know he and his wife are talking divorce and shouting it out and this piece is just crafted damage>
...just like Bill Gates and Bezos, both were found to be "foolin around" behind the backs of their spouses. A pic of a young Russian babe appears on the net with Gates. Money = power and corrupts most of us. But to Huang's credit, it likely was not he that "chased down" this Chinese spy. The Spy was the one coaxing him into an affair.
It's sort of like 1st degree versus 2nd degree. If you kill a person in cold blooded murder it is 1st degree, but if you have a good reason, or, are "lured" into the act, it's 2nd degree. I would argue for 2nd degree in this case.
Acknowledging that he compromised US national security by selling billions of dollars of chips to the shell company his spy girlfriend worked for.
What do you genuinely believe that a person looses if they choose empathy? And what does a person win if they choose the opposite?
Let's say there was a false apology. And a person here on HN fell for it. What exactly have they lost by falling for it? Let's say a person here on HN didn't fall for it. What exactly did they win?
People get to caught up in being right and "not being a sucker" that they forget if it's worth their time and worry. It seems people are most competitive when stakes are the lowest and there's nothing to gain.
None of us here have any stake in this.
I struggle to understand how you can come to this conclusion from reading the same letter I did.
Huang doesn't even admit wrongdoing for the actual important part of the scandal, selling restricted hardware to an adversary!
Besides, taking responsibility is something you DO, not something you say. Stepping down would be taking responsibility, for instance.
Seriously. The letter reads like 100% insincere PR hot air. Don't fall for it.
Good if he wrote this himself. But it sounds like the legal department been involved in writing this. If it is AI then it is really impressive.
He has tremendous EQ
His PR firm definitely does, this piece gives no indication of how Jensen is actually feeling or his EQ. I assure you he didn't draft this and push to a public website. There are literal investigations of national security implications, as well as billions on the line over this. This is the most strategic and controlled rollout of a story you will ever read. The wording is designed perfectly to minimize impact to stock:
1. take responsibility (by saying you take responsibility, hopefully there is no actual fallout from this). 2. Admit wrong doing (people hate someone who tries to cover up) 3. Talk about how much you love your family and how wonderful they are and you would never want to hurt them (relatable). 4. Write in a tone of sincere regret to avoid any public backlash (stock price depends on this).
He didn't seem to leverage that when deciding to have a prolonged affair.
with an obvious Chinese honey-trap spy.
Hindsight bias.
And that is very unfortunate. Maybe we all need better access to therapy and mental health care… billionaires included
Or maybe "therapy and mental healthcare" are simply not up to the task and it's not a matter of access?
Haha, wow, yeah I'm sure the reason for all this was that Jensen couldn't find a therapist. Aside from assuming he cheated for mental health reasons (not sure where you get that, maybe he just wanted some strange), the man could literally buy an entire therapy practice for his private use or just put one on $250k retainer to be available at all times. I would be surprised if they didn't have coaches / mental health professionals that attend to him all the time anyway.
Sometimes people cheat, especially when they have lots of offers, money, free time, travel, and time away from family. It feels good, and gives a sweet rush of dopamine, and is part of men's biological wiring and selected for over the eons.
It only feels good if the act of cheating is what get you off, which, then again, is another problem entirely.
And please, no, cheating is not part of “men’s biological wiring”. Not one is “wired to cheat”. It’s a choice. A conscious choice. We have enough will power to stop ourselves at any moment regardless of whatever bullshit “wiring” theory you might have. It was his choice and he chose poorly. Simple as that.
It always astounds me how billionaires (of all people) can be the stupidest people on Earth while also being the most powerful people on Earth.
Power doesn’t corrupt, power seeks the corrupt.
Yes, crazy how ignoring the evidence for all of human history to support your theory means that otherwise the most rational, educated, successful people in the world are complete buffoons.
On the other hand if we are partially controlled by biological drives, it explains these patterns we repeatedly observe, despite the consequences. I posit Jensen is not among "the stupidest people on earth" but that the skills that allow him to head a trillion dollar company are separate from the have-an-affair part of his biology. Of course, you could be right, maybe Bezos, Gates, Juang, Clinton, and others are just really stupid.
Cheating is not part of men's biological wiring. Survival and procreation are, and monogamy is a new enough concept.
I wonder what the pillowtalk was like: so are you ramping up production of product ABC, honey
See the TV series The Americans for a fictional depiction.
You know product ABC has ongoing yield problems from an outside source. Wait for moment when Person Z looks burnt out/stressed/etc and walk through emotional available "you can talk to me about anything" routine.
Don't pry about specific topic but wait until Person Z volunteers some vague conflict at work you know is the yield issue and try to gently redirect conversation using your insider knowledge Person Z isn't aware of to specific area you're interested in.
I'm being a bit weirded out to see, for this story (not just this thread), how the top comments are positive takes on Jensen.
He's a victim, he apologizes well, he's working with the board on this...
Is HN just this millionare-friendly? astroturfed?
Not that I expect a metaphorical lynching, but it's certainly a take when the news is "one of the most important roles in the US is potentially losing national secrets by absurd oversight".
A lot of users here probably have a lot of Nvidia stock in their portfolio.
At the risk of stereotyping, even more users here wish pretty women would pay lots of attention to them.
> Is HN just this millionare-friendly?
What do you mean by this, should we be negative about him because he is rich?
No, you should be negative about him because he's exposing an industry to sexual blackmail and espionage in a position way too high to not know better.
I'm implying him being rich is making people blind to this fact.
He had an affair(into which he was lured by someone professional) and accepted his fault and responsibility. He did not poison people for profit and tried to hide it, so personally I see this more as a internal family issue for him and not so much the worlds buisness.
If he had stored an important password on a postit on his laptop, would you call that a private matter?
I'm personally not interested in the morals of cheating, but claiming this is a private issue is crazy, as is removing his agency and implying it was something done to him. You don't fall in a random's bed by stumbling.
True, you get seduced. You think Russian and Chinese spy agencies leave these things to chance?
> If he had stored an important password on a postit on his laptop, would you call that a private matter?
Whoa, whoa, who, whoa, whoa! You know the rules: no leaking next week’s headlines in advance. What kind of outfit do you think we’re running here?
I do agree though: regardless of whether the woman is a Chinese agent or not, and regardless of whether he knew or suspected (I doubt he did), this affair represents a serious lapse in judgement that has implications far beyond his personal life.
If you can be compromised personally, you can certainly be compromised professionally.
I suspect it won’t happen, because it would likely tank the stock, but really he should be thinking about resigning.
"Oops, I tripped and somehow my penis ended up inside them."
While I agree with the top level in this thread that it _is_ refreshing to see someone like Jensen taking responsibility for once, I disagree that we should absolve him of all wrong doings. This is also not just a personal matter. If this person was indeed a Chinese spy (I believe this is still not confirmed), then that can have big impact on NVDA. Naturally, it may also not have any impact, but regardless, if it is the former, it certainly is not an internal family issue.
"I disagree that we should absolve him of all wrong doings"
I did not. If there was more to it, leaked confidentials, blackmailed deals etc. then yes, he will be responsible. There is an investigation. But what is known, so far he "just" cheated on his wife. And this is what they have to deal with.
Whether it happened or not I don't think is relevant, the lack of judgment in opening himself to blackmail, etc., was a lapse in judgment that at least IMHO disqualifies him from leading one of the most valuable and strategically important companies on the planet.
For what it's worth, I believe the military would agree, that would lead to a pretty quick loss of security clearances.
The dude isn't running a McDonalds franchise, after all. Everyone is saying he "took responsibility". No, he admitted it after it was already public (which is no great act of courage), now the board needs to actually make him accountable. And unemployed.
I'm not sure why we should give a fuck unless she was a spy or whatever.
Edit: Oh
I see a lot of comments like this, but I’m not sure people thinks he should’ve done. He cheated on his wife, that’s a bad thing. But let’s say he was single and got into bed with a spy, the situation wouldn’t be any better for I’m. So, what’s the actual criticism?
- he should’ve been more careful? How?
- he should never get into a romantic relationship because they could be a spy?
I think this is the wrong take. Being rich doesn’t suddenly reduce people’s humanity.
Assuming the spy angle to be true, He IS a victim as a target of a concentrated effort by a nation state to compromise him.
If all it took to compromise US national security was for a nation state to exploit the oldest backdoor in the human/male psyche, then I’d say there’s something wrong with the national security defense strategy.
Don’t blame the single point of failure, blame the design, maybe the designers.
It should never have been possible.
Having said that, Russia/China wouldn’t use this strategy unless it worked against most powerful men and their psyche.
Based on HN, a programmer who used company laptop for interview is total irresponsible unprofessional looser, no one should hire him. Whoever says something else is heavily downvoted.
CEO who gets honey-trapped by stripper agent ... is well meaning smartest person ever.
Very apt and timely comparison.
The implication is that HN commenters have a tendency to attribute more humanity and depth to rich and powerful figures than they do "nobodies."
I don't know about HN being millionaire-friendly (it probably is), but right now it looks like prop 40 (one-off tax of 5% on billionaires) in California is about to fail. Make of that what you will.
I'm not American but having retirement money be in the markets creates some wild downstream effects
Because Huang's decision to invest heavily in CUDA and GPGPU for years and support it across their entire consumer and enterprise product stack, before even crypto, was impressively prescient.
Say what you want about the Altmans who lucked into a rising tide, but Nvidia has been doing hard engineering, consistently delivered, strategically brilliantly for a couple decades now.
Plus, the primary risk here isn't that secrets were exposed but rather that Huang attempts to hide the thing and makes himself vulnerable to blackmail. The facts leaking (three letter agency off the record?) nuked that possibility.
It is rewriting history to think that this was prescience.
They lucked into being the available useful product when the transformer dropped. This was not some megabrain multi year preparation they had been doing.
Jensen did attempt to hide the affair. That's why it was an affair. Even now he does not mention the fact that he sold billions of dollars of chips to his girlfriend's shell company, violating export controls and creating a NatSec risk.
GPGPU across the product line with a stable programming interface isn't contingent on LLM success.
It was a bet that the future would need more streaming parallel compute, and GPUs were well-placed to deliver it.
That's a shrewd bet, and one AMD (and Intel) were stupid not to also make.
Even while admitting that this apology genuinely is one of the better ones I've seen, I am with you. The response is a bit... fawning.
Can you explain how he's not a victim of a Chinese intelligence operation?
Clearly his wife is the victim of him cheating. And he's a victim of a foreign intelligence operation.
It doesn't even mean he deserves sympathy but I see no rational basis for saying he's not a victim of anything here.
It's stockholder psychosis. Similar to AI psychosis. It's easy to convince the poor to defend you when you give them the illusion that their fortunes are riding with yours.
> Is HN just this millionare-friendly
He is a billionaire and people here fall over themselves idolizing figures like him. You get the sense reading HN comments that they respect founders they don't know more than their own spouse or kids.
Usually someone in the executive staff making mistakes ends up being required company training.
The phrases “I’m sorry” and “I take responsibility” are like Flex Tape for any problem.
Responsibility is only mentioned in the context of who to contact regarding this. It’s basically do not bother my wife I cheated on, she only found out about it from the news like all of you.
Responsibility implies consequences and as far as I can tell there are none so far, other than minor embarrassment.
>the first time in a long time that I see an apology letter written from a business person in the name of the company that actually admits wrongdoing and has accountability
Yeah, but how often is a "business person" (a) clearly personally, entirely responsible for a mistake like this and (b) is a significant enough "business person" for such a public letter to even matter?
To put it another way, Huang's apologie is how someone in his position would address a situation like this. It's not very impressive to hear a CEO make a personable apology for making such a personal mistake. Like, how else would it read?
Like, it wasn't that long ago that Bill Gates' got called out for similar things and made a similar apology (https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-apologizes-to-founda...). Of course, Bill Gates isn't at the center of the world's entire economy while getting caught sleeping with a Chinese spy, so there wasn't as much scrutiny on him.
"I'm very sorry I got caught."
Look, Jensen got whatever he wanted, China got the GPUs it wanted - China also turned Jensen into a staunch advocate for selling GPUs to China - everything's good - everyone wins.
"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang challenged US export controls on advanced semiconductors, arguing that continued technology collaboration and access to the Chinese market are ultimately in America’s best interest. Speaking to reporters in South Korea this week, Huang described China as a “singular, vital, important, dynamic market, and nobody can replace that.” He asserted he would continue campaigning for full access to this market, stating he is "optimistic" that China will remain a key consumer of US chips."
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/nvi...
He's not a traitor or a spy he's a capitalist wanting to make money - that's the American way.
Do you have a lot of Nvidia stock? . Embarrassing reading this.
how is it refreshing to see if he had no other option. Wasn't he denying it just last week?
I dont get all the Jensen glazing. "we are all human and all of us make mistakes. " . ok so what?
A banger of a tweet: "A man who pioneered parallel processing cannot be expected to run a single thread" [1]
[1] https://x.com/FangYi11101/status/2119586357853204813
Personally I think if she's a spy he is a victim. Who knows what his relationship with his wife is. It's none of the public's business.
The only newsworthy part of this is possibility he could've been blackmailed in the past about it and I assume this is what the investigation will be about.
He may be a victim, but note that he had to choose to participate.
Also note that his wife and children are victims of his unfaithful actions. He is the only one responsible for that - he just said so himself.
He may be a victim, but note that he had to choose to participate.
To play devil's advocate here.. If she's a spy trained in psychological manipulation and seduction we'd be right to call him a victim instead of a participant since he'd be a target of those techniques applied to him. Maybe?
I would personally agree that it is possible he is a victim of advanced psy-op technology. I don't personally believe we have nearly as much 'choice' or 'free will' as NA culture of the past 40+ years has led most people to believe.
At a deeper level we do get to choose our overall environment and what kinds of things we are exposed to frequently, the recurring patterns of life can be consciously managed and shaped. But in the moment, we are more like an LLM doing a forward pass on next token. If a specific weight relating to refusal has been abliterated, it's not realistic to expect the next token to somehow still come out to refusal.
We can control our training better than we can control our inference. We have ego-ideals and specific mental makeup that can be exploited if identified.
That can help explain what led to him deciding to cheat, but no it doesn't make him a victim. People have to be responsible for their actions rather than being labeled a victim of their own choices.
He's married... he made an oath, signed a social contract to another person, his wife, that he made the conscious choice to break.
Its clear his wealth generated a level of narcissism here that rose to a level that permitted him to invalidate the feelings of his wife, who, again, he made a vow to.
It does not matter if some hot chinese spy tried to get into his pants. He still let it happen. He his actions spoke for him: "I know i have a wife, but this chinese spy is so hot. I dont care about my wife anymore, but im going to keep this a secret from her because I know its wrong". For a loooooong time.
I'm personally so tired of excusing infidelity. He is a big boy. He can make big boy decisions.
Unless they're a poly couple, who knows.
What if she wasn't a trained spy but someone naturally gifted in psychological manipulation and seduction? No longer victim but participant? Even though the effect he faced was the same?
There are other ways to compromise a target that do not involve infidelity. These “techniques” just facilitate the process for an at least somewhat willing and/or interested target.
So, no, he’s not a victim, his existing personal potential for infidelity was exploited. It worked because he would have done the same thing if the right non-spy were to arrive on the scene. The spy takes advantage of that.
And if he was a gambler and she offered him money to pay his debts, would you say he is a victim? Come on man.
We just don’t know the story enough to judge. What if he was given benzos and was immediately blackmailed for example? This is a nation-state organized affair after all, not just a poorly judged night at the bar.
Jensen's offspring are both adults, at some point the relationship changes from one of total responsibility and dependence to one among equals.
We should really stop with this "just think of the children" knee-jerk
I have friends who as an adult one of the parents had an affair and and it was pretty tough for them, and the parent child relationship has never been the same again.
I don't know why you seem to be so against considering Jensen's children. Some people really value the commitments of marriage and see adultery as something very serious and damaging.
And project their world views onto others.
I don't consider his children because they are nepo-babies that were hired into Nvidia, make tens of millions of $$$, and stand to inherit billions. They will be fine.
There are so many other children in the world that deserve consideration before his (grown adult, very rich) children.
Jensen should be apologizing to Americans for compromising NatSec.
> Jensen should be apologizing to Americans for compromising NatSec
Why? National Security is not in his job description.
There's a tacit expectation that you don't use the privilege of doing business with/within a country to put the people you're doing business with at risk.
He does advanced chip technology it's 100% in his job description and is why he spends a full paragraph talking about natsec in that apology letter
I disagree. Even as an adult I would be distraught if one of my parents decided to cheat on the other. Your children being adults doesn't mean you no longer have a responsibility towards them.
I can tell you from experience that it hits different when you're legally an adult.
For one, there's no custody case. There's often also no child support (some jurisdictions extend it to college students) to speak of.
There's really mostly the sorrow of the parent who was cheated on.
Then its time to grow up, people change, interests change, lifelong love and happy life together is and always was a fairytale. Once you are 20 and somewhat independent its time to relax your responsibility claims on your parents. They already spent a great deal of their so very limited life time on you, at least be grateful for that.
Of course people change, but there's a way to go about it that doesn't involve going behind your partners back and making national news coverage in the process. The fact you don't see that difference is bizarre.
The national new part is only because he is a CEO of the gigantic and strategic company, I was addressing the idea that parents are responsible to adult children in general.
>Then its time to grow up, people change, interests change, lifelong love and happy life together is and always was a fairytale.
If this is your attitude then you should just never get married in the first place. At the very least you owe it to a partner that expects a real commitment.
Perhaps growing up is coming to the understanding that we have a responsibility to each other regardless of our ages.
> Jensen's offspring are both adults
So, they are not allowed to be upset if daddy decided to cheat on their mommy after long marriage with some chinese honeypot? I hope you are not planning on start your own family any time soon
I believe parent post's point was that the children are allowed to be upset, but it's a bit rich for the internet to be clutching its pearls on behalf of them if they're adults.
"Think of the children" is a rhetorical appeal to pathos.
There's plenty to talk about here that doesn't require assuming how an adult is going to feel about another adult's behavior.
Forget the children. Please think about the shareholders!
I notice quite a few people worry more about the financial implications (nVidia's stock price) than the ethical ones.
I think many of his defenders are very worried about the financial implications and are defending him to try and steer the conversation in a way that will minimize those implications.
> We should really stop with this "just think of the children" knee-jerk
From the horse's mouth:
>> My actions hurt her and our children.
Parents (or "equals") can hurt and and disappoint others at any age - including adults.
> The only newsworthy part of this is possibility he could've been blackmailed in the past about it and I assume this is what the investigation will be about.
What ? If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted. Sorry, that's news worthy.
> If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted.
Not sure, if I follow. Are you saying that he has confidential papers just lying around his house? Or a computer (or other device) with confidential data without a strong password and an encrypted drive?
If any of this is true, I would say that this is actually a bigger problem, than the whole affair thing.
I'm just a humble software engineer and wouldn't let myself to handle any work related data so carelessly. Not sure, why a CEO of a huge multinational corporation would be held to lower standards.
Hardware keyloggers, microphones, spycams, etc.
The precautions you describe does not shield against any of those, and I'm not even being creative.
> Hardware keyloggers, microphones, spycams
You're right, haven't thought about those.
in that case the rootcause is letting other people into your house, not cheating
All of it together. He compromised the company by having an affair with a Chinese spy. The cheating is relevant.
If that’s all it takes then he should never have any friends either. They could be compromised too.
Advanced security technology does nothing against the old attacks of "look over the person's shoulder while working in bed" and "your work is really interesting and important, please tell me more".
> "look over the person's shoulder while working in bed"
I don't know, maybe you're right. I, personally, am very uncomfortable (almost physically) if I know that someone is seeing my screen and I wouldn't be able to get any work done in such state. Maybe I'm just weird.
> "your work is really interesting and important, please tell me more"
This one is unrelated to physically being inside someone's house.
It requires intimacy, and Huang is not in the age/wealth bracket for long distance relationship.
Actually non-advanced security technology can prevent that by locking the system / user entirely if they're using their work laptop or accessing company data like... emails while not in a secure location, e.g. the office.
Corporate security is a strong reason for leaving your work at work.
> Corporate security is a strong reason for leaving your work at work
Never met a tech executive who left work at work. Also never met an IT security team who had the juice to tell the CEO what he could and couldn't do on his corporate phone...
I suspect this team will have a little bit of leverage now.
> Personally I think if she's a spy he is a victim. Who knows what his relationship with his wife is. It's none of the public's business.
This is an interesting take. I'm not sure I agree with it. I understand the principal: that she might have been being dishonest towards him, so he's a victim of lies.
Anyone who's worked in and around any high value, high risk or regulated areas has done the training courses on these sorts of risks though: specifically, people will lie to you to get information out of you.
Sure, on a personal level, consider him a victim if you want. On a professional level, this is him ignoring training, at great risk to the business.
There are just some things that as the head of one of the world's largest companies you can't do. If Jensen Huang doesn't realise the geo-political importance of his chips, then he shouldn't be in the job. But we know he does because he spends all his time hanging around the white house lobbying Trump to let him sell his chips to America's geopolitical rivals.
> If Jensen Huang doesn't realise the geo-political importance of his chips
The chips he wanted to sell direct to China?
It seems to have a political dimension: Jensen having a laissez-faire AI attitude and being a China dove.
Jensen also probably got too close to Trump and now the China hawks and maybe the dems are out to make an example.
Also Jensen does not have golden shares/full control unlike Musk, Zuckerberg etc. so he can be actually be unseated.
He’s absolutely the victim in one sense. On the other hand, the honeypot is the oldest trick in the book and he really should have known better.
how is he a victim for choosing to cheat on his wife? Leave alone a possibility of the honeypot. Like he willingly was engaging in the relationships with that chinese women behind the back of his wife. How is he a victim now?
>how is he a victim for choosing to cheat on his wife?
He's not, you're adding details to his claim that he never said. He's the victim of a foreign intelligence operaiton.
I was agreeing that he was a victim of the foreign spy operation, if there was one.
I’m not commenting on the adultery because that’s a separate, private matter.
Is the gambler the victim of the casino?
Is the alcoholic the victim of the liquor manufacturers?
Your analogy would be good if Jensen was a sex addict who frequented brothels and China developed an asset at one of these brothels.
But these arent great analogies because you dont have to have sex with a spy to be a victim of a foreign intelligence operation.
The gambler goes to the casino to gamble. And Alice Huang was sent to meet Jensen Huang under normal business pretenses.
The analogy cant quite represent it but its more like the casino sent a dealer-in-disguise to the gambler on some plausible non-gambling pretenses to spy on him. So he's a victim of the casino's spy operation. Then he gambled. Except he's not a sex addict, as far as we know.
Yes. They can prey upon the people who frequent them.
As I said, I’m not commenting on personal vices. I’m commenting on foreign intelligence operations because that’s the only question of legitimate public interest here, as opposed to prurient gossip.
It's the oldest trick in the book for a reason.
Or to paraphrase a really old joke: Men have two heads but only enough blood to run one at a time.
The real joke is the sexism that says this is somehow uniquely a problem with men. Women do plenty of stupid things because they’re horny and/or lonely. That whole ‘little head’ thing seems like a bit of harmless cheek until you start looking at it in the broader context of sexism and gender roles, then it gets a lot more tedious.
I think the cheating is newsworthy as well, but separate: Lori likes to donate money and she would be a great target for donations if she leaves Jensen.
There's $50B at stake, so there's a huge incentive for foundations to ruin what's left of the family.
> if she's a spy he is a victim
I don't know; at some point “don't put your dick in people from the Other Side” should be a pretty well known rule if you're someone important. She didn't even hide her nationality.
> Who knows what his relationship with his wife is.
Best bet: not too good right now.
> I think if she's a spy he is a victim
He's both a victim and a perpetrator.
And while I usually wouldn't care if he cheated on his wife, because that's between him and his family, in this case, he was also incredibly dumb. This guy could have cheated on his wife with any number of women, but he chose to do it with a Chinese spy. I think having somebody who makes incredibly dumb decisions be the CEO of the world's most important company is definitely newsworthy.
"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser, but you are talking to someone who woke up next to a Chinese spy."
> but he chose to do it with a Chinese spy
The implication here being that he _knew_ she was a Chinese spy.
No, the implication here being that he should have turned on his fucking brain and thought about it for one second before having sex with her.
"...he should have turned on his fucking brain...". That's exactly what he did.
He may be a victim of espionage, but he isn't a victim of adultery. He knew what he was doing, a spy didn't make him take his pants off against his will.
Or she's not a spy and both are victims of more yellow peril shenanigans. Like a Chinese national spins up SG proxy to legally buy Nvidia cards. Jenson wants to legally sell Nvidia cards to China within export control limits. He hardly needs pussy as incentive to sell more hardware. Business people running billion dollar companies (megaspeed is) talking to domestic politicians isn't a fucking espionage, just like Jensen phoning Trump isn't. Like is PRC going to lock up any western businesses men that's ever been to the white house? It's just business as usual except useful idiots will by the yellow peril narrative that a moderately attractive Chinese MILF is a spy and business friend with benefits being used undermine Jensen for following letter / not spirit of law, aka customary fiduciary duty stuff.
Is the "yellow peril", only Chinese or does it refer to all asians?
Originally used with Japan and China. It would be odd to invoke the phrase in some situation involving like, Bangladesh I suppose.
>Is the "yellow peril", only Chinese or does it refer to all asians?
I mean, Shou Zi Chew was grilled by Congress for his "links" to the Chinese Communist Party, and made to state that Tiananmen Square 1989 was a massacre despite being born, raised in Singapore, and served the Singapore military.
idk so Tiananmen Square 1989 isn't a massacre?
if I was given this much easy task on congress hearing, I'd just say it with megaphone and take the lead from there
why is it difficult to say some fact?
is it difficult for you to say so?
Because he isn't from China. It's racial stereotyping that everyone that looks a certain way is a threat to America. It's dangerous especially when violent attacks on Asians in the United States have skyrocketed as a result of this kind of discourse.
Change the race and ethnicity and tell me that it's okay.
Why can't you admit that this is yellow peril?
A guy from a Chinese country with an obviously Chinese name isn't the greatest exemplar of the idea that "it's not just the Chinese".
The concept seems to have been mostly focused on the Chinese, but that in turn seems to have been largely because they outnumber everybody else.
You can read an essay criticizing the concept at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26350/pg26350-images.ht...
(It's in French, written by a Russian in 1897.)
Thought it might be a quite fitting substitution for yellow press.
yeah as an east-asian, I find it really hard to believe that THAT lady is attractive...
hell that's the typical "before" face of countless plastic surgery hospitals -- provides a great contrast to the "after"
Defending a man cheating his wife because you probably have shares on the company is a great example on how messed up the world is.
A world in which Kings rule, and peasants defend their depraved way of life.
I really hope that you are a bot from a PR firm, because it his hard to image people being so servile to power.
I don't see how or why whether someone "cheated" their spouse would be at all relevant for anything, or to anyone other than said spouses. Caring about this, like if that was somehow important to fixate upon, is disgustingly sick. Have some morals
It's relevant because he's the CEO of one of the largest US companies that makes export-restricted, highly-coveted tech with military applications.
Because it's a matter of national security.
And because he deals with foreign governmennts and should know better being of Chinese origin that the Chinese are known to use such honeypots?
It does have shade a light on someone's moral compass and violates trust in the individual. If you break promises given to your partner of choice then you are going to break any promise period. Especially since you only apologise after you've been found out.
How do you know what promises they gave to each other? Maybe they're freaky.
Because his own letter clearly admitted that his behavior toward his wife was wrong and not up to her / his expectations.
It's a PR statement for a country that is generally conservative about these kinds of things. Could be true I suppose.
Why would he apologize if they weee in an open relationship?
Come on, think before you comment
You're not commenting on an apology from him to her. You're commenting on an apology from him to you.
It's a public document; the reasons he published it aren't even likely to include whatever relationship he has with his wife.
> I don't see how or why whether someone "cheated" their spouse would be at all relevant for anything,
I am not talking about the news. But about the people defending the cheating.
The news are not that he cheated but he cheated "... with a Chinese spy". And the post is not even about the news but an official release from Nvidia!
I do not even know anymore what is your point? Are you just asking people to stop caring about what billionaires do? Are you trying to protect the image of a billionaire for some weird reason? I do not get how do you fail to just read the news or the actual press release from Nvidia.
> Defending a man cheating his wife because you probably have
...
> defend their depraved way of life.
How about it's none of our business what happens in other people's bedrooms. For all we know his wife was fine with it or maybe she wasn't. Either way, not my business.
> For all we know his wife was fine with it
If she was, he wouldn't have apologized, he would have defended his open relationship.
Because that worked so well for Charlie Sheen?
It also worked well for Bill Gates.
He'll do exa tly what his pr company will tell him. 1. Admit guilt, 2. Apologise 3. Casually mention the thing most people are concerned about. 4. George Carlin script to follow...
This is a great example of someone not reading the article but commenting. RTFA.
Exactly. Downvotes on your comment just proves your point.
OC says Huang is a victim. For real?
Owner and CEO of a TOP 3 company by market cap.
At that point he's not a private person, his actions have global consequences (his wife, kids most likely still are private persons, that's true, but I don't know about them).
He's in an incredible position of power against the majority of world leaders, but he's apparently "a victim" in an eyes of HN oligarch apologetic crowd?! Because he was allegedly seduced by Chinese spy? What in the sinophobia and oligarchophilia is this?
If Huang wouldn't be of ultra-billionaire class and the woman would truly is a spy - he would be in prison for treason in a heart beat. I can bet - nothing will happen and by next Monday this all will be forgotten, washed by best PR firms he can buy.
victim of cheating on his wife? hahhaha c'mon people is this place are hilarious.
"To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust." I hope he told them in person. I don't understand why this is mentioned inside the NVIDIA press release.
His family is not of other peoples business....
On the other hand his family could have continued their private lives if not for an extremely public espionage-fueled affair.
Guess Jensen didn't read the terms and conditions...
Incredibly sad and demoralizing to see the rationalizations and excuses people are making for this behavior in the comments here (or for the likely lack of professional consequences). But I guess these are the times in which we live.
No excuses or rationalizations here, but: Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse? Seems like a private, family matter.
Of course, the spy aspect could be relevant from a professional perspective (depending on what actions he took or what he knew), but I'm guessing you're talking about him having an affair.
When they are the CEO of multi-trillion dollar, geopolitically important companies, and when we are talking about spies of geopolitical adversaries? Yes, absolutely.
In fact, the affair was less important. Even if they were just a very close but unromantic professional relationship it would be a serious scandal.
Most posters in HN don't think "poor corporations are the victims when they are hacked". They think "the corporations should be liable because they did not invest enough in security". This is morally the same.
We don't know that she was a spy.
It's not personal when you're in a certain role. You are not just representing your company, as a CEO you are practically embodying the company. It is the ultimate position, and it's compensated accordingly. If you want a personal life, resign from the job of CEO of the world's biggest and most strategically important company.
That is a very American take. I think there are other countries (e.g. Germany, the Netherlands) where there is a much stricter separation between the professional and private persona. Nvidia is american, and so is Jensen, so i guess it is OK to judge him by this standard. Just saying that different cultures judge this behavior differently.
Yeah you say that then your country elects a serial-cheater pedophile as president; I'm not sure you are so representative of your country customs as you think.
> Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse?
Yes, in many places, absolutely. Bad decisions in your personal live suggest bad decisions in your professional life.
People who speed take reckless actions endangering others, therefore we should fire anybody who gets a speeding ticket. Thoughts?
Now take the same point and apply it to every other crime, misdemeanor, and breaking of rules. Should companies really operate based on that? Or should we maybe draw a boundary around professional life and only consider the professional life?
What absolutely ridiculous places are these? Do you also get fired for lying to a friend, or wasting your personal money?
Does it work the other way as well, so you're forced to divorce your spouse if you make a bad business decision?
Irresponsible enough with that money, and you lose govt. clearance and can't pass background checks (even civilian ones).
> No excuses or rationalizations here, but: Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse? Seems like a private, family matter.
It is not so clear, if this is about his character and can he be trusted. This is evidence that someone is capable for lying and doing something that might not be in line with company ethics either. I don't think we can assume from humans that "he lies only in his private life, but can be totally trusted on business side".
Espionage aside, let's not forget that he was having an affair with a customer company's executive. If that's not a massive professional fuckup I don't know what is.
To be fair he probably spends all of his "free" time working. As the founder and CEO of it there is no personal or professional life. It's all one life.
He did sell billions of dollars of chips to the shell company his spy girlfriend worked for, violating export controls. So there is that.
> Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse?
Nowadays, we make them president.
A non-trivial % of people engage in this behavior themselves. Gotta remember that.
You don't applaud people for doing something easy. A non trivial % of people are in prison as well.
I don't think anyone was applauding.
There's somewhat of a difference between 1:4 and 1:200 (US) or 1:300-500(most countries)
The "big deal" here isn't the affair - that happens all the time and if he were dating an employ or something boring like that we'd probably never even hear about it.
The problem is the spying and Chinese influence - which doesn't happen all the time and is a big deal because he runs the biggest chip company in the world at a time we're trying to keep that tech away from China.
Security clearance applications have a whole section asking about extra-marital affairs, money problems, and whatnot precisely because spys use those types of things to bribe, blackmail, and pressure people. It sounds like a cheesy Cold War spy movie - but it happens in real life, as we're seeing.
I’ve seen some wild opinions on HN. One that particularly lingers in my mind was a suggestion that we use immigrant women as incubators to solve the population crisis. Shockingly not downvoted into oblivion.
HN cares about money and tech. Don’t take morality or life advice from here.
I mean there has been extensive reporting on the eugenicist sides of Silicon Valley.
That was probably just Musk’s alt account.
Not sure these times are at all unique. If anything I imagine equivalent billionaires from the past were even greater philanderers. Hell, I was recently reading about Benjamin Guggenheim, who died on the Titanic and is known for "I played the game straight to the end and that no woman was left on board this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward. Tell her that my last thoughts will be of her and our girls" - and he was travelling with his mistress while those final words were recorded.
Agreed, and I'm not even that moralistic about the affair. It happens. This guy is in charge one of the most influential and important companies in the world. He owes the entire world a higher standard of conduct. Not for moral reasons, but for security, integrity, and consistency. If he's allowing himself to be influenced by China, the ramifications for Nvidia are staggering. If he wants some sex, use a hooker, or at least have an affair with NOT A SPY. Having an affair with a spy is unbelievable levels of incompetence, and calls into question his competence as a leader.
We're not going to do the complexity justice with our 2 comments, but..
My opinion is that - particularly with the wisdom of hindsight - it is right to say this is a serious lapse in judgement of Jensen. Especially given the potential security/strategic implications.
However to then make the jump to this saying something about his qualities of leadership is a big leap. His leadership record is exceptional: decades of foresight, strategic risk-taking, and execution. It seems wrong to allow one episode to outweigh three decades of evidence.
That's fair too. Perhaps on balance a little Chinese influence isn't worse than what he has accomplished. It just feels like one of those red lines for me. If he's willing to canoodle with spies from adversarial nations, what else is he doing exactly? And is he doing it on purpose or by accident?
I'd make the observation that she probably wasn't wearing her "I'm a Chinese spy" hat when they met.
And from the reporting I've read, it isn't actually clear if she was a spy (i.e. directly trained and employed by a PRC intelligence agency).
The details (businessperson working in a viable business) make it seem more like she was a willing asset, who likely had a PRC intelligence handler.
I don't think that framing helps him. He's one of the most targeted people in the world for espionage. If the claim is he didn't know, to not check the background of a prominent Chinese national with which he was having an affair is gross incompetence.
Well, I'm also disappointed to see the holier-than-thou bias in such full display here too. If you're unfamiliar:
> It’s the well-documented bias in which people systematically overestimate how morally they would behave compared with others—especially in high-pressure or ambiguous situations—while underestimating the situational forces that actually shape behavior.
I'm sure we're all paragons of moral virtue here but the reality is that unless you've been personally targeted by a nation state and successfully resisted, then you're really just fantasizing. Yeah bro, I'm sure you would have effortlessly resisted the Chinese sex trap, right after you benched 1000, got that hole in one and beat Hamilton at qualifying. You're just that good.
For reference, one of the first things I was taught as a software engineer working in a highly secure industry long ago was that we should take psychological manipulation/seduction very seriously to avoid damaging the company and leaking national secrets. If I did something like this I would've lost my job at minimum and likely faced severe legal action.
Regardless of how much you think we can or cannot resist actions from a foreign nation state, the ultimate fact of the matter is that he failed and thus is no longer suited for his position. If I would face worse consequences for such an action, then I damn well expect someone who's paid far above my pay grade to represent a company to face some consequences as well.
Perhaps you face worse consequences for your hypothetical actions because you are less valuable to your company.
Why do people virtuously out their own personal weaknesses on here with such glee? Then again, this is Hacker News, wouldn't expect many men on here to get much attention from the opposite sex. You're probably right.
There was never a time when men didn't have affairs.
It takes two to tango!
Nor did I imply there was. I was talking of consequences when they came to light (doubly so when they materially impact one’s company and national security).
There was never a time when it wasn't deeply frowned upon either, because having an affair is not the norm.
Read Anna Karenina sometime. Tolstoy shows both the aspect of a society in which rich men having affairs was considered the norm, and the destructive effect it has on people. (And also the double standard by which women were judged much more harshly than men for having affairs). And he also, by comparing the two main relationships in the book (Vronsky's affair with Anna, and Levin's marriage to Kitty), said "It doesn't have to be this way, you can have healthy relationships if you just reject society's advice to have affairs and instead stay faithful to your wife".
I didn't like the book when I first read it (mostly because I seriously dislike Anna, and the book naturally spends a lot of time being told from her POV), but in retrospect, it's brilliant. Tolstoy has, without a single bit of moralizing, presented one of the best arguments I've seen in literature for being faithful to one's spouse and not engaging in affairs.
P.S. I should add that I don't think Tolstoy was inventing the "rich men having affairs was considered normal" aspect for the purpose of the book. I think that was what Russian society was really like at the time, and he took that aspect of society and wrote a book criticizing it, highlighting the negative effects that that attitude would have on people.
I think that "rich men having affairs" has been considered normal for most of human history. Of course, in China there were official (and unofficial) concubines, and many cultures have accepted and endorsed polygamy.
In South Africa, men marrying multiple wives is still accepted as long as they are "traditional". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_South_Africa.
Most Muslim-majority countries currently allow polygamy. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Do you really think it was never the norm for rich men to have affairs? That's a very optimistic view of history, I wish I shared it.
I think it's more accurate to raise an eyebrow at the idea of powerful people not habitually having affairs (historically, most of which have been men in modern times).
Because power is an ability to do what one wants, and a lot of people want sex.
How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia? As much as he seems to have done a good job, he appears less integral than with some companies like Bezos/Amazon or Zuckerberg/Meta (whether these are/were or not is besides the point, they are seen as such).
I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.
As an Nvidian, I strongly disagree. I'm sure somehow the company would be fine in the long run without him, but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success. Not to minca words, I think he is a far more qualified and intelligent CEO than pretty much anyone in big tech. There's a reason Nvidia doesn't have to lay people off ever.
> until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement
What changed today?
Every major leader and CEO has obvious blind spots. They're geniuses at X but idiots at Y.
Look at all the great CEOs with ridiculous political views. It's fine: they do have vastly superior judgement, just not in areas where it doesn't directly affect their business.
For the NVDA CEO, it happens to be a woman. That puts him in probably the 80-90% of great leaders on whom that works.
Even ignoring the alleged spitting, shagging someone who works in a position of authority at a customer company if obviously a massive conflict of interest.
I don't think the second half what you're saying is true. He has had a good hand, yes, but I think what we're seeing is "simply" the effect of a successful company being run by one of its founders. There is always a kind of reversion to mean once a successful company moves away from founder control, and that hasn't happened for Nvidia.
> ...but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success.
Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?
While there's no doubt that this is not the majority of the company's revenue, it's also not an insignificant amount.
If you had to pin Nvidia's success on one thing, the honest answer would be "right technology, right time." Without AI...And the questions about how sustainable that market is are now being asked by the market.
They've been investing in CUDA and machine learning for a long time before the current wave of LLMs. It's absurd to say "right technology, right time" when they were the ones who helped develop it.
The technology was built for 3D graphics and video game processing. The company was very smart to recognize the opportunity that AI presented when AI researchers realized that gaming GPUs could vastly outperform CPUs for their workloads, but this was a "happy accident", not something Nvidia actually predicted, planned for or initially pushed.
Yes, but they placed a bet on the development of the tech and on the time it would be relevant which was a huge risk.
> Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?
its always been well known. its that line item of suspiciously high sales to singpapore. its never been a real concern.
> its never been a real concern
Except it has been. There are people in multiple countries, including the US, Singapore and Taiwan, facing lengthy prison sentences for this. In the US in particular, violating export controls is a game you only play if you're looking for years of free federal accommodation.
Examples:
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-authorities-shut-down-majo...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/chinese-national-and-tw...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-man-arrested-smugg...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d9y18g73o
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/25/taiwan-ch...
https://asiatimes.com/2026/11/taiwan-to-criminalize-nvidia-a...
I think that says more about other CEOs than of his brilliance.
It is definitely the era of 'footgun leadership'
"I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, "
God god, no.
There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
Other than handing over very detailed schemas etc, there's almost nothing important he could tell them.
Maybe some future ideas and plans, maybe some government things about the Administration, it's small peanuts.
Nvidia is an operational success, their IP is embedded within deep layers of know how and expertise.
He's the 'father' of that org, he set the tone, they like him there.
Nvidia would risk being an Intel without him.
He denied, implausibly, all knowledge about Supermicro. I don't think that is going to work this time.
The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. Again, this is something that Nvidia and Jensen has been investigated on repeatedly. If he knew that Megaspeed was a front for China, quite hard to deny given that Alice Huang seems to have brought Chinese execs to every meeting with Jensen then it is very bad. And yes, the stuff that Jensen would have said would have been very useful because, I assume, the inference is that he would have been helping them evade sanctions.
The very best case from here is that the board fires him.
"The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. "
If that were true, then it's fair game, but I don't think that's what is going on.
US gov has not stated they are targeting him.
Also, there is a gigantic difference between 'avoidance' and 'evasion', like with taxes.
We'll see.
> "US gov has not stated they are targeting him."
Do we know that yet for sure? There's a closed-door US congressional hearing scheduled for nov/18
We know what they have said, and they are not targeting him, they are targeting the spy.
I think it's very unfair to suggest they are targeting him, when there isn't even mention if it.
He's obviously entangled in this so he'll at least be the subject but beyond that it's not fair to say.
It would have to be 'very, very serious' for the US Gov under a super pro-AI/pro-business agenda to take down their #1 CEO over something indirect.
Musk has direct meetings with Putin for gosh sakes.
> Musk has direct meetings with Putin for gosh sakes.
You mean over the phone?
Direct interaction, not in-person. And many more interaction with high level Russian and Chinese state actors. Huge investment from Chinese state banks and critical contracts for data collection.
> Huge investment from Chinese state banks and critical contracts for data collection.
He admitted having talks with Putin during 2023/2024.
His Tesla China can help him circumvent any investigation or questioning from US authorities
> The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls.
This would have generated extra profit for Nvidia. So I doubt they'd care unless the US government chose to take legal action against Nvidia. And that's unlikely to happen under the current US administration.
A spy like this isn't looking for chip schematics, they're looking for strategy. Strategy that comes from the CEO. Ultimately the main thing a CEO brings is judgement, and this was extremely poor judgement.
Strategy changes all the time. It will change overnight with the election results. What matters most is the information underlying that strategy, like, if ASML was coming out with some very specific new thing that would tilt the industry - that would be key.
I don't care that he had an affair (none of my business; who knows the terms of his relationship with his wife; Americans / humans are far too moralizing in controlling sex) and, even if it was wrong in the context of his marriage, I don't think someone should be fired for that.
If he knew / suspected she was a spy, yes, absolutely. If she was given access to confidential information, yes, absolutely.
If he thought it was a romantic relationship, fine, that doesn't affect me / NVDA / America.
Obviously he should stop now that he knows! But if he didn't at the time, you know, I think I can still trust him to make computer chips.
I agree. Judgement on love affairs and judgement on chip strategy are completely unrelated categories of judgement.
"Bad judgement" is a tool used in political rhetoric used to blame someone when there's nothing of any substance to blame them for.
However, all of this changes if it turns out that he gave his lover's company any kind of preferential treatment or that she was involved in China related lobbying.
This is what the investigation will focus on in my opinion. If they find anything at all then he will have to resign.
Not knowing someone is a spy is extremely poor judgement? Telling his mistress all kinds of corporate secrets would be "extremely poor judgement" but at this point I see no evidence that this happened?
> God god, no.
> There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.
I think the practical implications matter a lot less than the PR and legal ones.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, the board may have to act.
Similarly, if the right governments start asking hard questions, the board may have to act.
This is likely going to be a slow-rolling shit show for a while. At the very least, it’s legitimate grounds for one or more congressional investigations, which may start here but could go anywhere.
If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, it is likely ppl are afraid he'll be replaced. If the board "act" by replacing him, the price is likely to dive more, not recover
Elon Musk makes nazi salutes and says radically unhinged things, and does many things which are arguably illegal.
Most investors don't care.
Unless there was some 'materially detrimental disclosure' this is just tabloid.
The fact that Elon has a literal harem, Tesla has $500M loan from Chinese banks with all sorts of conditions etc.
Elon literally does Zoom calls with Vladimir freaking Putin.
I think this is a nothing burger.
If there isn’t anything important he could tell, then he isn’t very important and they don’t need him.
I've interned at NVIDIA and my impression was, he is extremely vital to its past and ongoing success. I don't know about him personally and his character, but he knew how to foster a motivating work culture with a sense of excitement and purpose. Maybe Nvidia is now at a place where he could be replaced, but I don't think Nvidia would be where it is now without him.
My amateur opinion is not very? They made the best graphics cards had a share price of $10 and then graphics cards started selling extremely well because of the crypto currency craze and now AI.
I think these trends happened to them despite Huang.
> How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia?
He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.
What percent of nvidias success was due to vision, vs luck?
I made a boat load of money off of the Tesla IPO(and then holding for 12 years) but I only invested because I thought they wouldn't be a successful car company but would produce a bunch of patents that would be valuable when licensed to the big auto makers.
Obviously I got that wrong, but my investment still worked out - and I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
If it happens 1 time, you can call it luck.
But CUDA, Ray tracing acceleration, DLSS? It's not luck anymore.
Although I'm still more of a "Voodoo person" myself, the "Riva128 guy" has shown bold vision and relentlessly fierce execution on top of it - consistently - since the early 90s..
> what they do
So, he is responsible for the crypto and AI bubbles? If tomorrow AI crashes and Nvidia share value with it would that make Nvidia CEO an idiot?
CEO worshiping is going too far.
Somehow Intel can't take advantage of the very same bubbles.
Jensen is extremely hands on. If he is replaced NVidia is cooked.
The dude is 63, there has to be some kind of succession planning? Or is it just expected the company is one helicopter accident away from becoming completely doomed?
Holy change of topic Batman!
Intel is apparently fine (it's not fine) with a rotating cast of CEOs.
You are right though. At least whoever is trying to oust Jensen is nice enough not to bring out the usual tools.
Navigating this political/diplomatic climate is key to Nvidia's success, and he appears to be driving that? In normal times maybe it would be different.
At the current state, maybe not much. He was integral to the journey, of course.
The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.
He's a vulnerable founder just like Steve Jobs was and he's also the closest to Jobs in terms of brilliance and impact in the current playing field.
He's been consistently showing up and proving himself over decades to be core to Nvidia's success - core as in leadership. I would look to sell my Nvidia shares without knowing him being at the helm.
I think his fear of failing is the reason for their success.
I hope he at least gets a nice severance package in that scenario. Tough job market in tech right now.
What's this puritanical streak? Men in power have been having affairs from time immemorial. It's not great but it's also not original. The guy works for a corporation, not a church. Yawn.
We’re going to find out tomorrow and I suspect in this case the answer starts with a B.
I have seen and read this a lot over the years and I am starting to wonder may be it isn't Pat Gelsinger that called Nvidia lucky but people actually felt it that way naturally.
For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.
Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.
And for another note about comments elsewhere in the thread that Open AI is what brought up the current AI craze. Nvidia was already selling to OpenAI via introduction of Elon Musk in 2016.
I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.
That Nvidia exists, it is ATI / AMD GPUs. They are doing mostly OK, but nothing like Nvidia especially in the dollars department.
I'm skeptical that he gets fired for this. The "Spy I loved" James bond style twist combined with his iconic leather jacket might actually come off as badass.
We can look across the aisle to AMD to see how much difference the CEO makes.
Not really. The key difference IMHO is not the CEO, it is that ATI/AMD always was the smaller underdog, while the established players Intel/NVIDIA get thrown money at them due to the "no one got fired for buying IBM" effect.
My understanding is that he has something like 50 direct reports. Which would make him a pretty major single point of failure.
Not to sound too negative but IMO NVidia has largely been "right place, right time" and I don't think Huang has had much to do with it. NVidia made computer graphics cards and CUDA long ago; they just happened to be in the right place, twice, in quick succession: first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting. It's like they set up a general store that sells pickaxes and drills, then someone found gold in the mountain right next to them, and then the goldmine ran out but someone found oil right under them.
The one big thing I will given Huang credit for is not going all-in on blockchain and recognizing it as a bubble. NVidia never really pivoted from their core business/customers to support crypto miners, unlike what they're doing with AI.
There were a lot of computer graphics cards manufacturers back in the 90's. Nvidia survived amongst the whole pack of them. 3dfx, Matrox, S3, ATI, Cirrus. How much of that is soley due to Jenson vs outside factors outside of his control, only he really knows, but I think her deserves a bit more credit than right place right time. CUDA was a very expensive investment with zero guarantee of payoff. The market could have gone an entirely different way and Nvidia would have failed.
That's fair. NVidia's execution has been rock solid for as long as they've been around and Huang deserves credit for that. But I would say most of the reason they've 100x'd since 2017 has been external forces.
Yes the demand of comapnies for AI compute which Nvidia delivered. These are still the external forces which let it grow at 100% YoY despite >$200b in revenue.
Did you forget the crypto boom?
> first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting.
Nvidia boosts AI a lot. They are the central bank of AI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49673098
Maybe the verb tense was unclear. NVidia currently boosts AI, for obvious reasons. But OpenAI was the company who did all of the legwork to make AI into an industry, with some minor support from NVidia. NVidia wouldn't have 10x'd since 2022 without OpenAI.
AI has been a (minor but existing) industry before OpenAI. E.g. Deepmind exists since 2010, 6 years before OpenAIs founding. Sure, OpenAI has contributed to it, in great deals, but Nvidia has always been there during the growth of AI. In 2012, AlexNet has been trained on GTX 580 GPUs, in 2016 AlphaGo used Nvidia GPUs, etc.
To be honest other hardware companies had years to catch up to Cuda and ML, but they invested shit into their software stacks.
Even when AI boom was imminient but 10 times smaller 2-3 years ago they did not invested heavily enough and Nvidia went all in.
I have no clue what percent of that decision making was Huang, but all the competition leadership was certainly incompetent.
So at least he did built company with a good leadership. Its a fact. Even if I personally dont like Nvidia or its products.
Yeah, they had been working on CUDA for a very long time before AI turned out to be interesting again.
> they just happened to be in the right place, twice, in quick succession
that is generally what it looks like when someone is smarter than you
> that is generally what it looks like when someone is smarter than you
Maybe. This is also what everyone said about Elon for a long time, though.
It's not that Musk is not smart, he's just erratic, and growing increasingly so. He is the Howard Hughes of our day. They will find his body in an expensive hotel room at some point, surrounded by bottles of his own urine.
Maybe that's the jetfuel we need to get to Mars.
I challenge anyone who says “Elon not so smart” to name a topic in his wheelhouse that you think you can discuss in more detail than him. Because I’m certain he’d run circles around all but experts, in rocketry, auto tech, power cells, and more.
I mean: dude is smart. Everyone just wants to deny him that because he’s now an anti-immigrationist and they can’t stand the thought of him being both awful and smarter than them.
He'd better. It would be a pretty severe embarrassment for a layman to know more than you about your own industry.
The trap he and many other smart idiots fall into is believing that having a high degree of expertise in one area qualifies you to speak authoritatively in unrelated areas. These days maybe you could call it Claude-smart: pairing situational brilliance with unwarranted confidence at other times. The really properly smart people I've met are good at tempering their statements with their degree of certainly based on their own qualifications.
Sure, I agree. My beef here is with people who insist he’s a dummy when it comes even to rocketry, etc. That he only just hired people, but otherwise is not himself any sort of expert. Just lucky (over and over and over, apparently).
The had the insight to develop and promote CUDA long before DL was a thing. IIRC AlexNet was when CUDA really paid off.
Yeah, but in this case they also built the pickaxes and drills and did it better than any other pickaxe and drill builder. In your analogy, they are commodities and a shop like that can be set up by anyone. But in this case, that doesn't apply. And if you look at their sales composition, they never pivoted away from gaming, but data centers clearly became ludicrously more attractive in the AI era. But they were always very good at computing triangles, perhaps the best in the world. They were lucky that market forces made that computation very valuable but they were not lucky in their ability to build it.
I do agree! They execute extremely well and Huang deserves praise for that. I just don't see him as a visionary leader shaping the industry in the same way that e.g. Jobs was. In an alternate world where the NSA doesn't create bitcoin and OpenAI is never founded, NVidia would be a stable, reliable producer of consumer electronic parts.
how can you be sure though we wont find a good use of computing triangles in that alternative universe? that technology would always have abstract value, how it is impmemented will depend on market forces but you have to admit, they know how to go with the flow, maybe to an extent where it seems like they just keep getting lucky
How integral is Nvidia to the success of LLMs? Seems like a few companies could step in and put that TSMC capacity to good use...
I'm sorry, who exactly? NVIDIA essentially has no real competition because of how wildly successful they are.
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, AMD, Apple, Huawei...
These aren't all entirely drop-in replacements, there are some trade-offs involved, but there are many companies with alternatives that could take Nvidia's market if they stall.
> Google, Microsoft, Amazon, AMD, Apple, Huawei...
Which of those sell chips at the Nvidia caliber sell to AI model builders in the US (not use internally)?
Google
Not internally, which is what Googles TPUs are for
Apple just needs to bring back the Xserve :p
It boggles my mind that Singapore!=China in terms of export controls. They're the same thing.
It boggles my mind that you think Singapore and China are the same thing. Because why? Lots of ethnically Chinese people? Is Taiwan and China the same thing too then?
While I understand what you're saying, it's pretty well known that Singapore is a major gateway for Chinese espionage and theft of intellectual property and company secrets.
by the way - are we allowed to debate whether the alleged honeypot was in fact herself an intelligence agent of one sort or another, or was it just the (somewhat justified) background level of ‘she / her company is a Chinese national / has significant Chinese ownership whether private or public, and therefore subject to China’s version of our US national security letters.
I just was seeing very little advance-neutralizing of 1950s Red Scare talk in these comments.
Spooks from CIA must be aware of this for a long time. The only question now is why this information is leaked now? What is the distraction they are trying to create by leaking this now?
It just seems like a coordinated crack down on Nvidia's relationship China.
Consider that the leak destroys the legitimacy of Huang's lobbying efforts efforts against tighter chips controls to China. In parallel the NYT released yesterday their investigation into commerce dept approvals of h200 chips to Chinese entities that the NYT claims are ghost offices linked to Chinese military contractors [1]. Also consider that these events put Nvidia under long term congressional security oversight with an installed watch dog. Nvidia is losing it's autonomy to cut international deals. Seems like the CIA/permeant state is getting nervous about China again.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/business/economy/nvidia-c...
It was known for months already.
(May 2026) https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...
> Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has not only vouched for Megaspeed, but seems to have quite literally walked alongside Megaspeed at every step, while maintaining an uncomfortably close relationship with Megaspeed’s Alice Huang, a Chinese national. He was first spotted partying with Alice Huang in June 2024 – the same month the Apex/Alibaba pledge was filed. He then dined with Alice Huang in Taiwan in May 2025 - just weeks after the news of U.S. trade restrictions.
I would think it’s timed to the market correction. Less stock drop when all ai stocks already dropped.
It could be just as simple as taking time to be confident. Or it could have been somebody wanted to use this as a bargaining chip and failed somehow... Who knows.
Just days after midterms? Sure
It has already leaked Trump and Rubio knew about this for 1 year.
I would guess it's to avoid Congressional investigations.
Maybe whomever knew wasn't sure of the election outcome of the revelation so they held it until reasonably afterwards.
Why assume it was a US leak?
The administration has known about it since at least May. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/08/us/politics/rubio-nvidia-...
This "what distraction are they trying to make" line is ridiculous conspiracism. It's completely obvious that someone leaked it to the NY Times because they are alarmed that the admin is doing nothing about what is obviously a huge national security problem.
He has a close relationship with Trump, so this could be an internal Whitehouse play to hurt Trump, or, he might have "disappointed" Trump, so this could be punishment.
Alternatively this could be a Chinese play designed to sow dissent and disruption in the USA post the mid-terms.
Or, it could just be a rather trivial story about an over confident and all to human titan of industry making the kind of mess in his personal life that a lot of people end up making - watch any TV mini series for example after example.
How would personal trouble in Huang’s life hurt Trump? Compared to all the other things that Trump has done to hurt himself, culminating in the midterm results?
And China, really? What dissent is this going to cause? As for disruption, Nvidia essentially has a monopoly on what they do. Who the person in charge is, or what he’s doing, barely matters at this point.
> watch any TV mini series for example after example.
You might have been watching too many of those.
Spooks is a pretty knowing term to use. Not exactly a word the average person throws around. And yes, they likely knew long before now. Right after the midterms? Interesting timing. Seems the spooks are doing what spooks do.
There’s a British TV show with that title
hey been trying to meet you
They had to rename it to “MI-5” for the US market. The word doesn’t have the same connotations in the US as it does in the UK. One reason is that it was used as a racial slur in WWII and after the war.
It generally doesn't. People should stop reviving the negative connotation. Sure if someone is calling a black person a spook let's call them out but if that's not how it's being used let's not insist it's an inherently racist term. It's totally counter-productive.
Not what you are doing, and I understand that's why they renamed the show but they shouldn't have. While it can be used as a racial slur it doesn't generally have that connotation. I think if you directly asked most people they would either not know about the slur or say something like "I think its a racist term for some group or something." I had to look it up myself to be sure. We can choose to let that usage of the term die.
I think that's just a result of the term falling out of common use in the US. I'd expect 30 years ago "Spooks" would be a perfectly fine name for a TV show in the US. (I remember watching spy shows/movies and reading spy novels as a kid in the 80s/90s and hearing/reading that term.)
What are you talking about?
You seem to know it.
what? no it isn’t
Take this with a grain of salt, but my guess is that the board on some level has to judge him as being so high performing that they would try to keep him as long as that doesn't cause too much PR damage to the company, or the deals get them in too much trouble with the government.
This is just a total guess, but I assume what a lot of the board want is for him to sell as much to China or indirect channels as he can get away with. So whatever these deals were that involved this woman, they probably want him to get those deals through it he can get away with it (although they wouldn't admit it).
I see this more or less as Huang doing his job. And relative to international expectations at that level of wealth, one public affair is probably not something most of the board (presumably largely male) is going to (privately) judge him for.
So if the board is investigating, I assume what they are trying to figure out is if the US government is going to do anything (probably not) or waiting to see if there is going to be some kind of public demand for him to be removed. Or it there is something likely to come out that will cause either of those things.
The board is investigating because the woman he had the affair with is a Chinese spy.
Neither the board nor the US government nor investors nor the average person gives a shit about a CEO having an affair as long it doesn't compromise his ability to do his job well.
What OP is implying is that the Board likely implicitly condoned any effort Jensen would take to make sales to China including making underhanded deals that look like honeypot operations but may as well have been a double honeypot operation. The implication is that the outcome of said affair was actually good for Nvidia. You imply that the interests of Nvidia and the US government and by extension the US public are aligned. That’s a citation-needed level assumption. Nvidia just wants to make money. The government hopefully has different interests.
The penalties for ITAR/EAR violations are severe so I suspect it's as ludicrous and incorrect a theory as one might suspect.
What is interesting is the woman appears to be extremely mid-looking.
If there is a lesson to be learned from all these extremely powerful men cheating on their wives with objectively ordinary women (e.g. Gates, Bezos, Tiger Woods) it's that the most beautiful woman in the world is worth about the same as the woman that works at McDonald's.
1. that is a bit inappropriate to just openly say "but that spy girl looks mid"
2. The goal of honey trapping is to gain trust from the target to do whatever you want to do, not to please them. They don't even have to have an actual physical contact. A "mid", unassuming, appearance is often appropriate for this purpose. This actually applies to actual assassins, 100x engineers, and millionaire landlords, too; they gain nothing from standing out, so they look mid. You may optionally look good, but your looks should not be the means by which you achieve your goals.
3. (Extension to 2.)A rich CEO having affairs with a "mid" woman for a true extramarital love is probably more damaging to their relationships than them just disappearing into a hotel room with a prostitute with a bottle in hand. The latter is probably more tolerable to those involved and to the public.
4. Forgot where I read this, some diplomat's essay or something, but allegedly, Russians will do what you want to be happening, starting with regular office staffs and moms, escalating to scantily dressed girls, to visibly gay dudes, at which point they accept that their operation had been too obvious and give up. So there is a chance, I guess, if you must have it???
Diogenes?
I'm sorry but what is this vapid take on personal relationships and attraction? I don't get the point of anything beyond your first sentence. Can you explain?
Incel views
Not the OP, but I was also curious about how the woman looked, i.e. if she was physically attractive or not. That's interesting from a "history of honey-potting"-perspective, good for the Chinese that they knew what moved this horny CEO's gears and that they were able to match it. As far as I know it was the Russians/Soviets who were experts at honey-potting, this is the first time when I read from the Chinese doing the same at such a high level.
There was also Fang Fang and Rep Swallwell
https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/swalwell-and-fang-fan...
Diane Feinstein also had a Chinese spy for a driver for 20 years, though I'm going to assume for my own sanity that wasn't a sexual relationship.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/details-chinese-sp...
I think this has been going on a very long time, it's just that these were politicians so I think everyone just brushed it off as "business as usual."
These guys are so rich they can hire beautiful prostitutes whenever they want. Looks alone are dime-a-dozen, in the end it's personality that counts (the latter notably also holds true for non-gazillionaires).
Yeah, someone like Huang probably has beautiful women throwing themselves at him all the time and it's quite possible that he's taken many of them up on the offer already, it's just never come out before. A man who has access to such abundance of beautiful women may over time become more interested in things like personality, if he wasn't already more interested in personality before -- there are some men who care more about personality from the start.
I like to believe Bezos was still being yelled at to take out the trash and for leaving dirty pancake batter bowls in the kitchen sink.
Implying that beautiful people can't work at McDonald's?
More like beautiful people are less likely to be into weird stuff probably.
Thats also wildly untrue
From observation, it seems Starbucks/High-end coffee chains attract easier looking staff. At the end of the day, you are going to get the higher paying job, and the higher paying job can afford to select the easier looking ones.
Not at all.
There is a more crude corollary to the theory that I chose to omit for decorum's sake:
P = P
Outside of your odd take on attraction, which is way more than looks alone...
There are memes that super-model looking women dating nerds are almost always spies of some sort. For this spy to have any chance at gaining real information she needed to have an actual relationship with Huang - which, see above, is more than looks alone.
Just to be clear, alleged spy, and working for a foreign government which wants to do a tremendous amount of incredibly profitable business with the company. Which he should be carefully weighing against the very real legal risks when the US government doesn't want that business to happen. And if he can't remain impartial, the board should be concerned about whether he can make the right decision for shareholders about that risk/profit.
Alleged Chinese spy unless I’m reading the article wrong? A Chinese intelligence asset could mean someone who just had CPC membership in college. Not that I’m saying Alice Huang isn’t a spy, I just would want more information before deciding.
She was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy.
Also, just to be clear here: the story is that Jensen was also going to Taiwan to meet with this person who was helping Alibaba evade sanctions, when Jensen met with this person Alibaba reps were always there, and in the US Jensen was making media appearances saying that sanctions on China had to be lifted.
Bear in mind that multiple people at Supermicro were charged for allegedly smuggling servers to China, and that the reason Megaspeed is being investigated is for effectively the same thing. Jensen denied he had anything to do with Supermicro, it is going to be much harder to say the same thing here.
I don't think the affair itself is necessarily related to the direction this will shortly take.
There is a huge difference between smugglers and spies though. Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else, you definitely don’t need a handler in zhongnanhai.
> Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else
What you need to be a smuggler is to avoid prison.
When one side is fully aware that you are a smuggler that they can rat on to the other side whenever they want, even a child could blackmail you.
So that's one (fairly realistic imo) pathway from smuggler -> to espionage.
This is a hypothetical anyways.
She is a CEO in Singapore, she avoids going to jail by obeying Singaporean law. I don’t know how American law would even apply to her, they definitely apply to Jensen though.
American law, procedures and formalities or not, can potentially apply to anyone.
Nothing is beyond our reach.
The core competency of smugglers is getting the goods delivered. Some smugglers are motivated beyond profit or avoiding jail.
The Chinese government definitely has better sticks to threaten Chinese nationals with than ratting them out to the US.
Certainly no government would ever encourage its own agents to engage in things like smuggling especially the smuggling of drugs to certain Global South nation states where the capital acquired from those operations end up funding pro-American paramilitaries who topple their local government. That would be totally bananas for any kind of republic.
Contra-ry to common conspiracy theories, I'm certain any government-led self-investigation into culpability in this vein was all very aboveboard and well-substantiated, and such incidents never ever happened.
> Certainly no government would ever encourage its own agents to engage in things like smuggling
North Korea has entered the chat ...
They are talking about the USA
USA, which is famous for engaging in several smuggling operations, like the Iran-Contra affair or the many cases when CIA was allegedly involved in drug trafficking.
I thought including 'bananas [...] republic' and 'Contra-ry' would be obvious enough of hints that I was being deeply sarcastic but alas
And by dictionary definition once someone has been established as a smuggler, there’s technically no way they can also be labelled as spies, or engaging in espionage. Also, spies never smuggle, never. Spy’s honour! Yeah, that makes total sense.
Smugglers can be spies actually, it’s not an uncommon trope. Just not all smugglers are spies. Or were you just trying to setup some sort of straw man to knock down?
> She was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy.
MLK Jr. was being monitored by the FBI and CIA, who believed he was a Communist.
That has nothing to do with the fact that she was being monitored by the CIA, who believed she was a spy. Stop it with the red herring bit.
But... he was a socialist.
Doesn’t sound like the Alibaba reps were at _every_ meeting
They were watching through very secret hotel cameras ;)
That's the risk - blackmail. It may very well be the reason Jensen is being so out in the open about this.
She was also the CEO of a large customer. That sounds like it could impact his job performance.
Chinese spy can mean everything from “sell us more GPUs to China or I leak our affair” (which I think NVDA would be very happy with - they’ve already admitted to chip diversion, and their senior execs have been arrested for the same) to trade secrets being given to Huawei.
IMHO, I’m speculating, but I think the affair could’ve happened first, and then the MSS got involved for access and blackmail.
There is, after all, statistically a high correlation with rich billionaires and infidelity…
> ...and then the MSS got involved for access and blackmail.
If you look at Megaspeed, it has Chinese state asset written all over it.
How
1. Singapore is a well-known hub for the smuggling of Nvidia chips to China.
2. The company was originally set up as the subsidiary of a Chinese gaming company.
3. When the US added stricter export controls for Nvidia chips in 2023, it was spun off and ownership reportedly moved to a BVI shell company.
4. Later it was sold to a company that is apparently owned by one person who is believed to live in China.
5. The Singapore offices of the company and others he is an owner or director of show little activity and according to one report, the co-working space at the address listed for one didn't even have a record of the company.
6. Despite the fact that Megaspeed showed less than $6 million in cash at the end of 2023, it somehow became an Nvidia Cloud Partner and between 2024 and 2026 purchased $4.8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia chips, making it the top Nvidia chip buyer in ASEAN.
This company was on the radar of people in the industry well before this scandal because basically nobody had any idea who it was and where the money was coming from.
https://en.thairath.co.th/money/tech_innovation/tech_compani...
Thanks for the extensive write up! Every point except 6 (the acquisition) sounds very normal for Chinese companies. 6 million is worth a lot more in the Mainland, not many AI chips tho… mmmm
It's unfortunate how it's perfectly rational for a board to want their CEOs doing just enough fraud/backchanneling/cosying-up-to-suspect-world-leaders to maximize shareholder value, as long as they're not getting caught/... in ways that overall minimize shareholder value.
I don't think it's rational for boards to encourage fraud, as it is illegal, nor does it happen much. The others sure.
That's not unfortunate: that's the way the system is designed to work:
* Corps maximize shareholder value
* Govs make laws/penalties to avoid too much harm/risk by corps
* Press keeps everybody accountable
It's great when everybody's doing what they're supposed to do, which obviously isn't often enough.
Unfortunate is when corps are so in bed with gov that they don't bother innovating or growing, and when press is so in bed with gov that they might as well not exist at all.
Sure, if by high performing you mean fully assuming the lions share of risk when establishing monopoly via personal enmeshment with a corrupt political administration on the verge of sunset. His job for this board could very well be gone-rogue fall-guy. Doubly so when the regulatory bodies will be eagerly looking for those among the "thought you were one of the good ones" cohort of power.
I think he meant, look at the chart, and not whatever you just typed up.
Chart analysis of bigger-number-better is accelerating past 1 recession per decade.
> one public affair is probably not something most of the board (presumably largely male) is going to (privately) judge him for.
So male infidelity is not a big deal?
On Wall Street, no.
I think it was Francois Hollande who was photographed while in office on his vespa leaving the presidential palace to see his mistress
Surely you weren't under the impression that the executive class is honest?
I've never seen a more direct statement, with the right priorities, in such a case.
As always, recovery under stress is more telling than speed on the happy path.
The other name founders - Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs - fell into the guise of their own image propagating down their leadership chain; Huang seems to be actually leading, often by example. I'd expect his team to do ok without him, but believe only he could make some of the hard decisions, particularly now that their success is bounded by their customers'.
Unless they want to keep the focus on the affair on purpose. What if she just helped him circumvent the ban on selling Nvidia cards to China or, if you want to really push it, on selling Nvidia tech to China?
https://archive.is/Hxn5h
I feel uncomfortable asking in a thread like this but why would a CEO talk about his private life publically?
I know others have said this is a carefully written statement, but in my culture I would feel it would be rude not to keep it private? Sorry if this sounds autistic.
Mainly because the person he was having the affair with was a customer of the company and because they are reported to have possibly been a spy for the Chinese government. All of these things have a direct impact on the confidence of employees.
I’d imagine as with most big companies having a relationship with a customer is a big HR violation. So at least that aspect would have to be addressed.
I’ve seen founders fired and their equity forefeit for such conduct. This being a 20M / ARR firm.
Perhaps this is a too big to fail scenario?
I don't think it's too big to fail. There are multiple factors:
1. Jensen is a billionaire who doesn't really need to work. This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.
2. Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new competing company. This would cause NVIDIA a much bigger issue, 10000x bigger.
3. Also, this means Jensen would get to unload the stock at the peak. Democrats won and is about to be way more responsible than Trump. Cue Luo Pai from Enron.
4. Dating a customer isn't really a big deal. Did her company get a preferential price? Treatment? I'd guess that her company doesn't make a dent in NVIDIA's revenue.
5. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.
> This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.
He cofounded the company over 30 years ago. He isn't just a rich person with a desk job he doesn't care about.
There are some things shareholders have to legitimately reckon with, that warrant a statement:
- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?
- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?
- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?
Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.
So that no one can extort him in private. Same happened with Bezos when his phone was hacked. He was the one who came forward to speak about what was shared by his phone.
If I remember, the perpetrators were determined to be the Saudis. I don't remember the reason, but they had an axe to grind.
I never got to (or wanted to) see the images, but, by all reports, he ... er ... had nothing to be ashamed of.
> "I don't remember the reason, but they had an axe to grind."
Technically, it was a saw. The Saudi King was mad at Bezos because of a column in the Washington Post (which Bezos had purchased).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/21/amazon-bo...
> "Saudi experts – dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the crown prince and his inner circle."
That's right. Khashoggi wrote for the WP.
No one here is getting it right.
It's because the woman is a member of the PRC, and it's being made into a national security issue, regardless of whether he announces it or not.
The strategic thing is for him to come forward first.
I agree that cheating or not their private life is theirs, I'm not interested in their family drama.
However if he cheated with a chinese spy then he was targeted by China and that raises this to a national security risk.
It seems to be a combination of things First off, hhe person he was having an affair with has ties to Chinese Spy agencies (not sure the ties, but either way, not a great look for someone trying to be deeply involved with America's government)
It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.
Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)
it's a public company, he's ceo, large implications for stock movements, corporate strategy, volatility if it goes to us govt intervention, divorce court, etc
It's being reported that the girl he was involved with was spying for China and this was some kind of honey pot operation.
To be clear, she is an adult woman.
That should already be clear. Otherwise "was involved with" would not be an appropriate/applicable term.
It's not at all given that it would be appropriate.
> given that it would be appropriate.
It would not be considered appropriate for Jensen to be having an affair with someone underaged. That is the current subtext.
Not exactly subtext but yes, it would be inappropriate. I'm noting that "inappropriate" != "impossible." Many of his peers have done exactly such a thing.
*woman
Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors, also, using 'girl' robs the woman of agency.
> using 'girl' robs the woman of agency
... only if she hates the word 'girl', I guess. Which we don't know. Personally, I know many grown women (30's, 40's+) who are perfectly alright with the word "girl". It is contextual, and often times cultural (i.e. your background).
No offense, but this is why it can often be pernicious to do drive-by virtue-signaling online.
> Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors
What does this even mean?... do you think what you're implying is exclusive to Americans? Honestly that's what it sounds like.
Most women who are okay with being called a girl are okay with it only in certain contexts. For example I don’t know any woman who is in her 30s or 40s who would be okay with being referred to as a girl in a professional context.
> professional context.
But this isn't the workplace slack. And again, correcting is one thing, but only if you're unequivocally correct, which the above poster is not.
To be honest, it seems what they've mainly accomplished is cause a distraction from the substance of what the person was trying to convey.
Yeah, workplace slack isn’t what I am talking about.
You are also not “unequivocally correct” so perhaps you are applying a standard to others you can’t live up to yourself.
I might be mistaken about this, but your point isn't clear.
And instead of a clarification, you replied with a straw-man:
> perhaps you are applying a standard to others you can’t live up to yourself.
I never claimed to be "unequivocally correct”.
Because he got honey potted by a CCP spy which specifically puts himself and Nvidia at risk.
He's forced to - he would not make the statement unless he had to come clean with it.
Indeed, he lied and said he only had a normal business relationship until further media and government scrutiny forced him to admit it.
> “Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” [1]
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-29/nvidia-ce... => https://archive.li/ljGPF#selection-1731.0-1731.119
Because its already public information. In your culture would you pretend like it never happened even though everybody else knows about it and are making their own narratives.
> why would a CEO talk about his private life publically?
Because it's already public. This is called "getting ahead of/seizing the narrative"
I could see how it’s rude for a CEO to be bringing up his affairs, but how is it rude to address public revelations?
He's kicking off a redemption tour. The world will now decide if his tone is sincere enough, and how long it should take to forgive him.
Not long I suspect, we don't expect much from tech CEOs. Nobody even remembers when Bezos cheated on his wife.
We'll get a kind of a "Gone Girl" moment but with geopolitics.
I guess no one noticed because they all looked the same. I imagine Bezos in the wife store like "Oh yeah, I like exactly that look. Gimme another one of these!"
Everyone has some preferred types, but same body, different person is pretty creepy.
Umm, the particular android Bezos picked is quite unique. His ex-wife actually looked human.
Generally speaking, it's normal to keep it private.
Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.
>for the biggest competitor for world hegemony.
thank you for maintining the WW1->Cold War era great-game / hegemonic frame. Nation-states love you for it.
Because the purpose was to get leverage, and Intel. Once she couldn't gather passive Intel, they would use the affair as blackmail, ole school is the best school.
there are indications that he continued the affair even after being tipped off by the US intelligence agencies -- which would constitute treason. An apology would just be a first step to ward off serious charges, if there are serious charges levied. Not that anything would happen in the large scheme of things, given JH has bought off the orange turd.
Because there's a question whether this woman is working covertly for a country that's known to do a lot of industrial espionage.
I wrote in another thread here, this is extremely serious:
Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.
It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.
In this instance the two have become linked due to his choices, hence the need to explain.
To cut off the possibility of blackmail. At personal great cost, of course.
That's the real reason that this affair is a problem. It made him blackmailable.
When we give individuals the same power as people in highest legal positions of power - they deserve immense scrutiny.
Jensen is as powerful as any politician, if not more so. Same with Elon, etc.
If you don't want that then get rid of the ability for such individuals to amass so much power.
The person he has an affair with turned out to be a Chinese spy and he's being investigated by the government for this.
I swear this is a bot. I refuse to believe it's not a bot. It has to be a bot.
lol
I find the geopolitical aspects of this news far more interesting than the affair drama.
That is totally unprecedented.
are there trainings on honey traps, like waht can a company do to prevent this ?? i just feel bad for his wife and also him
I came into some fair amount of power, and the CCP honey pot shenanigans got crazy. I didn't get in-person treatment, but the DMs were off the hook. A Cantonese businessman warned me, but I have to admit it could have worked if I had been in the wrong frame of mind.
They tried every persona: Sexy, shy, homely. Same sex. Confrontational. Open, but scared her overseers would punish her. Still get a ping now and then.
>A Cantonese businessman warned me, but I have to admit it could have worked if I had been in the wrong frame of mind.
Im curious more about that. He was just some regular businessman acquaintance with no special knowledge? Was he fairly accurate and specific in his predictions?
please do tell us more about these encounters
My first (well, metaphorically speaking) thought after reading the news was: how many attempts did it take? How many seductors and seductresses are out there? I can only assume the other major powers are playing similar games, given the history.
There is a company called DarkMind that is doing personality detection to filter people who are susceptible to manipulation
Detection and prevention is key
https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...
I don’t really understand what’s the issue with “cheating” his wife.
That’s his personal life and I fail to see why are we supposed to behave like some kind of religious zealots on marriage.
The best way to handle this should probably be to be upfront about it so that he could not be blackmailed. His only mistake was that he didn’t disclose it earlier when rumours surfaced
> religious zealots on marriage.
It's not about religion, it's about trust and keeping promises. Like it or not, the default understanding in a marital relationship in many places in the world is monogamy. Some people, of course, engage in other practices, after an explicit discussion, and agreement and understanding. But presumably Huang's wife believed she and her husband were in a monogamous relationship, and trusted Huang to keep it that way. That's the issue; religion is irrelevant. (And different religious practices have different things to say about monogamy vs. polyamory, and atheists decide for themselves if they want to be monogamists or polyamorists; religion need not be involved at all.)
But regardless, I think his infidelity is not his employees' business; IMO it's weird to bring it up in this way. The bit about his affair partner possibly(?) being a spy is the thing that actually matters to NVIDIA and NVIDIA employees, but he only dedicates a few sentences to it.
> he only dedicates a few sentences to it
That may be by design: the spying issue might hurt the stock/situation/etc more than the affair.
You and I have no idea what their relationship is. Maybe they swing.
Why would a trustworthy individual cheat someone they love? Would they cheat their customers?
It would not be unethical if he agreed with his wife to an open relationship, but this email is proof that he did not.
The email was written by a team of PR people to assuage the public as best possible. You nor I know what his relationship with his wife is.
It's mostly a US thing, I've seen a huge divide about marriage between old Europe and the US that's due to influence of puritanism. Only 20% of men in the US cheat, that's a relatively low figure.
The moralists also conveniently ignore that the vast majority of men is not very attractive. Cheating would take a lot of effort for them. In contrast, I knew some men who were attractive enough they had to fend off women almost daily. For them, not cheating takes a lot of effort. The bottomline is that most of the 5/10 guys who say "I would never cheat" would do so the very next day if a 9/10 woman suddenly got interested in them, which is exactly what happened in this case.
If your wife can't trust you, why should anyone else?
Not at all defending his actions, but I am reminded of someone in an earlier thread predicting that there may be some political reasons for this to come out, and that we may see NVIDIA do favors for the US government some time soon. That doesn't seem to be the case, but an observation:
"I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American." sounds like the exact words one would say if one expects to be threatened of being un-patriotic and therefore cancelled in the right-wing sense. In fact it sounds like something you would hear on South Park, it's a bit ridiculous. As others have pointed out in here, affair or not, the spy label is very much up to US government opinion.
I heard a guy I respect say “there’s a short list of things people will ruin their lives for.”
I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
It's not going to ruin his life. At worst he will lose $100 bil and maybe if it's really bad, he will get kicked out of Nvidia. He will still have $100 bil and can do whatever he wants at that point.
If he loses his family over it, it will ruin his life. There’s more to life than money. I hope for your sake that you don’t really believe this morally bankrupt concept.
The man was cheating on his wife. He already wasn’t thinking of his family.
I think it's common enough for people to have regrets after the fact. Not all do, but enough that you can't rule it out entirely.
Men are known to think with their penises every now and then. His wife knows that too. It's cheating, but cheating is often repaired.
Allegedly he was assaulted by a spy and wasn't able to deflect that assault. Who knows what techniques they use, wouldn't be surprised if they can sprinkle something in a drink that switches off half the frontal cortex.
Is there any example of this specific thing happening before?
Dopamine agonist are known to ruin impulse control: pramipexole, ropinirole, rotigotine.
That’s just conspiracy talk. It’s called honeypots for a reason. It requires willingness.
And there is more to life than family too, there is any amount of people who lived great lives without any family.
If the woman involved turns out to really be a Chinese spy, then it will definitely ruin his life.
AI and chips are, for better or worse, considered a national security matter.
Being a “Chinese spy” has very little to do with reality, much like being a terrorist. It’s a matter of what the State Department decides.
He is the the tech CEO most aligned with the current government’s optimism towards the AI build out and also its key orchestrator. What are the odds he will be held to any real punishment ?
Being a state of national security, yes.
Spy is rather easy to define though, and it hardly depends on what the State Department decides (although of course, they can call anybody a spy, for political or other reasons, I agree on that).
I don't know why this is being downvoted. The federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack that they themselves have not recruited. It is entrapment, and it is legal in most cases. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but even mainstream media has covered this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment...
It is perfectly reasonable to suspect similar claims of catching "spies".
Your article doesn't support your claim that the 'federal government has never really prevented a terrorist attack'. And a lot of that was highly motivated reporting itself by people like Glenn Greenwald who was basically denying that things like ISIS were real threats at all in 2014 and then went full victim blaming for things like Charlie Hebdo the year after (it was harder after the Bataclan).
Will you next claim that the police have never really prevented a murder?
I gave a link as a reference of how the Federal government operates. I did not think that I needed a whole bibliography to prove something that is very easily verifiable.
Not only that you think the reporting is not reliable because of the reporter without pointing out what is wrong with the actual report.
But I'll humor you.
- Here is the judge calling the US government the co-conspirator in the same case: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/07/27/judge-quest...
- The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot:
- https://www.rawstory.com/plot-to-kidnap-michigan-governor/
- https://reason.com/2022/04/08/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-pl...
- The liberty city seven: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22249838
- The cleveland bomb plot: https://truthout.org/articles/cleveland-anarchist-bomb-plot-...
- Sami Osmakac: https://archive.is/NINN0
---
These are all the cases that had some investigative reporter poking, or the jury/judge seeing through the bullshit. Here is initial reporting on recent cases. The "Iranian Agent" sent to "Assassinate Donald Trump"(emphasis mine):
>Asif Merchant traveled to New York in June for the purpose of meeting with men he thought he was recruiting to carry out the killings, even paying a $5,000 advance to two would-be assassins who were actually undercover law enforcement officers, federal officials said
https://www.ksat.com/news/politics/2024/08/06/pakistani-man-...
The woman arrested for "plotting to bomb the NY state capital":
>According to the criminal complaint, an FBI confidential source drove Bowie to the Home Depot in Rensselaer and gave her $200 to buy bomb parts. It’s not clear if they told her what items to buy.
https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/feds-say-capital-bombing-t...
---
This is not some fringe idea even here on HN. Here is a clear fed trying incite people to commit violence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629430
This common in most internet forums. It is called fedposting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fedpost
I hope all of these sources are of sound character by your standards. Now I would ask you; can you give me an example of the FBI catching a terrorist that:
a) They did not recruit, or b) Did not provide materials, or c) did not provide the target
AS for the police in the US, they are indeed very bad at preventing crime. Though that is due to multiple reasons, mostly policy related, rather than institutional malfeasance like the FBI.
> It's not going to ruin his life.
It might if he loves his wife.
Sometimes, it's the humiliation that comes from the public finding out and putting a spotlight on it that is the kicker; not the random side piece(s) (ex: Bill & Melinda Gates).
I agree, though.
___
edit: Funny enough, there's a House of Cards scene that goes over this exact scenario. Francis is sleeping with Zoe the reporter (they're both using each other for the perks/their own agendas). When Claire finds out, her response is something like "you know you must not embarrass me (publicly) with this", which Francis already knew because he would never do that to Claire... she doesn't say those exact words, but that was the vibe.
> "The reporter? ... What does she offer us?"
Exactly
If he loved his wife he wouldn't have cheated on her, and then humiliated her and his children in front of the entire world.
Humans are complex creatures. Plenty of men and women who have loving families and genuinely love their spouses cheat on them and destroy their lives/families. It just takes a moment of weakness. Stay vigilant.
Love and sexual attraction is totally different thing. As long as you get married Male usually lose interest and sexual attraction on female and want to try new things. That happens to me too and its like both biological and mental.
A "moment of weakness" leads to a one-night stand, not to however long a fling needs to be to be dubbed an "extramarital affair."
It's not really a moment when the moment is stretched over months and years, but yes we are all human and all make mistakes. That does not absolve us of the consequences.
Way to minimize cheating. Describing it as a “moment of weakness” makes it sounds like it’s a minute of lapse of judgement, meanwhile we’re talking about pre-mediated, long-term cheating.
I have zero sympathy for this guy, generally speaking. But this is one of those very few things where what you have said is the socially "correct" thing, and actually is probably healthy to believe, but is factually wrong.
Lamentably, people don't have cartoon emotions. Life would be so much easier if they did.
That is not an automatic fact. Humans are very emotionally complex creatures. And Jensen didn't call his secretary and say "can you pencil in 'humiliating my wife and kids around 4PM'? You can? Great, thanks".
He has full agency over his actions, so yes, it's an automatic fact. He knew what he was doing and he knew what the effects would be on his wife. He knew what would happen when this came out. If you're saying he DIDN'T know what would happen, then you're saying he's extremely stupid. I haven't seen any evidence that he is even a little bit stupid.
Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?
If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?
This seems like an emotionally compromised perspective (which is very, very normal, and I am not insulting you).
It is, of course, not an automatic fact. The context here is emotions, so it makes no sense to point only to agency as proof of an emotional "fact". Such a thing doesn't even exist.
People, especially men, are not robots.
> especially men
meaning that women are more likely to be robots? wasn't aware of this, gotta try doing turing tests on women around me.
This is not complicated if you define “love” as “wouldn’t cheat”. Which plenty of people do.
Well, yes, nothing is complicated if one already agrees with their audience.
Oh, with this “open letter” he literally did just that.
$100 bil? You say that like there aren't trillionaires going around in their "flying" cars... /s
Good reminder to avoid those near occasions of sin.
Jensen carries the responsibility here for sure.
But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.
I mean a state sponsored enterprise to get you to have sex with someone (or one of a group of people).
Getting him to have sex with her was literally this woman's day job and she was probably told it was a matter of national security.
It is quite absurd once you think about it.
All he had to do was say no and keep his dick in his pants. Use some judgement, think about your wife and kids (oh yeah and all that national security bullshit). The man with all his money and power can't say no, that's what's absurd.
The question is how long took and if he was happy with his family.
It's easy for a professional with china backend to play with your feelings, much easier if you have normal family life or worse.
Is the woman likable it's just a matter of times. (Independent of the gender)
If this happens within a week, I would agree, if this happens within months the gender you like can makes your heart jump if you are I a very long term relationship.
You’d think being in your 60s would make it a tad easier to not think with your dick but then again a bunch of CEOs are running TRT these days.
This is just deeply embarrassing. His adult children both work for his company so they’d also receive this exact memo.
Imagine Slacking each other: “Daddy’s been naughty”. “Again?”
> But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.
The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.
One can't help but think of Sergey Brin who famously had an affair with an underling on Google Glass, Amanda Rosenberg [1]. This of course blew up his life and he divorced Anne Wojcicki in ~2014. Of course he got married again and divorced again with another expensive divorce (although neither was in the realm of the cost of Jeff Bezos's divorce).
I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.
For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.
So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.
[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...
Does wealth do this to people or are people with these tendencies more likely to become wealthy?
And this is part of why we need a billionaire tax - to help these bright, talented people hold on to their humanity.
If there are any billionaires out there who are too alienated by their inability to wait in line at the airport: don’t worry, you can give me the money. It’ll be a burden, but one I think I can handle.
The airport was just an example. You simply can't do normal people things.
I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.
That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.
I think he probably could do normal things outside of major tech hubs. He isn’t famous for his face, like an actor.
If asked he could say he works for a company that makes some computer part.
“Are they well known?”
“Kinda, but mostly datacenters buy them, you probably don’t own one.”
> I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza.
Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.
It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.
Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.
If you’re that rich but you can’t live a normal life, and you aren’t willing to restructure things to prioritize your life, you’re obviously making a choice in favour of continuing to accumulate wealth or power.
You reckon that if the Concorde was still in existence then all the tech billionaires would be avoiding it? I doubt it.
With regards the "What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth?" question, I've been thinking a lot about this recently, as the billionaires accrue more influence than ever before. And I think that's the keyword - 'influence'. After a point, wealth doesn't buy you more things, it buys you power, which is seductive. It goes far beyond making your family comfortable and doing right by your company, employees and shareholders; it becomes a means to lever the world. Yes, some of this drive is about being apart from the real world and possibly an element of personal sociopathy (corporations are famously sociopathic entities, too, which probably rubs off on the C-suite execs), but hedonistic adaptation (we're very good at getting used to things, even vast wealth) and wanting to change the world are (I imagine) very addictive. I imagine it even goes some way to assuaging the embarrassment of The Leader of the Free World calling you his AI Expert...sorry, 'SI' Expert.
And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.
Related: the market cap of the stock market is basically a conversion factor between currency (for daily purchases) and power (being in charge of all the world's companies). When the market crashes after an election, we shouldn't think of it as "$3T of wealth wiped out", it should be "power gap between normal people and billionaires decreases" (it takes fewer normal people to buy a billionaire's position).
You’re making my heart bleed for the suffering alienated billionaire class.
yeah you can't pay your bills or afford a home, but that pales in comparison to how lonely billionaires are. makes you think
Why is reading comprehension so scarce nowadays?
The last paragraph of my comment basically calls these billionaires sociopaths because you have to be to enrich yourself off the backs of making millions of people poor. How is that a defense of billionaires?
My point is that the "prize" isn't even worth it. It doesn't make you happy. Actually there's one way it seems to make them happy: by enjoying the suffering of others and having the power to influence people and even governments. But to what end?
Reading comprehension is fine. It’s your writing comprehension.
>So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).
You’re saying here that they’re “starved” of the human contact most of us take for granted (for example in standing around an airport and being squeezed into economy). This is thus a cause for heart-bleeding.
Ingvar Kamprad flew economy and drove an old Volvo. Being extremely wealthy doesn’t have to come with this kind of isolation. If Sergei Brin was flying economy, most of the plane wouldn’t realise who he was and the few who did would be like “oh look it’s Sergei Brin, weird.”
Easier said than done. Especially when we’re not thinking logically which is surprisingly and disappointingly too often.
“God gave men enough blood to run their brain or penis but not enough for both” - robin williams
Honestly this might be the most accurate statement ever made.
Honestly a terrible way to deflect responsibility. If you're finding your judgement impaired take a breather, the opportunity is usually not going to disappear right away.
There is zero percent chance the board does anything to Jensen.
His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.
We don’t know the extent of what happened. My first thought, given MegaSpeed, is chip diversion.
How much of NVIDIA’s sales and revenues is actually to China? Would that be allowed to happen still?
I honestly feel truly sorry for her. No amount of wealth can replace what she’s lost.
I received this authoritatively from a famous divorce lawyer of my city/country that “feeling” bad usually happens only when young children are involved — or marriage is young and love was involved in the marriage (this is an arranged marriage country, so that part is different from USA). Other than that if a huge parting sum of money is involved that sense of liberation outweighs everything else. In fact if anything else, it’s an overwhelming sense of relief.
rubbish.
I'll take the other side of the wife -> ex-wife bet. He was photographed publicly with the "spy" and has been signing boobs.
If the camel had a back, then it was already broken, IMHO.
He wasn’t photographed in a romantic context as far as I know, and he just signed the upper part of a woman’s chest with tons of cameras around, clearly a marketing ploy rather than him trying to enter into a relationship with her.
>afaik
What? [0]
You just touch someone's lower back, throw an arm around their neck, and share seats for one at lounges with platonic friends?
[0] https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/jensen-huang-rom...
When did those pictures come out? Perhaps the ones you are describing have just been released.
> When did those pictures come out?
"shallow dismissals" are against HN guidelines [0]. Worse, the article dates the paparazzi photos pre-2026.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I could not access the article (or I did not want to pay), hence the question.
Given the celebrity status of Jensen, it seemed unlikely that scandalous photos of him would be publicly distributed and it not already have been a huge story.
It is possible the scandalous pictures (not just him walking in front of her or sitting next to her) were already floating around, and I am not up-to-date on celebrity scandals, and the wife was already planning a divorce, as you claim.
But without those photos, it could be the wife is finding out about the affair just now.
I still have not seen the pictures you are referring to, but I’m not that interested to look for them either.
> I could not access the article (or I did not want to pay), hence the question.
> I still have not seen the pictures you are referring to, but I’m not that interested to look for them either.
I figured you were acting in bad faith because the article addressed your question and you didn't mention you skipped the article.
Not mentioning is categorical bad faith-- another HN guidelines faux pas. Then, you double down with "not interested."
Please don't be toxic to others, too.
Paywalled.
It’s pretty much cruel to share a paywalled link after that description.
Cruel? You have no idea what that word means.
Giving a source to someone who hasn't done any checking and asserts a falsehood is not inhumane.
There’s cheating on your wife.
And there’s cheating on your wife and having the feds write up intelligence reports about it, the Financial Times running an article about it and having to send a public admission to every single employee at your company including your two kids who you employ there.
Did you ask yourself how his wife would not know this was happening? They were seen in public in intimate settings.
Don't kid yourself about the reason he wrote the letter. He's only writing this because of national security optics and buries it in a shit sandwich format.
https://youtu.be/FGCP2F_7rQk
This video of Lex Friedman and Jensen hanging out and drinking in Taiwan came out 3 weeks ago. Jensen and his wife seem pretty happy together in it. So today’s news is genuinely new news or they’d already gone over it and sorted it out. Jensen seems to do a lot of booze fuelled entertaining…
>new news
Why?
They'd been photod publicly since 2024.
They are both rich, lmao. The wealth is marital.
But I agree with you that both of them or one of them will be very rich because they will get to sell at the top without upsetting the market.
OH NO WE HAVE TO SELL BECAUSE OF THE DIVORCE NOW. BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS NUKE AI COMPANIES. OH NO. [insert croc tears here]
You can google Luo Pai (from Enron) to learn more.
> His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.
She was already rich
It can be argued that the reason rich people are rich is they lack satiation, therefore they can never be rich-enough.
Betcha this is going to turn into: He was being blackmailed but decided to pull a David Letterman on it...
I appreciate the sentiment, but literally speaking, we may need to have a conversation about what it means to have your "life ruined".
> I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.
I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.
> the short-term high is usually not worth it.
People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.
Now we have to re-evaluate all his statements in favor of selling to China. For example, we want China to build on "our stack". On the face of it, that seems correct. If China has multiple stacks to pick from why wouldn't we want them to pick our stack? But do they have such a choice?
He has been openly advocating to selling to China.
As CEO of a company that sells GPUS, it seems like the more people he's able to sell to the better.
As have most. Some, like Tesla and Apple, even have factories there!!!
Apple has connections so great that United even introduced a whole airport leg SFO-PVG just for them (unless it's an urban legend).
I think this was SF to Chengdu. From: https://www.reddit.com/r/whoathatsinteresting/comments/1tspz...
From the book: Apple in China
I was curious, so I researched it (aka prompted ChatGPT). SFO-PVG was established in 2000, long before Apple offshored all of their manufacturing to China. An article from the time describes it being something that was in demand among Silicon Valley in general[1] rather than Apple particularly. In 2019, United revealed that Apple does spend $35 million/yr on that single route, averaging 50 seats/day[2], so I suppose that's the source of the legend.
[1]https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/shanghai-to-s-f-flig...
[2]https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/11/apple-united-airline-pu...
Another is the pretense of overcoming Chinese resistance. China sent a cute spy to bang the CEO of Nvidia, but they simultaneously set a "strict limit" on import of Nvidia chips. How does that make sense? It makes sense if the purpose of the "strict limit" is so that any sale of H200 to China can be seen as overcoming Chinese restrictions. Anything that is against the Chinese government's resistance must be good for the US, right?
China also opens up visa free for many countries now, on the other hand, raising requirements for longer stays (work permits, green cards).
It could be that they wanted design information and other details from him, and were going to use those to build up domestic manufacturing alongside import restrictions.
It's hard to say from the outside what the goals would be - pushing him in certain directions, extracting intel, etc.
> It could be that they wanted design information and other details from him
For this it would be much easier if the Chinese spies banged Nvidia engineers.
We don't know that this is not happening.
They should list it in the compensation section for job reqs.
More likely that she was given devices to plant / message him zero day PDFs or whatever.
I like to see this more alpha pivot in tech.
In parts of Asia it is "expected" that a successful politician or businessman will have a "second family". I'm thinking the spying part (Huang is from Taiwan and was possibly leaking info to China) is considered worse than the cheating part by everyone involved.
> parts of Asia
That's Japan. Don't make it sound like other parts of Asia are like this.
You literally have cities in China that are called "second wife villages"(二奶村) where politicians and rich people have their mistresses that are located close to ports/airports for quick access on "work trips". In Shenzhen for example its the Luohu (罗湖) and Futian (福田) districts that are for this purpose.
It's a bit much to say the purpose of Luohu is mistresses, but you're right that it definitely is not a Japanese-specific thing.
Correct, and OCT (also in Shenzhen)
Might be but last time I checked Huang was not Chinese.
It’s much more than Japan: Chinese in other countries, Philippines, etc. I’ve met in person sons and daughters from “second families”.
Also the French, so it’s not exclusively a practice of East Asian people.
Don't make it sound like Japan either. It's just not possible where no family with a connection to someone powerful would be satisfied hidden away in a rural village. When caught by a tabloid, your career ends completely, not really excepted behavior.
Confident much or are you playing on concubine vs wife game word?
US probably cares about the 2bil worth of gpus she brought. This looks like it will get messy.
With all the money he has, he fell to this
The owner of the 49ers, a billionaire, was recently arrested for trying to have sex with someone off craigslist in a trailer park.
What, that’s a crime now?
Solicitation is indeed a crime
Do i really need to remind you of all the orange team ?
you need to remind me. What is the "orange team"?
Maybe everyone in the Epstein files.
There is no way he would have known that the woman was a spy. Also we can't know if the allegations are true or not either until proven somehow. The woman was from Singapore. Singapore has denied it. but lets assume that she was a spy so why hasn't she been charged yet? Where is she? The chips apparently went to Malaysia .. is there a proof that they were moved to China? There are claims that their clouds were used by the Chinese. Something doesn't add up here.
Malaysia doesnt even show up in the graph of owners but obviously has imported some chips.. were they illegal ones.. who knows. How much relative power does this malaysia have? If it did, wouldnt show up in the graph?
https://epoch.ai/data/ai-chip-owners?view=graph&tab=count&co...
These are just US companies in the graph tho?
Sounds logical to me!
Will Huangs wife CASH OUT ?
Its priced in
or sometimes - you shed the image of being a family man & embrace being a 'player'
the reason bond was made - was the guy who the novel was based on - being a double-agent couldn't be honey-trapped as he was already womanizing.
Everyone knew exactly what jensen was as soon as he donned that slightly too tight leather jacket like 15 years ago
Correct. He put that on, and I said “This guy fucks.”
Could we see Jensen abandon the leather jacket as part of atonement for his affair?
The most interesting part might be that this is coming out so publicly.
Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.
Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ...
Jensen/Nvidia has not been playing ball with other parts of the AI industry and the administration, pushing heavily against export bans and promoting open source models/companies , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.
This is conspiracy theory territory, of course, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an intentional leak.
remember, the only evidence of any criminal activity here is the leak of this story, which is a felony unless directly authorized by a classified executive order.
> The close relationship between the president and Mr. Huang has impeded efforts to clamp down on Nvidia’s chip sales abroad, current and former U.S. officials said.
> This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance
https://archive.is/lwBvW
the most likely scenario here is that the faction that supports export bans leaked the initial story to try to blackmail Huang into dropping his support for free trade, he refused, so they released the package to damage him as much as possible. likely route, based on the named sources, is senate or house intel agency staffers, using elected officials and classified briefings as cover.
NY Times, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman would identify this as being firmly located in the anti-Trump faction, so unless it is some super devious reverse play, which seems unlikely for Trump, it is a criminal leak.
The moment I saw the leak I had that exact same thought.
I think everyone with a brain did.
It was done intentionally to send a message to him and to wrap him over the knuckles.
Great people all round.
I suspect that the "intention" behind the leak isn't really about Jensen or Nvidia, but is just more administration infighting - Jensen is just collateral damage.
Consider the timing of the reporting - the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th - just enough time after mid-terms. Consider that follow up reporting clearly identifying Rubio as the author of the in-administration warning memo.
JD and Rubio (and who knows who else) are clearly trying to find ways to distance themselves from Trump without being completely cut to pieces, now that it's completely clear that the Trump brand is toxic.
> the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th
It came out on Oct/29 instead; the date is there in the URL itself if you find the article behind a paywall.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-...
Oops, nvm.
I still think its possible the leak is due to administration infighting, but definitely less evidence now.
Man of all the girls in all the towns in all the world why the spy?
I suspect that billionaires don't exactly hang around in normal spaces, so whomever they will run into will be "special" in some way or another.
If you're a spy you can be whatever they want you to be. You like abstract geometry? Oh my god I have a PHD in abstract geometry. Would you like to come back to my room and read my thesis? You're so funny! People don't normally get my abstract geometry references!
“Vanity…definitely my favorite sin.”
- Devils Advocate
Maybe they are just an innocent couple who fell in love, and his wife was not providing the affection he needed. Why jump to conclusions?
If that were the case I imagine he'd divorce his wife privately and not publicly admit to cheating on her.
Would this lead to him stepping down or dialing it up? NVDIA will be fine with either way, but how much does he really adds to its value?
As an Nvidian - Jensen is the single most important part of Nvidia. Speaking personally I couldn't care less about this particular lapse in judgement because every example if have seen in professional circumstances his judgement has been stellar. It sucks for his family life but that shouldn't become our business and should remain private. If she really is a spy that might suck a bit for our relationship with the US government for a short period but it's not something that can't be managed and overcome.
It's not a nothing burger but if it results in Jensen leaving Nvidia that would be a travesty IMO. We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake, especially one that should in any other circumstance not become public.
His private life is irrelevant. He’s an adult and can do what he wants. It only matters if he spilled secrets to the spy
It's obviously not irrelevant for two reasons, one practical one moral. The practical one is that you don't need to 'spill' secrets to a spy. Having one around you in private means you can be bugged, blackmailed, have your means of communication compromised and so on. It makes you vulnerable by definition.
Secondly if he's willing to lie to his wife and family he's obviously willing to lie to anyone for much less. It tells you something about the character of a person, how can anyone trust a cheater?
Arguably, cheating is now a normal every day part of society. Approximate 2/3rds of people have been cheated on in USA. Much higher in Asia. The sex industry in asia is absolutely massive and it’s primarily for married men. In Japan, only 65% of people say cheating is morally wrong.
But it’s usually don’t ask don’t tell, not explicit lying.
To give a specific example, I’m currently traveling in Vietnam, and an entire floor of my allegedly “5-star” hotel (the most expensive in the city) is reserved for prostitution. This is a smaller city with almost no foreign tourists. The rest of the hotel operates as normal, with a fancy breakfast served everyday 6-9am.
This is an insane comment.
Why? Sounds like your culture made you feel that way.
Absurd argument.
Baffling reply.
Logical response.
Based on what I’ve seen. Seems like being a good lier would make you a more suitable CEO not less.
its not really about his private life its about whteher he was manipulated into it wihtout his knowledge. Psychological manipulation is a thing and if they got him to do this what else happened?
https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...
> A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.
I'm not sure what actual letters like this are supposed to achieve (besides protecting his ass I mean). Are employees supposed to stand beside their fallen leader, are they supposed to go about their business differently? Anybody having affairs with subordinates can't be trusted to make good judgement calls with respect to internal leadership / delegation, at least it wouldn't seem so to me.
It's better than not having a statement and have rumours flying everywhere.
Well the only reason we have the letter is because rumors were flying everywhere and an investigation has been initiated.
Agreed. It's due diligence and saving face; at least he owns it?
It sounds like your problem lies more in his mistake, not in coming clean about it. Him being the one to do that takes any influence the woman had over him away.
A BoingBoing article from 2003, "Pr0nstar Catalina's appearance at Nvidia E3 party raises eyebrows": https://boingboing.net/2003/05/27/pr0nstar-catalinas-a.html .
Everyone was doing that at E3 in 2003. Everyone. Microsoft, Sony, EA, etc.
-NVDA/Huang gifted Trump $25 million for his ballroom
-NVDA Huang agreed to pay Trump 15% of sales of certain chips to China
-Trump gave Huang the "National Medal of Science"
-Huang on AF1 for last China trip
This seems like the tip of the iceberg on a major corruption story.
Is Jensen most likely on his way out? I think yes, more interesting times ahead and will his exit eventually help in reducing Nvidia's dominance which might be a desirable result though there're quite a few conditions to be met so that it indeed is one.
Related:
Statement from NVIDIA Board of Directors
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50416801
I hope it’s apparent to everyone that the natsec state (whether CIA or FBI for its domestic counterintel mandate) had to actively engage in ‘conspiracy theorizing’ in order to determine whatever exposure Jensen had, which seems to be bearing out to some as-yet-unknown degree. Worth keeping in mind next time you’re feeling shy about expressing your own latest conspiracy theorizing.
If you're the CIA, wouldn't you want to plant employees, or 'hire' employees at major firms like this? I guess I assume they do already. Probably each major corporation has 10-50+ employees getting kick backs from the government.
Most large US companies if they want to have the government as a client, have special rooms with employees with security clearances that work mostly on projects that the CEO and even their line managers do not know what they are. HR also have a special employees or a private section that deal with these people. There is some deniability also: the managers can tell the truth under oath and say they have no knowledge about the projects!
It's part of normal business operations not some secret illegal shady kick backs operation within some kind of spy movie.
There's no need to secretly infiltrate a company when the company is working happily with you. People underestimate how close big business and 3 letter agencies actually are in many cases.
The US intelligence agencies would have a hard time planting employees in US firms while remaining within the bounds of FISA. They certainly have assets inside major Chinese firms though, of course.
I sincerely doubt anyone gives a shit about whatever "FISA" is, sounds like a credit card company or a shoe brand tbh.
I can’t tell if this is excellent sarcasm or complete ignorance.
Why do you doubt that? And who do you suppose wants to work for the CIA in this aspect, when the job description is pushing pencils as an intern at a tech company trying to get sad old men to have sex with them?
It doesn't quite work like that. You don't go off and find some super smart person who can easily get a job at Nvidia and tell them "Hey you, go work for this company". You find someone who already works at Nvidia, and you bump into them at their kids' little league game, and you get chatting and build a rapport and over time you build trust and before you know, you've got a trusted source inside Nvidia. They don't even need to know they're a plant. And then, if you really do need something more than information you can go further. But you start with someone already at the company and you target them, rather than the other way around.
And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".
They do, according to Jonna Mendez, but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary. This causes some contention since they are paid far less than salaried employees and get no equity, so it leads to high turnover
> but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary
Technically, they collect the company salary, and then the CIA reduces their pay by the same amount. (They have to be indistinguishable from ordinary employee, including to payroll.)
At one point, they couldn't keep any excess if the company pay was higher. Now, they're apparently allowed to keep an amount that doesn't significantly exceed comparable federal pay.
From the context, I believe the question was about infiltrating _American_ companies. If Mendez has made that claim, do you happen to know where she said it?
She gave 2 fireside chat style events at the commonwealth club of California and it was at one of those. They’re on YouTube, how I found them. There is other press coverage though.
Infiltrated is not necessarily the right word. Company executives know, but few other employees do
What if she wasn’t a spy and it was just an affair.
Apart from his direct family, who cares? Why is this an issue? It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.
The leader of the central company in the AI boom was compromised by a spy from the US’s biggest adversary while US and Chinese companies are in an AI arms race.
Would that count?
The US government has known she was a spy due to CIA and hasn't acted till now it's in the press.
So how much of a security issue is there if the government hasn't cared so far?
We have a sitting president who freely shares state secrets with dictators upon request. This seems rather high effort when they could’ve just asked nicely no? </s>
Is whataboutism really necessary?
It isn't whataboutism if it's directly relevant to the point at hand (as opposed to attempting to distract from it). The question posed effectively amounted to "why is this particularly noteworthy compared to everything else of a vaguely similar nature that's been going on".
the </s> is for sarcasm..
That president's board (US voters) just put him on a much shorter leash as a result. Actions, consequences, etc.
I know you are trying to make some point for your political team but if you look up what a fiduciary is then you will see why this would be a good thing and a way to avoid other legal issues. But I know, OMB and all that!
It’s an issue because for some reason the US intelligence agency decided to go public with this and then the newspapers started running with it.
This letter is just part of the ceremony of events that is expected to happen afterwards.
Huh? CEO's private life has always always been a big deal. These were just a few cases the last few years alone:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/coldplay-kiss-c...
Jensen Huang's case is even more high profile because of the spying accusation.
You misunderstood what I meant, obviously the newspapers all cover these things when they become public. The difference is that this time, it’s an intelligence agency that went public with it (or someone leaked it from there), the spying angle is quite unique.
Probably more like the administration, given how they were briefed more than a year ago.
There’s been recent power spats (JD Vance’s tweet, Susie being replaced by Steve Bannon, and probably more infighting).
As much as I want to believe there’s greater 4D chess and motivation, I assign a modest probability to someone going “fuck it”, opening a massive short on NVDA, and then leaking it just for the love of insider trading. Rather than anything strategic or real.
I'm a shareholder, and the fact that both the US government and Nvidia itself is going to investigate him is very, very bad. So yes, I care about it a lot because I'm probably going to lose a lot of money tomorrow!
This US Government investigating Jensen Huang will be an exercise in cotton balls and kid gloves.
Trump himself relaxed laws on chip exports to China.
P.S. If you have any other liquidity available, maybe 'buy the dip'?
It's an issue, but vastly over stated in the press.
Why does it matter that one of the key leaders of our aI strategy was having an affair with a Chinese spy while advising the president on our policy of selling chips to China?
The investors probably care. If you’ll lie to your wife to get laid, you might also lie to your investors to get paid.
Integrity matters for maintaining corporate secrets. Someone who is having an extramarital affair is a target for blackmail. Most of getting a security clearance is not lying.
> Why is this an issue?
She was also a Chinese spy.
> It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.
He admitted to the affair. No one has admitted to being a pedo. Much less forgivable.
And how long has US government known that she is a spy and only watched and not investigated?
There could be only 2 options: 1. There is no national security issue -> all a nothing burger 2. US government looked the other way -> THE REAL SCANDAL HERE
I suspect nothing will change at Nvidia although Jensen does not have any sort of "super shares" so he can easily be deposed by the board if they really want to. But why would they.
There was no reason to make this public and this happens just after the midterms.
This screams political hit job.
The political move was to wait until after the midterms for this to come out, because data centers/AI has such a negative public perception. Turns out waiting didn’t help
lol what
i mean it is political in the sense that he slept with a chinese spy while also doing business deals with chinese companies.
but if you're suggesting this has something to do with the midterms, what would even be the gain
first Ethan Klein, now Jensen Huang...
The Ethan one is especially shocking because his whole shtick is being the "better man" compared to all the people he reacts to and sues. Throwing it all away just to doink a coworker is pretty out there
People who brag about their ethics are compensating.
China spying the West for some key tech secrets. Not New.
love this comment. the ceo of one of the most influential companies in the world gets caught sleeping with a spy of a rival hegemonic nation state during a period of intense technological, political, and economical change, and OP is like "pfft nothing to see here". amazing
Rich Americans don't face consequences. Unless he spilled secrets that would put Nvidia's competitive advantage in jeopardy he'll probably be required to attend some mandatory government/corporate seminar on espionage for a couple of weeks and then things will go back to business as usual.
When the money is this big, all ethics go out the window.
You're just making things up. From https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/19/business/andy-byron-astro...
> Andy Byron, the chief executive of New York-based tech company Astronomer, has resigned from his role after he was spotted embracing an employee at a Coldplay concert, according to a statement shared with CNN on Saturday.
Also from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/coldplay-kiss-c...
> Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired in November 2019 after it was discovered he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a subordinate, breaching company rules that prohibit managers from dating employees they oversee. Easterbrook admitted the relationship, calling it a mistake, and stepped down. Initially, he left with a $40 million severance package.
What other consequences do you want? Jail? Infidelity is not a crime in the US.
He doesn't need to apology, it's a common failure of man.
Is he known to talk in his sleep?
I don't know if this is Jensen himself or his advisors, but if you're going to make an apology, this is the way to do it.
There was, no deflection "this is not who I am", No blaming the spy.
He owned up to his mistakes
For sure he has excellent PR and comms advisors. He gets credit, I guess, for taking their advice, but none for betraying his wife and family. It speaks volumes that so much of the leadership class in American tech and business is so morally compromised.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure many, if not most, humans in their position could be compromised in this way.
It is one person, and your enemies have all the resources at your disposal.
It is very easy to say, “I would never do X” but when you literally have a nation trying to get you do X, I presume it’s a lot harder.
All you have to do to moot 100% of that massive adversarial effort is to decide (ahead of time) to not be a POS and keep your dick behind your zipper. Not deciding that and sticking to it makes you a garbage husband and a dangerous and unreliable CEO.
This is why I am content with being a nobody.
Crisis communications is a real field. Most companies aren't prepared for it in advance and do it poorly as a result, but there are specialist consultants who are good at getting it right (source: close friend who did this kind of work for many years - it is not a pretty business, and often involves significant human failings).
I don't mean to belittle the letter, but Jensen's PR firm undoubtedly helped with the letter and undoubtedly had advisors who specialize in this.
Owning a mistake is especially hard in the East Asian culture. It’s been a long time I have seen a public figure admitting his wrongdoings.
Indeed.
Anyone who believes he personally agonised over this alone in a darkened room is being rather naive.
Or, you know, you could be a stand up person and be genuinely contrite.
He's a big time CEO and his company is impacted by how well he handles it. So of course there are PR/crisis people around. They specialize in making psychopaths look human.
But leaders are where they are because they make good decisions - their character does matter. Calling in the image-fixer types to clean up your mistakes is easy mode.
Being seduced by a foreign agent was neither a good decision, nor evidence of good character, nor proof of situational awareness.
Can we assume this was a one-off because she was uniquely persistent and persuasive?
Yes, total failure on many counts. But when called to answer for it, you can respond like a flawed human or you can have a pr crisis firm present you as a bland corporate robot who says things like “if anyone was offended I apologize” or “we’re going to investigate how this happened.”
I think his answer was solid and seemed genuine. Doesn’t mean I think he’s got good judgment generally, but at least this was not a shitty thing to say.
As apologies go it’s skillfully done. But it’s almost entirely about his personal failings (the affair), and it leaves plenty of room for a slow-walked board investigation that will end with a report designed to look thorough while concluding nothing.
Even if he didn’t know she was an intelligence asset, it’s hard to believe he didn’t at least suspect Megaspeed was a conduit to China. If you read the press reports, there were a ton of red flags.
Nvidia has also said he’ll stay on as CEO while the investigation runs. I can’t think of many CEOs who would survive this, let alone without taking any time off.
Its all calculated down to the pretend patriot lines near the end even though he's constantly looking for ways to bypass export restrictions to sell to china.
Probably he had to have an affair with that woman to give the CCP some leverage over him. Powerful financial entities nowadays won't allow you to have any opportunities unless they have have leverage over you.
Maybe he had to do it in order to be allowed to make sales in China.
I think I may have lost some big opportunities myself when I was in crypto because I was faithful to my wife. Powerful people need people who they can control. They need kompromat.
It's called prostitution.
It's actually called espionage. Take a read of the UK cops infiltrating animal rights groups. When jo blo cops get the protesters they are investigating pregnant....who can only guess what goes on with the people at the pres's table.
If you think last week's selloff in AI stocks was solely about the democrats winning a majority you're naive.
This was most certainly known about last week and front-run by insiders(maybe NVDA insiders, more likely Trump insiders, but we will probably never know).
I can't believe the naivete of people in this thread taking a well crafted statement to be a definite representation of how he feels. How the hell would you know? It feels direct and authentic? Yes, that is why the personal crisis management agencies are paid a load of money - to make things seems genuine.
The only thing verifiable so far is what he did.
Watch what he does in coming days, not what he says today.
At this point, we can safely start treating South Park as a documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V2HxWrlqqE
So true: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/04/16/musks-legio...
And with one letter, Jensen ceases to be a blackmail target candidate.
Author David Brin has been outspoken lately about politicians taking active measures at neutralizing the effects of blackmail, (which Jensen’s activity happens to match), in pointing to an older post of Brin’s: https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-hero-might-escape...
(i don’t recommend reading directly as it is verbose, but summarize with AI)
Caught with pants down while wearing leather jacket.
Bias: I'm a Chinese.
How did they met? If it was a spy operation, then it will be an interesting case study to learn how the spy agency managed to connect these two without raising suspicion, and the information can serve as a warning/education.
BTW, the woman is fine, sure, but not cheating-worthy fine. Why? A escort (a.k.a prostitute) is much safer and clean option for man like him if he's THAT desperate. https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1xrlb...
> the woman is fine, sure, but not cheating-worthy fine
ugh...
This is all very distressing, but I say: Let he who has not built the linchpin company of the industry the entire global economy is levered to and not risked it all in an extramarital affair with a chi-com honeypot cast the first stone!
> I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Hmm, just like you were fully committed to your wife?
Given what we have seen happen at Supermicro, for example, CEO smuggling NVIDIA chips to China, it seems unlikely that no one at NVIDIA suspected a thing. Why wouldn't they want to bolster their China business?
An "exposure" of affair[1] could very well be the best coverup: "couldn't control my dick" is the ultimate plausible deniability. Timing also makes sense. Better open an investigation and get it closed while this Congress is still in power, as the next one is going to be more in bed in LLM companies than hardware.
[1]: The other party is overtly a customer, not some random individual.
Supermicro is a company who has a massive scandal every 3 years...go check...
This reminds me of President Clinton's apology to his wife and the nation, except in this case, it's a letter so we can't be sure he even wrote it himself or feels the sentiment expressed therein. In any case, it matters not to the price of GPUs.
This is a strong worded letter from a person with balls.
Yet this person immediately demonstrated political obedience before trump, calling AI "super intelligence" immediately when trump renamed it and multiple times in his twitter.
I don't have a conclusion here.
I guess 2 Huangs don’t make a right.
10/10 dad joke satisfaction on this one.
> My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
Props up the surveillance state with Palantir, requests privacy.
Oh my...
Mr. Rizzo has maintained that Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were “not unusual” and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers.
You know you're worth zilch when you are not getting honeypotted; even by the Hot Singles in Your Area.
PSA: Don't tell your wife that you are now technically cheating on the other woman
he will only have to deal with the embarrassment of figuring out how to spend his golden parachute money. IF he gets ousted, which is not a guarantee at all.
Fell for the oldest trick in the book.
The threat of Chinese models running on NVIDEA hardware..
Enlighten me please: why should anyone (CEO included) apologise to employers/colleagues/board for a private matter such as an affair?
If he had moved the Nvidia HQ to France it might have reached the back-pages in the news but nobody would have cared.
It’s interesting how overall virtue signalling is presented as important whereas the bubble shaped valuation of Nvidia and built upon bubble valuations of major clients is not considered important enough for related statements or actions.
> you deserve better from me
This sentence is laughable without resignation.
Jensen does not need to resign.
He needs to stop using AI for these letters. Big power requires big responsibility (cit. S.M.)
A billionaire or powerful man had an affair? news at 11pm.
I listened to Jensen give a rousing speech extolling the benefits of hard, important work that you enjoy at a university more than a decade ago now. It wasn’t until many years later that I’d realized he’d shamelessly lifted the idea from Daniel Pink’s Drive (worth the read btw). I’m now wondering if his comments that his brains were what attracted his wife to him and him to his wife were perhaps less than honest as well.
Probably a big nothing burger... Sad to see someone so smart got the Christine Fang treatment. Spy agencies are really something.
This is like WW1 spy movie but IRL....ROFL
Would be hilarious if a man thinking with his dick and not his head causes the next US recession.
Probably time to step down and take the golden parachute, Huang. Your AI generated letter is doing nothing.
His fate will probably follow the Boston tech company CEO that got caught cheating with HR executive at a Coldplay concert.
Oh wow, the guy who pushed for being able to sell advanced AI chips to China was having an affair with a Chinese intelligence asset?
Shocked. Shocked I tell you.
Nobody cares. Nothing will happen/change. Move on.
I don't give a shit about affairs - that's personal business.
However if you lack the common sense to not fall for Chinese spies then your judgement really must be questioned.
If detecting spies required mere common sense, there would be no spies.
He runs one of the biggest companies in the world with massive interest from China.
It's not hard to guess.
I agree with the first part, inasmuch as volatility in one's personal life affects one's professional conduct and ability. The two cannot be entirely separated, but there are definitely varying scales of inter-connectivity.
Common sense and judgement fluctuate. Humans, you know, we're prone to entirely unpredictable moments of emotional weakness. Maybe we're hungry, maybe we're tired, maybe the missus or the kids have been sick, maybe we just don't want to face leg-day after 12-hours of strategising. As per the attack and defense argument: A defender only needs to be wrong once.
I actually don’t have anything derogatory to say about Jensen.
But bonus instructive irony points if (de-facto gpu-based) LLMs were used by the malicious actors to psych-profile him to probe for which of the many character vulnerabilities we all share assortment of that he would be more receptive to.
>then your judgement really must be questioned.
As if it were that easy? Being that rich and influental means someone out there will attempt (and succeed) to game you.
Anyone else think that they’re only making this public not because it happened but because he’s tried to go against Trump and releasing this is payback/coercion
no. this is a national security failure, and reflects poorly on the administration considering there's reporting they've known for months and still had huang in close proximity to the white house.
china has to resort to honeypots because they have few legitimate political tools to influence decisions of an american company. not so for Trump et al - there are much more effective ways for the president to coerce a ceo than telling the world they let a potentially compromised individual help make policy decisions lol
At the end of the day we are all human.
At the beginning of the day too.
During the day... not so much.
Even more so at night.
All he had to do was wear leather jackets and sell enough GPUs to cause a global economic crash*, but he wanted just a little more.
*Crash in progress.
Lol some of us are more "human" than others I guess.
Big Tech CEOs - all of them are the same sociopathic liars...
Given the entire thing's paywalled, what's the tl;dr, and is it actual tech news or just drama?
Full text:
Subject: A message to our company
Body: "I owe my family and all of you an apology.
I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.
To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.
To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.
Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA's Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company, and I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.
My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy."
Actual article: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
Given the news article is paywalled can mods please replace the URL with this one ^
The official Nvida article only mentions national security concerns and does not bluntly say, as this one does, in its opening:
> admitted to having a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy
So it definitely should be changed. The Nvidia one is factual, while the other one is tabloid speculation.
He admitted to having a relationship with a woman.
There's a separate question of whether the woman was a spy.
People reading the nvida article will be wondering what is suspected. Probably why this article is trending as well as the original.
Whether tabloid, or completely inaccurate, Nvida make reference to it and that there is an independent investigation. It is reasonable for people to wonder what it is about.
> There's a separate question of whether the woman was a spy.
I mean, it's pretty clear it was a spy. Have a look at WSJ, NYT, etc. It isn't tabloidish to say so.
There is another thread dedicated to the nvidia newsroom disclosure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50416801
That's not the same link.
Welp can’t remove it now that there’s a reply. My bad you are correct.
I disagree. Giving NVIDIA / Huang the stage and a microphone is begging for disinformation. Legitimate reporters can provide context, important information omitted by NVIDIA/Huang, and fact-checking.
Strongly disagree with changing it to that URL. This the kinda news you don't want to get from an involved primary source... that page is missing a crucial detail (the national security concern mentioned is espionage) and could just disappear whenever it becomes convenient to get the news cycle on the next thing. It will almost certainly be a 404 Not Found by the time 3 years have passed.
Then there could be a second archive link.
I mean they are literally the same article in essence. One is from the official source and the other is paywalled with nothing worthy added.
The choice is clear.
If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you are going to be the target of all the secret services of all powerful countries. Period.
It is their job. You take decisions that are worth billions, you influence people that take decisions that are worth billions, and affect their countries.
They are going to study you for years. Your personality type and that of the people around you. Your weaknesses. Your problems and that of your family.
They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
> If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you
In that case, you also have access to practically every resource on the planet to run a background check on the person of your interest. He didn't do it; that implies a lack of judgment, so he fell short of what's expected of him.
Jensen fell for convenience, or was blindsided by some trait of her personality. Otherwise, executives use escort services all the time.
Hold on, you also have China finding a person that does not have anything that shows up in a background check which they could execute with even more resources.
US intelligence agencies were able to flag her based on something. So, clearly, she left a trail.
That trail may not have existed beforehand. You can't find breadcrumbs before they're laid. Perhaps it was her notifying her handlers of her success that was noticed.
I honestly think he knew she was a spy and did it anyway.
I was very surprised to learn that he decided to stay back while the rest of Trump delegation returned back from their China state visit. The plot is clear now.
The troubling part is the cover-up. Huang seems to have believed that if Republicans kept control of the Congress he wouldn’t have to come clean.
True, to some extent. But also, he should know and see it coming, and people in his entourage should also see it and be briefed/watched by services.
It's a cat and mouse game. Obviously, the adversary will in turn do everything in their power to make it look natural and get past that kind of defensiveness.
Perhaps as far as to say, the only suspicious thing about the perfect agent would be the lack of anything to be suspicious of.
I mean he should just not have an affair, independent of whether the other person is a spy or not.
stop making excuses for these people.
Yeah, you don't need to go that deep. Look through histories, myths, folklore from all around the world. Powerful men have mistresses. Regular men have mistresses. Powerful women go through several husbands. Regular women, too. The institution of marriage exists to counteract the natural human tendency to be "unfaithful". No one needs to make excuses, they need to accept the fact that this kind of thing happens and update their expectations.
I say this as someone who's family was torn apart by an affair, by a failure to update expectations. Well, that was the excuse; the issues were deeper, the affair was a focus-sink and an excuse not to address them. I wonder if that's the case here, too.
(I should make clear that I think Jensen Huang sucks for other reasons.)
>The institution of marriage exists to counteract the natural human tendency to be "unfaithful". No one needs to make excuses, they need to accept the fact that this kind of thing happens and update their expectations.
fair observation and sad society’s current script still demands it be posted under anon throwaway account.
> Jensen and Kim calculated that, for men in their first year of marriage, the divorce rate is 96 percent higher for Oscar nominees and 205 percent higher for winners
When men suddenly get more attention from women, they're more likely to cheat. Interestingly, women who earn Oscars are more likely to keep their husbands than other actresses.
https://newrepublic.com/article/121108/oscar-curse-myth
No judgement on the approach but I do advise being careful not to blame yourself for the actions of others. Sometimes your own expectations are valid.
"these people" ?
Rich people who can’t help themselves to whatever they want/see because they are too powerful/rich and have lost perspective. They think they can do whatever they want with impunity because most of the time they can. Then once in a while there are actual repercussions and someone wants us to be sympathetic? Get outta here
> Get outta here
Lol, don't take out your anger for not being rich at random people on the internet. Affairs are common across diverse economic profiles of people, not just the rich. All that anger for nothing.
I’m not angry, I’m laughing at how absurd this is.
Yes affairs are unfortunately common but this whole honey pot thing is ridiculous. That doesn’t suddenly make me sympathetic to cheating.
Seriously. They're asking us to give this guy more grace than any other cheater because he's wealthy.
It’s so bizarre
Rich people, lol. I think this tale's been told cross income net worth strata for something on the order of eons (or all of human history if you really want to know).
And yet who would go to bat for you and I claiming we deserve sympathy for having an affair?
People for whom fidelity is optional.
There’s a 100% chance the dude was so hornt up that he didn’t care if he slept with a spy or whatever. Inventing a universe where he lost at Six Dimensional Sex Chess is what somebody would do for an AO3 story
Huh, makes you wonder why this isn't available overboard via expensive matchmaking. And if it is why doesn't he use it.
A plausible reason would be that he was not looking to have an affair but rather was actively seduced. Someone not looking to have an affair would not use a matchmaking service.
Been there done that.
lol I am not the richest man, not even close and nothing physical happened. But I once got into a parasocial relationship after decades of monogamy and no dalliances. Never planned for it, and in hindsight years later don't know what happened. And it was so cathartic.
Were you an Onlyfans whale?
No. Never spent money on these sites. Public website/app. You could read any comments publicly too. Never even DMed, until ... Some things just happen, quite randomly. No more details.
Remember that in the above scenario the seducer is an agent for hire (or she's doing it for patriotic or other reasons), not genuinely in love with the rich exec. Honest matchmaking can't guarantee the same experience in every instance.
Obviously the exec could have paid for the same service himself, but that wouldn't be called matchmaking (and it's not what most people seek).
Good points. It's a one sided match that's in part due to acting. And person often isn't actively seeking it out consciously.
They don't go out and find your perfect match, they get someone that works for them to act like your perfect match.
This does exist as a service and is considered by many to be the oldest profession in the world.
> It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.
This is really not true. Spies are just people, there aren't that many of them, and they don't come "customized". The overlap of effective spies and "the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world" is very close to zero.
What you are describing is conspiracy-theory thinking or the kind of stuff you see in James Bond movies. Not real life.
Obviously spies exist, like here, but she's just... a normal woman who has a job as a spy and tried to seduce him and succeeded. He may have turned down five others who failed miserably in their attempts.
And sure they try to put together a psychological profile of the person, but that's also not really rocket science, and it's going to be pretty basic stuff. "Your weaknesses" is not going to be that exciting. Maybe he's really into expensive wines. It's not like he has a secret gambling addiction.
So let's just keep this reality-based and not fantasy-based.
> The overlap of effective spies and "the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world" is very close to zero.
The overlap doesn’t have to be that great. The spies are also not random you don’t get random spies matching with random CEOs. They just have to have enough available agents and enough info on the target, physical proximity, and other factors to attempt something to work out. In many cases it’s not something that will be in the news either. It will be just a failed attempt, or just an affair.
Realistically speaking, there's a good chance the affair probably happened first, and then the MSS got involved second.
Even the most powerful people can be really dumb.
> Even the most powerful people can be really dumb
"even"? Barring the fact that power makes you dumber, those in power at least for the last ~40 years or so had been actually selected to be dumber
mr. Huang case here is a shining example
>> not fantasy-based
A nerd thinking a woman is into them...that is the fantasy...No she did not happen to bump into you in the elevator, and no she is not there to attend the same AWS conference that you... and oh no... she does NOT happen to like the same SciFi you do ...and no ...you are not ohh so funny...
That
> What you are describing is conspiracy-theory thinking or the kind of stuff you see in James Bond movies. Not real life.
This is literally a state actor running sexpionage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexpionage).
Yes, this is real sexpionage. Not the Hollywood fantasy described upthread. The scenario described is not what has played out in reality.
What part of that struck you as fantasy?
Again, this isn't some low-level clerk that just needs a handjob or some Grindr kompromat--this is the CEO of the second largest company in the world by market cap.
Is it the assertion was that they'll do research on you (which is why having a gambling problem, large debts, or lying during a clearance interview is an issue)?
Is it the assertion that they'll pick a very pretty woman instead of some plain-looking one (which is why historically the NKVD recruited from theater and ballet schools)?
The "Hollywood fantasy" is real, it just happens in a vanishingly small set of cases.
For a truly bizarre version (even stranger than this!), see the case of Shi Pei Pu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Pei_Pu).
few of us can imagine the problems that come with being that type of leader/ceo. Knowing who trust and who is using you is a challenge
thats why you hire professional security people who've played these games...
Sign me up!
What if we maybe built legal and financial practices that prevented such a concentration of power and wealth that these honey pots would not be viable.
Then we wouldn't have iphones and rockets.
Probably for the best
It didn't work out too well for Christopher McCandless.
Sorry, is this an argument for or against?
While the dynamic for the physical security of the rich and powerful has changed a bit due to drones, up until recently it was neigh impossible for the common person to threaten the physical security of someone like this, or for nation-states to do so without being noticed.
That meant that the only way to attack these people was a soft attack in the form of social interactions or social media and as such it's always struck me as extremely foolish for these kinds of people to let themselves be preyed upon in this manner.
Like they have teams of people who keep them physically safe, but not mentally safe, so in the age of social media a motivated attacker can, with enough cleverness[0][1] directly reach the mind of someone who otherwise couldn't be reached.
Why does that happen?
I think it's not so much because they're juicy targets that entities with unlimited resources can meticulously target like you describe but because people like Jensen Huang or Bill Gates are very technically competent they probably lack the social skills so they're too often the Michael Scott to the Todd Packer in situations like this[2] and when a hint of opportunity to be sexually promiscuous is presented to them they seize on it without thinking of the consequences.
Think of the married blue collar dudes who pick up bored divorcees at some dive sports bar after watching the big game and then drive home drunk, juggling multiple mistresses and a family life with relative ease for years.
A manager like Jensen Huang may be able to handle multiple business units but he can't manage a single mistress handling his unit because that just isn't his skill set.
[0] https://gwern.net/doc/www/web.archive.org/5e00c6993450adc597...
[1] https://www.npr.org/2010/06/08/127564512/for-the-love-of-goo...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Ci_oopVTk
Maybe. Or maybe the point of acquiring outsize money and power to many people is to unshackle their experience of the world, and to impose their philosophy on it. Physical security is one thing; I reckon most aren't signing up to be brainwashed for the good of the company (beyond WUSA or whatever).
A drone is a pretty extreme measure. A mistress is a very long term plan with long term ROI if not discovered and comes with the ability to influence decisions. It is far more valuable than being able to murder random people.
Agreed. The drone comment as an aside just to head-off people saying "Well actually people aren't so physically secure anymore..."
The point I'm trying to make is that people at this level can and often do have absolute physical security but have almost comical[0] lapses in psychological/mental security that lead to the kinds of things that you're describing.
The severity of this issue makes me wonder why it seemingly isn't accounted for appropriately in security threat modelling. You'd think that that the handlers for a dweeb like Huang or Gates would take the appropriate steps to mitigate the threat, if only by adopting harm-reduction principles and getting their CEO an in-house honey pot to proactively fend off external threats.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4d74Qk3ac
I agree, but I wonder what is the threat model for the CEO saying, “shut up, I’m your employer. Let this person through.”
I’m not sure somebody with an infatuation and ultimate authority over you is something a security person can work into the threat model.
This reminds me of Ralph Klein, the former Premier of Alberta affectionality. / derisively referred to as 'King Ralph'[0] who had a reputation for drinking and gambling. On the one hand it apparently made him exceptionally accessible to the electorate because you could saddle up to him at his regular drinking spots and give him a piece of your mind but on the other hand it lead to situations like this:
> Public opinion regarding Klein's alcohol consumption reached a boiling point in December 2001 when he visited the Herb Jamieson Centre, a 249-bed homeless shelter in Edmonton while intoxicated. An argument ensued between Klein and homeless men sleeping in the hallway who were denied a bed because they had been drinking.[153] During the argument Klein told the men to get a job, which was rebuked by some of the men who stated they had jobs but could still not afford housing.[154] An argumentative Klein was shuffled out of the centre while he tossed money at a homeless man on the way out.[154][155] According to biographer Don Martin, Klein continued with his normal schedule in the following days, and when rumors of the event began to pop-up amongst the media, Klein was unable to remember the event.[154] After the event Klein called a press conference and emotionally acknowledged he had an alcohol problem and pledged to curb or stop his drinking. He called alcohol "the devil" and an "awful beast", but did not go as far as acknowledging he suffered from alcoholism.[156] Klein admitted to being intoxicated at many moments in his life, visibly during his 2001 general election party, a month earlier when he introduced former US President Bill Clinton, and at the public memorial for Calgary sportscasting legend Ed Whalen.[154]
As I understand it Klein had a security guard / handler whose job was to keep the public safe from Klein as much as it was to keep Klein safe from the public but apparently he wasn't able to dissuade Klein from drunkenly throwing money at a homeless person and telling him to get a job that night.
I would imagine that it is an interesting dynamic being the handler for a person with a lot of power, there's an interesting level of self-awareness needed by the person in power where they have to understand that they are wilfully giving some of that power up to a person that they can trust to make these judgment calls when needed and give them the feeling that they can do so when needed without long-term consequences to their personal lives.
A way to do that is to pay them well enough so that they don't depend on you to feed their family so that they can always choose to be the person that has to put their foot down and tell you what you need to hear when you need to hear it even if you don't want to hear it in that moment.
But at the end of the day it comes down to the ability of the CEO to wilfully give personal power to another person, and time and time again that seems to be single largest failing of the people in these positions -- they just can't do that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ralph
> They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.
I heard stories of the CIA doing a class with new State Department employees, or ones at a certain level, that among other things involved the instructor "rating" everyone ("You're a 4, you're a 6, you're a 5..."), with the point being "If a woman comes up to you at a bar, and she's a 9 or a 10, she's either an escort or a foreign asset, and your safest assumption is the latter."
Sorry for the newly created anonymous account to comment.
This is true.
Those of us working on classified programs get briefed on this sort of stuff and this is exactly what they tell us.
These operatives are highly trained, research their targets extensively, and are very good at their jobs. Once they get leverage over their targets they're most of the way there. Sex, money, fame, are all very enticing to some people and once the leverage is established most people will do anything to keep it going and keep it private.
Huang's coming forward and publicly admitting the affair effectively zeroes out the leverage. It's probably the best thing he could do once the full gravity of the situation came out.
I don't know if high-level leadership at every company with export-restricted products gets the security briefings they should. I bet Mr. Huang and the rest of the leadership team at Nvidia is getting it now.
It's... really not that hard. All you have to do is be content with what you have, and not go lusting after new opportunities. Although granted, anyone who can pull that off probably isn't going to be a multibillionaire CEO, because that's the kind of personality selected against among CEOs.
But if you're married, with kids, and you're willing to throw that away to chase someone else, I'd argue you have a serious personality flaw going on there.
>to chase someone else,
There is no chase here. It is the other way round.
Even if someone else is initiating it, you still have the power to say no. Especially if you're rich enough to be able to do things like apply for restraining orders or else to keep them away.
Jensen wasn't an innocent victim, he was still an active, voluntary participant.
Yes, but more or less in the same sense that drug addicts have the power to say "no".
It's not that easy to rebuff approaches from women you're very attracted to; it's much easier to avoid having the opportunity come up in the first place. I think at the very least the moral judgment should be accompanied by some empathy.
May be a better analogy is simply not any drugs, but a well funded and researched unique drug that is specifically designed for the target.
I am going to guess Jensen isn't even looking for beauty, although that is certainly part of the deal. But someone who is also business savvy, understands technology, smart and somehow well connected to AI as well as a business partner in some sense.
And perhaps it is worth pointing out the obvious, this isn't a simple beauty trap, it is a pys-op.
Although there is part of that thinks. Could Jensen knew of this all along. And it was just a way to get business going.
You're telling on yourself here.
Just look what happened to Leto II
Isn't there actually a south park episode about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Healing_(South_Park)
> All you have to do is be content with what you have, and not go lusting after new opportunities
What if Huang wasn't married/with family? Would he just never get to form close relationships after becoming successful?
No, it means you apply a modicum of common sense, commensurate with your risk/exposure. While it might seem the opposite of romantic you have your security people check them out.
>serious personality flaw
exactly, although I would double down that that is precisely the kind of personality being selected for by the system
Being content with what you have arguably not a mutually compatible attribute with being a billionaire. Not even being snarky.
I'm not going to disagree with you--I've said multiple times in the past (not sure if I've said it here) that I don't think it's possible to be both ethical and a billionaire.
But that's not really a defense of the behavior, and it's perhaps a sign that we should stop valorizing billionaires.
Billionaires become that way by creating products and services that people are freely willing to pay for.
Nothing unethical about it.
Yet there are plenty of billionaires who do not, at least publicly, have tragic relationships. Steve Jobs? Warren Buffet? Gavin Newsom (for the past 20 years)?
Look at recent and current tech CEOs. Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg sure…but Amodie, Altman, Cook, Nadella seem to be in stable relationships, and stable in general.
No, not all men think with their dicks. Huang’s martial fidelity is below average.
Didn't Bill Gates' wife hint that the divorce was caused by some Epstein stuff?
Steve Jobs, the man who named a computer after the daughter he denied for years was his?
True, but we’re talking about him being manipulated by intelligence or a gold-digger, then betrayed. His relationship troubles with Chrisann Brennan happened before he got famous, and it doesn’t seem like she manipulated him, rather his obsession with work and rudeness put her off (which is the opposite of “thinking with his dick” too). Then he had a seemingly-healthy relationship for over 20 years.
Having Steve Jobs on your list makes me retroactively suspicious of every other name on the list
https://www.ranker.com/list/steve-jobs-loves-and-hookups/cel...
This doesn’t read “groomed by intelligence agencies” to me. He had relationship troubles, but they were before Apple blew up. He met Laurene Powell in 1989 and they stayed together until his death in 2011.
I also don’t think it’s an excuse that he was particularly attractive, since plenty of other men on this list are less so. Buffet married a 60-year old woman in his 70s, if he cared about looks he could’ve dated a 20-year old.
You said "tragic", not "groomed by intelligence agencies tragic".
Maybe you thought the context was clear, but I honestly had no idea that was what you were trying to convey.
It’s not tragic, either. He was happily married for the last 20+ years of his life and even his daughter reconciled with him.
I'll give you Jobs, now that he's passed away and we have a lot of the dirt on him. But everyone else, we really don't know about.
Also, (just kind of pointing this out as a relevant factor, not really trying to insult the others), but Steve Jobs is tall and good looking. The guy would have gotten plenty of women with just a guitar and not a nickel to his name. I'm thinking Musk and Gates were very likely not in that league as far as raw attractiveness.
Just because actual desk toy Bill Gates didn't make the cover of Rolling Stone or even Teen Beat shouldn't detract from his ..
.. whatever this is: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/
I can give more examples. Past US presidents. Joe Biden? Barack Obama? Either George Bush? Ronald Reagan? Jimmy Carter?
6 of 8. And they’re politicians, so if they had any embarrassing martial info we’d surely know about it.
Ronald Reagan did have a bit of old school 1950s era scandal about him - a twice married Hollywood actor type whose kids from the second marriage didn't even know they had brothers and sisters from another mother until their early teens(? not sure on timing).
Small beer stuff today, titillating gossip for some.
What a load of bollocks. You make it sound like Jensen was some kind of victim here and had no choice. Please let's not normalize moral failings and weaknesses (especially of powerful people).
I think their whole point is that he had many choices and he should’ve known this was a risk.
He chose to start a business, stay in charge, grow it to its current state. He chose to meet politicians and world leaders and get involved in global affairs. Those choices, as lucky as he’s been, have put a target on his back.
He chose to talk to these women. He chose to have the affair. He chose those actions. He should have known the prior choices (be a major and visible CEO) would lead to a world where future choices (have affair with random women) may be complicated.
He is no victim to anything but his own ego and foolishness. Taking no moral stance of having an affair, he should have known better because he had made his choices already.
We should have known he was a security risk years ago: https://nypost.com/2026/11/08/tech/jensen-huang-ceo-of-4-5t-... (“Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang autographs a woman’s (she is confirmed not the alleged spy) bra at the Computex trade show in Taipei, June 4, 2024.”).
Moral failings and weakness is the most normal thing there is, though?
Moral? Where is morality here?
We’re all pretending that these people can’t afford NDAs, background checks or other people to manage these situations. What you’re saying is true and exactly the reason billionaires have an inner circle that manages all this. NFL players with a fraction of the money these people have manage that better. If you’re Jensen, there really ain’t that many excuses you can make.
yea an NDA would have definitely stopped her lol
Read the whole sentence and comprehend it
i have, it's too early to speculate on what measures have or haven't been taken. i just singled out the point about NDAs because that is ridiculous to bring up when talking about espionage
I've been thinking about this issue a lot in terms of the influence on the US government. The NKVD then KGB coined the term "kompromat" for compromising material.
If you join a 3 letter agency or the military or probably many government departments and contractors, you'll have to go through a background check. The more sensitive the information you have access to, the more extensive the background check. The particular employer won't necessarily care what skeletons are in your closet. They're concerned with your ability to be blackmailed or bribed. So if you get in a lot of debt, you can lose your security clearance. Some of the most successful spies have recruited with a relative pittance of money in comparison to the damage they can do.
But there's one exception to all this: if you an elected politician, you don't need to go through any of this. The FBI can't disqualify you. Even if you're in the executive, the FBI might disqualify you but the president can overrule that. Case in point: Jared Kushner [1].
There are a bunch of politicians and senior staff who are DL (ie secretly gay). There's a running joke that Grindr has an outage every time the RNC Convention is in town (eg [2]). The ownership of and access to Grindr's platform and data is actually a national security concern.
And then there's the Jeffrey Epstein of it all.
So while things like honeypots have existed and will continue to exist (as might be the case here with NVidia), you might find yourself asking "how do these powerful people fall for this stuff or end up having dirt?" whereas I think you should be asking "do these people become powerful and/or rich because they're compromised or can be compromised?"
Someone who is compromised is on the team and won't rat you out. It's mutually assured destruction.
I'm really not sure what we do about it. Ideally politicians should be able to pass security clearance background checks but that's a moral hazard as the agency, whose head is a political appointee, could effectively veto certain candidates. This has the hallmarks of the J. Edgar Hoover years.
A system intentionally filtering out people with integrity who aren't compromised is a sobering and depressing thought.
[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/officials-reje...
[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/grindr-app-crashes-milwaukee-rnc-19...
A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery ended up losing the money when the girl they were into at high school flies themselves at them, has their kids, then goes back to the dude they were with before with the kids and child support, and this is relatively small fry and without any possible gov involvement.
The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves.
This does not sound like something you've ACTUALLY encountered multiple times.
40% first marriages in US end in divorce. Second marriages have 60%. 2/3 initiated by women
You just need to know few people to qualify for "multiple times"
This number keeps coming up.
A: It hasn't been true for multiple generations. The # comes from when divorce was first legalized and there was a huge boom in divorces right away.
B: The number of failed marriages is dramatically increased by "frequent fliers" who get divorced multiple times.
College educated adults have a 25% divorce rate.
College education adults only have a 15% chance of their 2nd marriage failing.
> 2/3 initiated by women
You say this like 2/3 of divorce is the fault of women, but IME they usually have good reason to do so.
Agreed. If we’re talking inconvenient truths, I see far, far more husbands being useless married (and particularly parental) partners than I do wives. And I say this as a man.
I'm fairly sure they meant entirely the opposite.
I’m assuming “initiated by” is an objective legal term for filing the divorce. which ironically is probably oppositely correlated to fault in divorces, i.e if the husband cheats, the wife files for divorce, and it was the husband’s ‘fault’ as they breaches the marital contract
The figure comes from interview data of post-divorce couples regarding motives for divorce (and a few other questions, i.e. regret etc). It's not literal paperwork filing data.
There is no conspiracy in it
Divorce implies involvement of a government institution and women feel like a fish in water when it comes to bureaucracy, while men avoid it
That's why in same-sex pairs women are twice likely to call cops and file a lawsuit regarding house abuse and men half as often
It's a large jump from "divorces happen a lot" to "many startup founders have their highschool sweetheart honeypot them for child support"
In fairness, it seems like everyone is a startup founder. I can't tell you the number of CV's and resumes I've seen that have CEO of something I've never heard of on them.
Just saying that being a startup founder is not particularly rare or special the past twenty years. You don't even have to do particularly well with your startup. People probably get targeted for a measly 750K exit. I think on HN we get a twisted opinion of what is big money to most people.
>" I think on HN we get a twisted opinion of what is big money to most people."
>"a measly 750K exit"
No kidding, lol.
This is how you know this is a male dominated forum: women would not be remotely surprised and in fact tend to be the only ones warning of it when it is about to happen.
And let’s face it, nerds are especially vulnerable.
People are missing the point; it depends on the "circle" you are in. Not all will have the same experiences occurring at the same frequency.
> A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery
Maybe he only knows one person who "won the startup lottery"
I sure have. I’m surprised you’re surprised.
That remind me of founder of a really good, Realtime NoSQL Database .. RethinkDB . And his wisdom that he hard earned still reminds me not to repeat his mistake.. ~Don't Hire a Hot young girl before you have product market fit.
Here's some wiser wisdom: keep it in your damn pants.
its hard... u know ( no pun intended)
This sounds incredibly unlikely to happen to multiple people a person knows but “significant proportion” is vague enough for it to still be true even it’s just one. But, I think people are misreading that you’re suggesting these were honey traps rather than just high school crushes taking advantage of men they ignored earlier in life when they become rich and then abandoning them once they no longer are.
Marriage and hyperindividualism are a dangerous mix.
“If she’s a 10 she’s an (intelligence) asset”
That principle works for anyone with means to seize.
>That principle works for anyone with means to seize.
Believing that is the first step to a compromise. This principle works for anyone period.
Just think everyone should consider the possibility that no one really needs the head of R&D. For good intelligence agencies, the guy who does low level IT will do nicely thank you very much.
No one, man or woman, grows closer to being a 10 as they age. So if you work for some of these critical companies and your perfect man or woman shows up, you should be on your guard.
> So if you work for some of these critical companies and your perfect man or woman shows up, you should be on your guard.
TBH if I was higher up the chain of command, I'd actually give less fucks. If I have a mortgage I cannot afford to lose job or money so I'm on guard because I'm one failed marriage away from homelessness. But if I have ten million dollars to my name, and a Chinese spy shows up then what exactly do I have to lose? If the company kicks me out then good riddance, I can already retire to perfect comfort and nobody can take away the memory of spending a year with a 10/10 partner.
If you know for a fact they are a spy, are we sure that they are the ones doing the finessing? can’t you just feed them false intel and develop a syncretic religion between their confucianism(or communism/ maoism) and my catholicism such that they don’t know who is brainwashing who?
I wouldn't care about giving out real intel in exchange for a passionate romance because that's something you cannot buy with money.
That's for other people. This time is different.
This is why I refuse to give up reading HN comments. For absolute nonsensical gems like this.
Not my experience in SF. About the worst sin they’ve committed is moving to Walnut Creek to get a big house - which is admittedly fairly criminal an act.
This reads like someone with zero familiarity with divorces or people in general.
- anyone with enough money to be targeted like this has enough money to get a prenup.
- most states do 50-50 custody these days unless one parent gives up their rights. So any child support would be decent, but not life-changing. Doubly so if the guy is rich enough to be targeted, in which case he's also rich enough to hire a good lawyer. The woman in this scenario has less money, so she can't get as strong a lawyer unless she's gambling that he'll have to pay her legal fees.
- With 50-50 custody the woman can't fly out of state to raise the kids, the court frowns on uprooting them from their hometown / school system.
The only way this makes sense is if the guy relinquishes all his rights to the kid, in which case he's hardly a hero either.
This isn't even considering the ridiculous notion that this woman has a man on the side just waiting for her to get knocked up with some millionaire's child.
Dear world's intelligence agencies,
On the chance that I might one day become the CEO of a very important company, could you forward me my dream girl in advance? Thanks.
PH.
> A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery ended up losing the money when the girl they were into at high school flies themselves at them, has their kids, then goes back to the dude they were with before with the kids and child support
What in the world are you talking about? Most successful people you know get honeypotted by their high school crush? I don't know anybody like that. How did you determine it was a honeypot and not just a regular divorce?
> The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves
Maybe speak for yourself.
I guess that with AO3 being down people have to turn to HN to post their sick fantasies. This sounds like something straight outta Andrew Tate’s fear mongering playbook. If your worldview is such that you thought that anyone would believe this nonsense story then I’d hate to know what else you believe.
Sounds like you have little to no experience with people who won the startup lottery.
Sounds like you don't know that divorce rate is near 50% and mostly initiated by the woman
The divorce rate could be 99% without GP's situation ever happening. This stat says nothing by itself.
Even if the situation really did happen multiple times, it's entirely possible that something else caused the divorces, e.g. people who came to money like this could turn out to be bad parents/partners on average. I mean, seems like there's plenty of examples of riches frying people's brains right now...
You say “mostly initiated by the woman” like it proves something about women maliciously ending marriages to make off with their husbands’ earnings. Have you met men? Many are eminently divorcible. A lot of people have bad relationships that should’ve never started, and it’s not surprising that it falls to the woman to eventually call it quits.
They're patriotic women in both cases; in the former case, by stealing industrial secrets, in this case, doing their duty to help decentralize their nations' wealth though the family court system, thus helping to solve the wealth inequality crisis.
This is kind of necessary with AI taking over jobs. If the situation gets worse, poor chad men will have to find themselves a rich mistress (or client) to support them financially. It might become the biggest non-tech industry. There will be entire teams of people working on just one rich tech guy's wife and competing against other teams to seduce her. The last remnant of a free market.
> The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves.
People in here are probably salty that they are not valuable enough to be targeted by some sexy Chinese spy.
But you know, she doesn’t really want you, unless you let yourself.
> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
I think most normal people have tried Doritos at some point, which are the flavour-equivalent of what you’re describing here. It’s food designed to satisfy your human needs and desires.
I don't know... I mean I'm just a CEO of a one man company and even I get suspicious when a woman is too nice to me. Surely, with more responsibility you should get even more paranoid
So you keep it in your pants. I mean, come on.
> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
She’s a woman, not a sweet from Willy Wonka’s factory. If you find yourself thinking “wow, she couldn’t be more perfect, it’s like she’s too good to be true” then perhaps as the CEO of a billion dollar company with national security concerns you should consider hey, maybe she is too good to be true? Maybe look into that?
All else aside, if you find yourself being tempted, you make sure she isn’t around you. The CEO compensation more than makes up for your sacrifice.
I think the point is you have a nation-state adversary with millions of dollars and many teams of people working around the clock for years to figure out how to make you say yes. Including not crafting a persona who is too perfect, because that would obviously arouse suspicions.
Obviously the target has agency, I don't deny that, but it seems blindingly shortsighted to think it's as simple as "be suspicious of supermodels who are into you".
I don’t even know that suspicion needs to come into it. Don’t have affairs that are connected to your job as a billion dollar CEO. She wasn’t a barista he met at a coffee shop one morning, she was a professional connection with ties to the industry. It’s not too much to ask people earning insane amounts of money to avoid mixing work and pleasure.
Yeah, can’t disagree with you here, that’s the hard counter.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I love my wife and wouldn't cheat on her, even if a nation state tried to craft some kind of "ideal woman." It's a bit alarming so many people on this thread are treating it like a foregone conclusion that all men are doomed to cheat on their wives if given the right hair color and conversation topics.
Well to be fair, you haven't been put in that situation so it's hard to say how you would act. I'm sure many people who have affairs believed, 3 months prior, that they would never be the type to have an affair.
> Maybe I'm just weird, but I love my wife and wouldn't cheat on her
I agree with you, but, brain chemistry is weird, and "wouldn't cheat on them" is easier said than done and requires a lot of discipline in the heat of the moment when the situation arises and your own hind-brain and hormones are fighting you. A blasé attitude won't prepare you foe the sucker-punch.
I've seen grown people with multi-decade relationships throw it away because they got a tiny bit of extra-marital romantic attention, and the thrill regressed them to teenagers. In the majority if cases the cheaters' amors weren't interested in a long-term relationships.
That's a valid and measured take, but most of the comments in here are not talking about the affair in such terms. They are mostly painting Jensen as some kind of innocent child who was manipulated with Jedi Mind Tricks, when there's no reason to think her approach was anything but blunt.
I don't even care that much about what Jensen did, I don't even know what his marriage is like. It wouldn't bother me if he stayed on Nvidia. But people are defending him in a way that comes off less like "we can all make a dumb mistake on the wrong day" and more like "all men want secretly to ditch their wives, and his mistake was doing it with a spy."
It could be a matter of personality. Some people are happy with what they have, while others are fundamentally unhappy. Unusually successful people tend to be of the latter type.
It's not a forgone conclusion, but from a defensive perspective the threat model is more sophisticated than you're assuming.
All that effort only to discover Jensen likes what every man likes.
Expensive video cards?
This is what happens when you lose sight of what's important....sweet video games.
> They are going to study you for years.
Lol. Jensen Hueng's case was likely figured out in a smoke filled room somewhere in the bowels of some intelligence agency in China, agents passing around pictures of Jensen while puffing on cigarettes. One them tosses a picture on the table and just says 'he always wears that leather jacket'. The others nod, and one them sucks in the air while shaking the ashes into an ashtray, 'We have a few candidates in mind'.
All of this makes sense assuming you aren't married. An affair is still an affair. If it was just about finding the perfect partner, he should have gotten a divorce first.
Sure, so its a given that they will fall to such tricks? If that's the case, may be don't develop a one person cult of personality and power. They're paid enough to look out for precisely for these things so that they don't make mistakes that'll ruin 100s of people's lives, yet they don't have such concerns when making stupid decisions. He is not designing chips, burning midnight oil on trying to figure out how to dissipate enough heat to get best performance from the chip, the kind of problems that actually are consequential. He is the pizza guy, yet cant do that well.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a -single- man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a -wife- bit on the side"
But somehow, it is his company that he brought to that point, and also why would he care for being spied on by a country or another? There is nothing that said that he had to swear fidelity to the US.
Few companies can afford to be disloyal to their government for any reasonable amount of time. Not easy to see in the West because most government are quite closely lobbied, but it's important to be aware of. Nvidia is of strategic importance and has been part of the USA's sanctions regime against its so-called near-peer adversaries for quite some time.
> If you are one of the most powerful man on earth
So just hire women? Sounds like an incredibly simple solution to being security compromised.
I think you need to think about that a little bit longer.
I'm curious. Care to explain? It sounds dead simple to me.
The feds tried to disrupt the civil rights movement by faking a bunch of correspondence that made it seem like they were all cheating on their wives. They thought it would work because it worked on the commies in the 30s-50s. It didn't really do shit because their wives all already assumed they were from the get go.
There's a lesson in there somewhere.
It would be nice if "the most powerful man on earth" actually had a brain and used it too?
> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.
“It takes the machinations of an intelligence apparatus more powerful than you can comprehend to make a rich guy cheat on his wife” lmaooo
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49712639/49ers-owner-jed...
Makes you wonder if this is why Elon just doesn’t stay attached to one person.
But another reason why as someone of such a high caliber you should never be alone with other women. Always have a bodyguard or something, surely you can afford someone…
> But another reason why as someone of such a high caliber you should never be alone with other women.
That would preclude having a meeting with a female unless there's a bodyguard but not need one when you're meeting with a guy?
That would be quite weird.
Just keep your dick in your pants.
CEOs are not “high caliber” people.
This is likely a reason that they use escort services (like those provided by a certain "hung" pimp), and they tend to marry very high-profile folks. It's not about having a "trophy spouse," but having someone that can't really leverage you.
"you should never be alone with other women. Always have a bodyguard or something"
I mean, each to his own, but there are times when I would not want a bodyguard involved.
It's something someone I know that they suggested after observing so many people who have affairs, and it always stemmed from private settings where a married person and an unmarried (sometimes married, but less likely) person wound up having an affair usually emotional vulnerabilities or business was involved.
I'd wager this is very low on the list of reasons Elon doesn't stay attached to one person lol
Well if he as unlikeable in person as he seems on any media he's on, I'm not really surprised
ok, Mike Pence.
Or the woman was in fact not a spy and that's the story to get this sympathetic reaction.
we will never know
I doubt this was even that sophisticated. These types of people live on deception and extracting benefits for themselves. Pretty woman walks up of course it's theirs for the taking. My God hasn't musk been paying women to birth his children? These people are more or less ill. That's why they are CEOs at high power companies.
I wonder if this was all planned out. Perhaps NVIDIA can't spearheaded by someone unimportant and dispensable like Jensen Huang. Watch him get replaced by someone from a very specific ethnoreligion.
Not only are you antisemitic, but your too much of a coward to say jew.
There's plenty of cheating CEOs. I don't really understand what difference it makes that his mistress was Chinese Spy.
Unlike a "regular" affair. The spy may have used many tactics available to her including knowing all his weaknesses, having the ability to manipulate his relationship with his wife by her state hacking the phones etc. With enough resources you can probably manipulate anyone to cheat or at least 99% of the population.
Essentially all CEOs of big companies have affairs and employ prostitutes. There are very few if any exceptions. Some hide their behavior better than others, some feel no need to do so. It's how 50+ heterosexual men behave if they have the resources to do so, and these guys have the resources to do so.
The consequence of this for security is twofold. First, compromising someone with sex is both much cheaper than compromising someone with direct payments of money and much easier to hide in an operational sense. Second, this is particularly so when the married mark's image (even sincere mentality) is one of rectitude and hard work and so forth.
> heterosexual
You mean, employing male prostitutes is somehow any better?
I made no such statement. I simply qualified that the specific behavior I was describing seems particular to a certain context.
The poster made no such insinuation.
A much more reasonable interpretation is that they are limiting their statement to their knowledge.
Well, the "mechanics" in these (rare) case work "different"
How so? Genuinely curious
I feel like every thing requires a tin foil hat now. Is this some last ditch ploy to stimulate noncompetitive regulation from the US government? I find it more difficult to trust anything these people say everyday.
Just to be clear, this was probably already happening, but I can imagine the board being like "hmmmmm..... opportunity?" Then we see titles with "Chinese spy" plastered onto every major news network. Seems a little convenient to me.
Pangram says that this letter is partially AI-generated. Hilariously, it's the part where he's sorry that he cheated on his wife that's AI-generated, while the part about cooperating with the investigation and affirming his love of America is real.
I would love to see the prompt.
Isn't the letter too short to make any kind of accurate assessment of whether it's AI or not?
Shouldn't he eat his own dog food?
I respect the guy. It takes guts to admit when something like that is up.
Per the article he was basically forced. He didn’t admit anything of his own free will.
> To my wife and family: I love you.
No, you do not.
That's unfair. Most people are helpless against trained mind-tricksters; anyone could fall into that trap. Don't tell me you have never wondered how soldiers returning from war stop having panic attacks and soiling their clothes after seeing a qualified shrink, who does nothing more than talk. Words alone can heal, convince and mislead you. We have no idea what that woman used to lure him. He's not some random guy from Ohio who cheats with a stripper, he's a high-value target. We're talking about Hitman 3 (videogame) level espionage here.
>We have no idea what that woman used to lure him.
Looking at her picture might provide a hint.
It’s possible to love someone and make mistakes
$NVDA down 2% pre-trading.
how does that work, a movement pre-trading, since trading sets the price?
is it pre consumer level trading, with institutional trading happening on different time windows?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended-hours_trading
$NVDA down 5%
sounds like an easy buy, if it wasnt already way expensive.
i guess we'll actually find out if he gave away useful nvidia secrets in years from now, but by then the tech might not matter all that much to Nvidia.
he was cheating on his wife before now, and Nvidia was doing just fine
A forward PE of 11 ain't expensive. It's the cheapest it has been in a decade.
Tell me you don't know how the stock market works without telling me you don't know how the stock market works.
I have a BA in Economics.
This is a humiliating incident for everyone in AI.
Most of the Bay Area AI cult is one giant polycule, no one cares about Jensen Huang cheating on his wife.
The US National Security blob certainly cares, but not because of the infidelity.
"Giant Polycule" would be a great band name.
I guess that’s one good thing about the whole “sex cult” thing, that everyone in it is more or less immune to sexual blackmail. The trade-off being susceptibility to in-group sexual manipulation. Not sure if that’s better or worse tbh.
it's actually rather comforting and egalitarian to think that everyone in the world is basically susceptible to sex
There will be sex bots in the future. Does that make things worse or better? If you have sex with a robot, does it count as cheating?
robots for now will lack the status danger and thrill of a human partner - it's not typically about the physicality of a relationship, but actually power differentials, status, movement
Chinese priority: infiltrate the polycule!