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cladopa 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mosura 1 hours ago [-]
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.
WheatMillington 28 minutes ago [-]
This does not sound like something you've ACTUALLY encountered multiple times.
InsidiousWombat 6 minutes ago [-]
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"
v3ss0n 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
Revanche1367 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
antonymoose 47 minutes ago [-]
“If she’s a 10 she’s an (intelligence) asset”
That principle works for anyone with means to seize.
skhr0680 26 minutes ago [-]
That's for other people. This time is different.
29 minutes ago [-]
hansonkd 11 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like you have little to no experience with people who won the startup lottery.
InsidiousWombat 5 minutes ago [-]
Sounds like you don't know that divorce rate is near 50% and mostly initiated by the woman
Capricorn2481 47 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
35 minutes ago [-]
JumpCrisscross 3 minutes ago [-]
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.
stephc_int13 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ip26 1 hours ago [-]
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.
rtpg 1 hours ago [-]
I mean he should just not have an affair, independent of whether the other person is a spy or not.
bonoboTP 1 hours ago [-]
Huh, makes you wonder why this isn't available overboard via expensive matchmaking. And if it is why doesn't he use it.
corndoge 1 hours ago [-]
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.
kshacker 58 minutes ago [-]
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.
selcuka 58 minutes ago [-]
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).
bonoboTP 46 minutes ago [-]
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.
hamdingers 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
slashnode 2 hours ago [-]
stop making excuses for these people.
fuzzythrowaway2 1 hours ago [-]
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.)
14u2c 13 minutes ago [-]
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.
neya 1 hours ago [-]
"these people" ?
Forgeties79 56 minutes ago [-]
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
neya 43 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
36 minutes ago [-]
Forgeties79 32 minutes ago [-]
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.
method_capital 44 minutes ago [-]
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).
Forgeties79 30 minutes ago [-]
And yet who would go to bat for you and I claiming we deserve sympathy for having an affair?
BoingBoomTschak 40 minutes ago [-]
People for whom fidelity is optional.
totallymike 42 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
crazygringo 26 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
rdtsc 11 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
dannyw 9 minutes ago [-]
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.
Betelbuddy 13 minutes ago [-]
>> 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
fantasizr 2 hours ago [-]
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
nunez 20 minutes ago [-]
thats why you hire professional security people who've played these games...
method_capital 2 hours ago [-]
Sign me up!
jayd16 20 minutes ago [-]
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.
darth_avocado 52 minutes ago [-]
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.
fxwin 40 minutes ago [-]
yea an NDA would have definitely stopped her lol
jcranmer 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ksec 1 hours ago [-]
>to chase someone else,
There is no chase here. It is the other way round.
jcranmer 1 hours ago [-]
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.
cataphract 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
ksec 11 minutes ago [-]
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.
totallymike 36 minutes ago [-]
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fxwin 38 minutes ago [-]
> 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?
appplication 51 minutes ago [-]
Being content with what you have arguably not a mutually compatible attribute with being a billionaire. Not even being snarky.
jcranmer 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
Teever 1 hours ago [-]
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).
testbjjl 1 hours ago [-]
But you know, she doesn’t really want you, unless you let yourself.
thatsabadlook 32 minutes ago [-]
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.
yread 1 hours ago [-]
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
yubblegum 35 minutes ago [-]
> 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'.
13 minutes ago [-]
xboxnolifes 1 hours ago [-]
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.
steve_taylor 1 hours ago [-]
All that effort only to discover Jensen likes what every man likes.
peri-cl 1 hours ago [-]
Expensive video cards?
jayd16 16 minutes ago [-]
This is what happens when you lose sight of what's important....sweet video games.
afavour 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ip26 1 hours ago [-]
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".
Capricorn2481 35 minutes ago [-]
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.
ip26 5 minutes ago [-]
It's not a forgone conclusion, but from a defensive perspective the threat model is more sophisticated than you're assuming.
reassess_blind 18 minutes ago [-]
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.
OtherShrezzing 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
bamboozled 1 hours ago [-]
It would be nice if "the most powerful man on earth" actually had a brain and used it too?
tauwauwau 1 hours ago [-]
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.
greatgib 51 minutes ago [-]
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.
samus 42 minutes ago [-]
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.
kelseyfrog 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
cucumber3732842 48 minutes ago [-]
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.
jrflowers 26 minutes ago [-]
> 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
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…
andsoitis 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
whoanoway 45 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
rubyfan 1 hours ago [-]
CEOs are not “high caliber” people.
1 hours ago [-]
InsidiousWombat 2 minutes ago [-]
Well if he as unlikeable in person as he seems on any media he's on, I'm not really surprised
ChrisMarshallNY 1 hours ago [-]
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.
lukan 2 hours ago [-]
"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.
cozzyd 53 minutes ago [-]
ok, Mike Pence.
corndoge 1 hours ago [-]
Or the woman was in fact not a spy and that's the story to get this sympathetic reaction.
Given the news article is paywalled can mods please replace the URL with this one ^
rc1 2 hours ago [-]
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
markdown 2 hours ago [-]
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.
rc1 1 hours ago [-]
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.
1 hours ago [-]
avazhi 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
Welp can’t remove it now that there’s a reply. My bad you are correct.
mmooss 2 hours ago [-]
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.
creatonez 2 hours ago [-]
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.
DeepLogin 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ilaksh 1 hours ago [-]
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.
avazhi 1 hours ago [-]
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.
seanmcdirmid 1 hours ago [-]
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.
skippyboxedhero 60 minutes ago [-]
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.
anonymous908213 42 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
dannyw 1 hours ago [-]
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…
noitpmeder 24 minutes ago [-]
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.
ionwake 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ethanj8011 2 hours ago [-]
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.
nonfamous 1 hours ago [-]
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.
antonymoose 45 minutes ago [-]
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?
peeters 2 hours ago [-]
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.
elorant 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ChrisMarshallNY 1 hours ago [-]
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.
peri-cl 56 minutes ago [-]
> "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).
> "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."
ChrisMarshallNY 51 minutes ago [-]
That's right. Khashoggi wrote for the WP.
barbacoa 2 hours ago [-]
It's being reported that the girl he was involved with was spying for China and this was some kind of honey pot operation.
vigilantpuma 2 hours ago [-]
*woman
Conscat 43 minutes ago [-]
To be clear, she is an adult woman.
yeeetz 2 hours ago [-]
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
urams 2 hours ago [-]
Because he got honey potted by a CCP spy which specifically puts himself and Nvidia at risk.
1 hours ago [-]
bluegatty 2 hours ago [-]
He's forced to - he would not make the statement unless he had to come clean with it.
Brybry 1 hours ago [-]
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]
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.
gfrttttttq 13 minutes ago [-]
I swear this is a bot. I refuse to believe it's not a bot. It has to be a bot.
wrexx0r 2 hours ago [-]
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)
vigilantpuma 2 hours ago [-]
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?
hackernud3s 2 hours ago [-]
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.
ahartmetz 1 hours ago [-]
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.
pimeys 1 hours ago [-]
We'll get a kind of a "Gone Girl" moment but with geopolitics.
TheAlchemist 2 hours ago [-]
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.
glitchbot 2 hours ago [-]
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.
xhevahir 2 hours ago [-]
Because there's a question whether this woman is working covertly for a country that's known to do a lot of industrial espionage.
Keyframe 2 hours ago [-]
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.
2 hours ago [-]
butternet 2 hours ago [-]
In this instance the two have become linked due to his choices, hence the need to explain.
bradlys 1 hours ago [-]
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.
umeshunni 2 hours ago [-]
The person he has an affair with turned out to be a Chinese spy and he's being investigated by the government for this.
RetardedBastard 2 hours ago [-]
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flowerlad 2 hours ago [-]
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?
tsunamifury 2 hours ago [-]
He has been openly advocating to selling to China.
markdown 2 hours ago [-]
As have most. Some, like Tesla and Apple, even have factories there!!!
est31 1 hours ago [-]
Apple has connections so great that United even introduced a whole airport leg SFO-PVG just for them (unless it's an urban legend).
flowerlad 2 hours ago [-]
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?
nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
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.
flowerlad 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
interlocutor 1 hours ago [-]
We don't know that this is not happening.
danpalmer 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Conscat 41 minutes ago [-]
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.
bluegatty 2 hours ago [-]
"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.
skippyboxedhero 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
bluegatty 9 minutes ago [-]
"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.
danpalmer 2 hours ago [-]
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.
bluegatty 1 hours ago [-]
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.
denkmoon 1 hours ago [-]
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?
moregrist 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
andsoitis 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
IncreasePosts 39 minutes ago [-]
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 wronged, but my investment still worked out - but I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
jsw97 2 hours ago [-]
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.
dingaling911 2 hours ago [-]
I think his fear of failing is the reason for their success.
ksec 33 minutes ago [-]
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.
agnosticmantis 1 hours ago [-]
I hope he at least gets a nice severance package in that scenario. Tough job market in tech right now.
iambateman 2 hours ago [-]
We’re going to find out tomorrow and I suspect in this case the answer starts with a B.
hoppp 2 hours ago [-]
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.
plaidfuji 2 hours ago [-]
My understanding is that he has something like 50 direct reports. Which would make him a pretty major single point of failure.
gcbgcb 1 hours ago [-]
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mjr00 2 hours ago [-]
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.
solyin 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mjr00 1 hours ago [-]
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.
est31 2 hours ago [-]
> first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting.
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.
est31 1 hours ago [-]
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.
javier2 2 hours ago [-]
Yeah, they had been working on CUDA for a very long time before AI turned out to be interesting again.
SXX 2 hours ago [-]
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.
hcta 2 hours ago [-]
> 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
mjr00 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
CamperBob2 1 hours ago [-]
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.
xiaoyu2006 2 hours ago [-]
The had the insight to develop and promote CUDA long before DL was a thing. IIRC AlexNet was when CUDA really paid off.
altmanaltman 2 hours ago [-]
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.
mjr00 2 hours ago [-]
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.
teknologist 2 hours ago [-]
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...
Tadpole9181 1 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry, who exactly? NVIDIA essentially has no real competition because of how wildly successful they are.
danpalmer 1 hours ago [-]
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.
Which of those sell chips at the Nvidia caliber sell to AI model builders in the US (not use internally)?
iambateman 2 hours ago [-]
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.
reenorap 1 hours ago [-]
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.
TheAlchemist 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
rustyhancock 2 hours ago [-]
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.
olyjohn 1 hours ago [-]
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.
ungovernableCat 40 minutes ago [-]
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.
giwook 2 hours ago [-]
Easier said than done. Especially when we’re not thinking logically which is surprisingly and disappointingly too often.
chasd00 1 hours ago [-]
“God gave men enough blood to run their brain or penis but not enough for both” - robin williams
voidfunc 2 hours ago [-]
There is zero percent chance the board does anything to Jensen.
His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.
dannyw 2 hours ago [-]
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?
caminante 2 hours ago [-]
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.
lotsofpulp 57 minutes ago [-]
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.
caminante 35 minutes ago [-]
>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?
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.
Betelbuddy 2 hours ago [-]
Betcha this is going to turn into: He was being blackmailed but decided to pull a David Letterman on it...
SecretDreams 57 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
hackernud3s 2 hours ago [-]
> the short-term high is usually not worth it.
People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.
shock-value 1 hours ago [-]
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.
shrubble 1 hours ago [-]
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.
losthubble 1 hours ago [-]
US probably cares about the 2bil worth of gpus she brought. This looks like it will get messy.
w10-1 44 minutes ago [-]
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'.
oumua_don17 16 minutes ago [-]
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.
method_capital 2 hours ago [-]
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.
kraken_cult 2 hours ago [-]
It's better than not having a statement and have rumours flying everywhere.
method_capital 2 hours ago [-]
Well the only reason we have the letter is because rumors were flying everywhere and an investigation has been initiated.
dieselgate 2 hours ago [-]
Agreed. It's due diligence and saving face; at least he owns it?
twodave 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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
zulux 1 hours ago [-]
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.
dzonga 1 hours ago [-]
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.
tetrisgm 2 hours ago [-]
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
Barrin92 2 hours ago [-]
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?
randyrand 1 hours ago [-]
Arguably, cheating is 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.
It’s usually don’t ask don’t tell, not explicit lying.
Side-note: 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. You would never see this in USA. Honestly I was surprised though. I’d never have guessed if my local friend didn’t tell me.
b--l 57 minutes ago [-]
This is an insane comment.
randyrand 39 minutes ago [-]
Different strokes for different folks.
If it was so socially unaccceptable, it wouldn’t be so blatant, IMO.
goodcake3963 2 hours ago [-]
With all the money he has, he fell to this
2 hours ago [-]
MiroslavPokorny 2 hours ago [-]
Do i really need to remind you of all the orange team ?
b--l 58 minutes ago [-]
you need to remind me. What is the "orange team"?
augment_me 2 hours ago [-]
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.
anon7725 2 hours ago [-]
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?
fastily 2 hours ago [-]
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>
dolebirchwood 2 hours ago [-]
Is whataboutism really necessary?
fc417fc802 2 hours ago [-]
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".
fastily 2 hours ago [-]
the </s> is for sarcasm..
DragonStrength 1 hours ago [-]
That president's board (US voters) just put him on a much shorter leash as a result. Actions, consequences, etc.
dinkumthinkum 2 hours ago [-]
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!
stingraycharles 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jryle70 1 hours ago [-]
Huh? CEO's private life has always always been a big deal. These were just a few cases the last few years alone:
Jensen Huang's case is even more high profile because of the spying accusation.
dannyw 2 hours ago [-]
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.
reenorap 1 hours ago [-]
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!
BLKNSLVR 54 minutes ago [-]
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'?
bluegatty 2 hours ago [-]
It's an issue, but vastly over stated in the press.
techblueberry 2 hours ago [-]
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?
2 hours ago [-]
fwlr 2 hours ago [-]
The investors probably care. If you’ll lie to your wife to get laid, you might also lie to your investors to get paid.
DragonStrength 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Noaidi 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
ryandrake 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
vkaku 25 minutes ago [-]
I respect the guy. It takes guts to admit when something like that is up.
anuptalwalkar 2 hours ago [-]
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?
wewewedxfgdf 2 hours ago [-]
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.
hackernud3s 1 hours ago [-]
If detecting spies required mere common sense, there would be no spies.
BLKNSLVR 58 minutes ago [-]
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.
ed_mercer 21 minutes ago [-]
>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.
the_duke 2 hours ago [-]
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.
b--l 55 minutes ago [-]
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.
icegreentea2 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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!
yunnpp 1 hours ago [-]
> My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy.
Props up the surveillance state with Palantir, requests privacy.
tgma 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Betelbuddy 2 hours ago [-]
Supermicro is a company who has a massive scandal every 3 years...go check...
dietr1ch 2 hours ago [-]
PSA: Don't tell your wife that you are now technically cheating on the other woman
matteoraso 1 hours ago [-]
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.
calvinmorrison 2 hours ago [-]
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.
derektank 2 hours ago [-]
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.
calvinmorrison 1 hours ago [-]
I sincerely doubt anyone gives a shit about whatever "FISA" is, sounds like a credit card company or a shoe brand tbh.
jackweirdy 2 hours ago [-]
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
JoshTriplett 2 hours ago [-]
> 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.
readthenotes1 2 hours ago [-]
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
adriand 2 hours ago [-]
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.
reverend_gonzo 2 hours ago [-]
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.
Noaidi 2 hours ago [-]
This is why I am content with being a nobody.
yodon 2 hours ago [-]
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.
charlieyu1 2 hours ago [-]
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.
TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago [-]
Indeed.
Anyone who believes he personally agonised over this alone in a darkened room is being rather naive.
shermantanktop 2 hours ago [-]
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.
TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago [-]
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?
benzible 2 hours ago [-]
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.
2 hours ago [-]
greenchair 2 hours ago [-]
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.
plant-ian 2 hours ago [-]
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.
plant-ian 2 hours ago [-]
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.
xyst 2 hours ago [-]
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.
gigatexal 1 hours ago [-]
Would be hilarious if a man thinking with his dick and not his head causes the next US recession.
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
wmf 2 hours ago [-]
People who brag about their ethics are compensating.
TheRealPomax 33 minutes ago [-]
Given the entire thing's paywalled, what's the tl;dr, and is it actual tech news or just drama?
Noaidi 2 hours ago [-]
$NVDA down 2% pre-trading.
jjtheblunt 2 hours ago [-]
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?
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
madaxe_again 2 hours ago [-]
A forward PE of 11 ain't expensive. It's the cheapest it has been in a decade.
tcdent 2 hours ago [-]
Tell me you don't know how the stock market works without telling me you don't know how the stock market works.
Noaidi 2 hours ago [-]
I have a BA in Economics.
dnw 2 hours ago [-]
At the end of the day we are all human.
hackernud3s 1 hours ago [-]
At the beginning of the day too.
2 hours ago [-]
theandrewbailey 2 hours ago [-]
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.
jryan49 2 hours ago [-]
Lol some of us are more "human" than others I guess.
holdingunsteady 2 hours ago [-]
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."
1 hours ago [-]
vscarpenter 2 hours ago [-]
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sick_of_slop 1 hours ago [-]
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myway93 1 hours ago [-]
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carlos-menezes 2 hours ago [-]
> To my wife and family: I love you.
No, you do not.
iLemming 2 hours ago [-]
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.
petit_robert 1 hours ago [-]
>We have no idea what that woman used to lure him.
Looking at her picture might provide a hint.
tetrisgm 2 hours ago [-]
It’s possible to love someone and make mistakes
carlos-menezes 2 hours ago [-]
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dingaling911 2 hours ago [-]
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carlos-menezes 2 hours ago [-]
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serf 2 hours ago [-]
You want to see how hot someone was to know whether or not it was worth potentially ruining your family and reputation while on top of the world?
I can't even imagine someone that attractive.
dingaling911 2 hours ago [-]
Marriage gets boring. Unfortunate truth. My suspicion is that Jensen was basically allowed to do it as long as it wasn't made public and if so, then this was def not the first time.
It would be a strange coincidence if the first and only time he cheated on his wife was with an intelligence agent.
artemonster 2 hours ago [-]
Its really funny how a person can have infinite resources to solve infinite real world problems and yet chooses to succumb to primitive monkey brain and tickle their dingdong instead
dingaling911 2 hours ago [-]
Exactly. We are dingdong tickling monkeys. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.
kittikitti 2 hours ago [-]
This is a humiliating incident for everyone in AI.
ctmlr 1 hours ago [-]
To be specific the lack of op sec is very humiliating and of public concern. The affair aspect is between him and his wife, people are people and we have to assume those things will happen or else you'll inevitably will be caught lacking.
mbgerring 2 hours ago [-]
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.
shermantanktop 2 hours ago [-]
"Giant Polycule" would be a great band name.
mbgerring 2 hours ago [-]
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.
BLKNSLVR 45 minutes ago [-]
Chinese priority: infiltrate the polycule!
yeeetz 2 hours ago [-]
it's actually rather comforting and egalitarian to think that everyone in the world is basically susceptible to sex
solyin 1 hours ago [-]
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?
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.
The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves.
You just need to know few people to qualify for "multiple times"
That principle works for anyone with means to seize.
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.
Perhaps as far as to say, the only suspicious thing about the perfect agent would be the lack of anything to be suspicious of.
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.
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).
This does exist as a service and is considered by many to be the oldest profession in the world.
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.)
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.
Yes affairs are unfortunately common but this whole honey pot thing is ridiculous. That doesn’t suddenly make me sympathetic to cheating.
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 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.
Even the most powerful people can be really dumb.
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
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.
There is no chase here. It is the other way round.
Jensen wasn't an innocent victim, he was still an active, voluntary participant.
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.
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.
What if Huang wasn't married/with family? Would he just never get to form close relationships after becoming successful?
But that's not really a defense of the behavior, and it's perhaps a sign that we should stop valorizing billionaires.
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
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'.
> 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.
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 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.
So just hire women? Sounds like an incredibly simple solution to being security compromised.
There's a lesson in there somewhere.
“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...
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…
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.
I mean, each to his own, but there are times when I would not want a bodyguard involved.
we will never know
> admitted to having a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy
He admitted to having a relationship with a woman.
There's a separate question of whether the woman was a spy.
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 mean, it's pretty clear it was a spy. Have a look at WSJ, NYT, etc. It isn't tabloidish to say so.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MLK Jr. was being monitored by the FBI and CIA, who believed he was a Communist.
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…
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.
Perhaps this is a too big to fail scenario?
- 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.
I never got to (or wanted to) see the images, but, by all reports, he ... er ... had nothing to be ashamed of.
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."
> “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
However if he cheated with a chinese spy then he was targeted by China and that raises this to a national security risk.
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)
Not long I suspect, we don't expect much from tech CEOs. Nobody even remembers when Bezos cheated on his wife.
Everyone has some preferred types, but same body, different person is pretty creepy.
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.
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.
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.
It's hard to say from the outside what the goals would be - pushing him in certain directions, extracting intel, etc.
For this it would be much easier if the Chinese spies banged Nvidia engineers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.
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 wronged, but my investment still worked out - but I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons
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.
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.
Nvidia boosts AI a lot. They are the central bank of AI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49673098
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.
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.
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.
Which of those sell chips at the Nvidia caliber sell to AI model builders in the US (not use internally)?
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.
AI and chips are, for better or worse, considered a national security matter.
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.
This is just deeply embarrassing. His adult children both work for his company so they’d also receive this exact memo.
His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.
How much of NVIDIA’s sales and revenues is actually to China? Would that be allowed to happen still?
If the camel had a back, then it was already broken, IMHO.
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...
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.
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.
People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.
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'.
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.
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.
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?
It’s usually don’t ask don’t tell, not explicit lying.
Side-note: 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. You would never see this in USA. Honestly I was surprised though. I’d never have guessed if my local friend didn’t tell me.
If it was so socially unaccceptable, it wouldn’t be so blatant, IMO.
Would that count?
This letter is just part of the ceremony of events that is expected to happen afterwards.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/coldplay-kiss-c...
Jensen Huang's case is even more high profile because of the spying accusation.
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.
Trump himself relaxed laws on chip exports to China.
P.S. If you have any other liquidity available, maybe 'buy the dip'?
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.
However if you lack the common sense to not fall for Chinese spies then your judgement really must be questioned.
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.
As if it were that easy? Being that rich and influental means someone out there will attempt (and succeed) to game you.
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.
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.
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.
Props up the surveillance state with Palantir, requests privacy.
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.
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.
There was, no deflection "this is not who I am", No blaming the spy.
He owned up to his mistakes
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.
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.
Anyone who believes he personally agonised over this alone in a darkened room is being rather naive.
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.
Can we assume this was a one-off because she was uniquely persistent and persuasive?
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.
His fate will probably follow the Boston tech company CEO that got caught cheating with HR executive at a Coldplay concert.
Statement from NVIDIA Board of Directors
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50416801
is it pre consumer level trading, with institutional trading happening on different time windows?
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
*Crash in progress.
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."
No, you do not.
Looking at her picture might provide a hint.
I can't even imagine someone that attractive.
It would be a strange coincidence if the first and only time he cheated on his wife was with an intelligence agent.
The US National Security blob certainly cares, but not because of the infidelity.