YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Now, post-midterm, Trump's political power has waned considerably, so the knives came out.

This is clearly retaliation for not falling into line

I don't know why I feel this way. Something just feels off and I can't place it.

The cheating is just a bit of humiliation, the damning part is the knowingly circumvention of export controls.

The news made it sound like she was a sophisticated person using him as a simpleton, but if anything he was using her to move his products against sanctions.

And a lot of other shady things around nvidia, half of it we probably will never know about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-administration-jail-le...

And that was only with a subordinate, not a subordinate AND with a foreign spy (alleged). Reports say China got billions in chips imported thanks to this operation.

Politicians also drop like flies. The only person impervious to consequences has been Trump. None of his supporters care that he's the devil.

We're just gonna keep shoving the illegal GPU trade with China under the rug I guess.

The jury is still out on this, re the circular financing mess with AI

We don't know his relationship with his wife, what their stands on cheating even stands.

You can argue its an image issue, but thats a problem of the press and marketing and not that he might have cheated.

His wife is an adult and is for sure not poor, so its not a situation were she has to stay with him.

I do believe it either has to do with the whole spy story or he did something he really shouldn't have.

I think both nvidia AND jensen will be doing quite fine 5 years from now.

And: the public only knows what's made it out. Who knows what else has come out in private.

Otherwise you end up thinking "should I start an affair with this Chinese spy I've been breaking US laws with? What are they going to do, fire me? They can't, I've got them trapped so I'm untouchable, I can do whatever I want. And if I'm in a helicopter crash then it sucks to be them, I'll not care when I'm dead".

Except that we have evidence in this case: he literally admitted to the affair. I don't see any "spin."

So it’s no longer about national security. What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care? Did Jenson reduce SpaceX’s allocation?

Part of me is hopeful after this. Huang did something that was, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and just short of treason at worst. However, I'm also filled with dread, because I know that this means that there will be even more of an effort by founders to make sure they're immune from consequences from boards if they go public. You already see this at Meta and with Zuckerberg.

We need real reforms on corporate governance that make this sort of situation - a board able to control the C-suite - the norm, not the exception.

Having these people saying otherwise is pure hypocrisy.

Very much dislike that this in large part is overshadowed by his adultery, which should be considered separate and treated totally private, at least for the sake of his family.

I think it was the affair with the direct report that did him in.

That's a bigger no-no than selling to spies, especially when the administration knew about it and did nothing.

I thought this was like, basically an open secret? Like... I'm sure they stayed within the technical letter of the law? Except if any of the laws required them to not be grossly negligent and not be cartoonishly naive. So that they can later argue that they couldn't possibly have known that chips going to South East Asia were being resold to China?

This is obviously something that has been postponed for after the midterms.

I think NVIDIA lose more things by firing Jensen.

CEO is supposed to be a high integrity position despite most tech CEOs trying to pretend that is not the case. If this person cannot be loyal to those closest to him, how can he be loyal to the company or shareholders?

While Jensen seems like an egomaniac who deserves what happened to him, there's a part of me that feels some China hawks had fingers in his firing, it must not sit well with them than America's most valuable company is not in the hands of the old guard.

Now that the possibility of him being compromised by an actual Chinese spy AND the possibility of Nvidia actually sanction-busting to ship to China regardless are on the table? Both at the same time, no less?

Yeah, that kind of liability is bonkers. Jensen might be too vital to load him into a cannon and fire him into the sun, but I'm not at all surprised that Nvidia wants him gone from the big post.

According to who?

I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that. With the Chinese spy he can portray himself as the victim. As I've said elsewhere, with billionaire corporate security and the support of the US government, It's astounding to me that this happened at all.

Also I'm reminded of this quote [1]:

> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two

[1]: https://x.com/_NathanCalvin/status/2084856543561093535

But yeah, the affairs are probably just a last straw.

That's not the reason either.

They never did it in a way that's not technically legal.

And the administration allowed the exports later anyway.

They're likely worried about the optics of it, and what a Democrat administration, or increased power, would do to Nvidia stocks with such scandal as leverage.

...maybe. Or maybe not. Consistency in application of the law is not exactly at an all-time high right now.

What changed is the publicity about the affair. So this is about the affair.

The future will be commoditized local AI anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. I just needed to rant a bit about the US hypocrisy in that matter.

You don't get to cheat on your wife, company and country and get support lmao, what a strange things to say.

I’m sorry but this shows wildly inappropriate decision making. Say what you will about honeypots (I received specialized “warning” early in my career, but I recognize that is abnormal), but we all are forced through training every single year about how relationships at work, especially with imbalanced power dynamics, are inappropriate and should not take place.

I don’t care about the infidelity, but he represents the company at its pinnacle. He had to go.

You can agree or disagree with his position on exporting to China being good/bad for nVidia or the US. But actively working closely with a company (Megaspeed) where, from a thousand miles away, it was clear that their primary goal was to get around and/or bend US export controls... that's a bad idea. Megaspeed was clearly working for the direct benefit of the Chinese government.

Add onto that having an extramarital affair with the representative of that company? Come on, it's extremely likely she's an agent of China, and if not it's a gigantic business risk.

Then, on top of that, you have to remember that he's married. A divorce results in half of his shares going to his wife, who would then have a grudge, probably not in the best interests of the comapny.

Not a single inch of empathy for his wife and family, nor the misled investors and staff.

I mean yes, he shouldn't be hounded, but if he'd kept it in his pants, he could have avoided all this nastiness.

However let’s hold both thoughts at once, this was no hit job. Nvidia was forced to act quickly to mitigate business and legal risks. The eventual fallout they’ll face is still not fully known.

Apparently I am able to, what was that?

Pretty sure all those nVidia employees over the years had a bigger hand in building it.

This breaking just before a meeting with Trump/Xi and just after the midterms show a changing wind in Washington is a hell of a coincidence—or not.

This isn't just a case of some extramarital sex.

Could 75% of CEOs in the US help foreign intelligence assets to evade export controls and not face consequences?

The same company they've audited the datacentres of, and saw dummy non-running servers within which had been stripped of their GPUs, and were 'fooled' that they were simply yet to be commissioned.

I had only heard about a consensual relationship.

When I entered the workforce not so long ago most companies didn't even have policies against it. My university didn't make a policy about it until 2012.

I think it's a good policy and it's fair they enforce it, but equating it to sexual harassment is nonsense.