Yeah he fucked up. But as far as fuck ups go, especially for billionaires, this is pretty tame.
Honestly, given how much he was critical to the company’s success, the ouster of Jensen Huang as the CEO of our top AI compute company will possibly be a bigger hit to our AI competitive edge than any near term risk of IP compromise.
<Chuck video>
Counterpoint: if he was having an affair with a CCP asset and helping to evade US ITAR regulations to sell more chips to China, that is actually not tame.Yeah he fucked up. But as far as fuck ups go, especially for billionaires, this is pretty tame.
For the actual scandal, I agree. But the question I (and I'm guessing many) have is what other agreements or agendas was she working on/from him. Routing physical assets through a third-party country would be a great example.
There's a bunch of documentation on how there are massive amounts of 5090's showing up in China. Obviously nVidia isn't providing those directly, since they chips come from board partners and not the company itself, but it's clear nVidia hasn't been too active in trying to put a stop to all of the illegal imports.
Maybe, but he's been actively working for expanding the capability to our main competitor. Huang was putting nVidia ahead of US national security (and in a way, ironically enough, Taiwan security). For a CEO, I understand his priorities, but up to a point.
Again, couple that with trying to rearrange board designs (as an example) to slide under the embargo is a problem. And the fact that the redesign and marketing also allows nVidia to charge 5x+ for the capability than what the same consumer level chip sells for here in the US just makes me shake my head even more.
That was actually pretty funny.
Counterpoint: if he was having an affair with a CCP asset and helping to evade US ITAR regulations to sell more chips to China, that is actually not tame.
Respectfully, I think you have this bass-ackwards. Having affairs is almost certainly not what got him pushed out - though having one with a subordinate is an incredibly poor look.If he was making deals to backchannel to deliberately go around US export laws, I’d agree, different problem. But reporting is that the IC is backing off the initial reports she was definitely a CCP agent (obviously TBD how that lands), and the resignation seems more about the affairs, not around funneling hardware to the PRC, which was something he was willing to fight before the other affairs leaked.
You can order a 5090 off of Amazon and there is zero traceability on it afterwards. They’re not actually regulated within the US. Neither is the H200 - although Amazon doesn’t carry those. There is a massive amount of hardware we are allowing to circulate freely on the commercial market. You really can’t put that genie back in the bottle without screwing with the ability to develop our own domestic capability. This is like the old argument of needing to restrict PlayStation 2s because the CPUs were powerful enough to run (at the time) advanced fire control and missile guidance computing.
I do see the point that he was working to expand market share in the PRC, but that was something the Administration ultimately approved in determining where the line was for export compliant. That’s also an area with a lot more nuance too, since the PRC now actually restricts large scale importing of US GPUs, because they don’t want their AI capability to be dependent on foreign sourced hardware. Which is exactly the case Nvidia made last year, ie that the stop on exports would just make the PRC want to develop their own domestic capability. Whether our government drew the export line at the right level is a different question. And there are levels we haven’t even gotten into - like the fact we’re not restricting the frontier AI models themselves, as we’ve seen PRC linked attackers conduct agentic assisted cyber attacks using frontier AI systems.
When other billionaires (Elon) get away with all kinds of shit (baby mommas in his companies, throttling Ukrainian Starlink/shield), how many more unknown in the Epstein files, I can’t say this one is anywhere near the top of my concern pile. Or maybe I’m just getting so jaded with how fucked up the personal lives of billionaires are…
. Agree, I think this is the correct take. This has nothing to do with who he decided to sleep with or not sleep with, but that he used power and allowed himself to be influenced in ways that were not in the best interest of his shareholders or his company, or the law for that matter.Respectfully, I think you have this bass-ackwards. Having affairs is almost certainly not what got him pushed out - though having one with a subordinate is an incredibly poor look.
I think what is more likely is a combination of the circular financing charade, the Alice Huang fiasco, and extremely serious questions about Singaporean and/or Malaysian cutouts to satisfy the Chinese market.
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Howard Lutnick Took Softer Line on Nvidia as Calls for Tougher Controls Grew
Critics say Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, and his department have shielded Nvidia as concerns have grown over A.I. chip sales to firms like Megaspeed.www.nytimes.com