Hacker News

Responsibility means taking consequences when you/your company failed or you took missteps. Too often I read of "taking full responsibility" as an empty phrase that invalidates said ownership of responsibility.

I feel like with all the stuff coming out and congress and Nvidia both looking into it, it was only a matter of time before the facts became public and he's getting ahead of it this way.

Words are still empty without actions. He chose not to take any.

I felt the same way. I can see his remorse and genuine care for his family which makes me feel a bit sad.

Good if he wrote this himself. But it sounds like the legal department been involved in writing this. If it is AI then it is really impressive.

I struggle to understand how you can come to this conclusion from reading the same letter I did.

Huang doesn't even admit wrongdoing for the actual important part of the scandal, selling restricted hardware to an adversary!

Besides, taking responsibility is something you DO, not something you say. Stepping down would be taking responsibility, for instance.

Seriously. The letter reads like 100% insincere PR hot air. Don't fall for it.

He has tremendous EQ

I'm being a bit weirded out to see, for this story (not just this thread), how the top comments are positive takes on Jensen.

He's a victim, he apologizes well, he's working with the board on this...

Is HN just this millionare-friendly? astroturfed?

Not that I expect a metaphorical lynching, but it's certainly a take when the news is "one of the most important roles in the US is potentially losing national secrets by absurd oversight".

>the first time in a long time that I see an apology letter written from a business person in the name of the company that actually admits wrongdoing and has accountability

Yeah, but how often is a "business person" (a) clearly personally, entirely responsible for a mistake like this and (b) is a significant enough "business person" for such a public letter to even matter?

To put it another way, Huang's apologie is how someone in his position would address a situation like this. It's not very impressive to hear a CEO make a personable apology for making such a personal mistake. Like, how else would it read?

Like, it wasn't that long ago that Bill Gates' got called out for similar things and made a similar apology (https://www.wsj.com/articles/bill-gates-apologizes-to-founda...). Of course, Bill Gates isn't at the center of the world's entire economy while getting caught sleeping with a Chinese spy, so there wasn't as much scrutiny on him.

The phrases “I’m sorry” and “I take responsibility” are like Flex Tape for any problem.

Responsibility is only mentioned in the context of who to contact regarding this. It’s basically do not bother my wife I cheated on, she only found out about it from the news like all of you.

Responsibility implies consequences and as far as I can tell there are none so far, other than minor embarrassment.

"I'm very sorry I got caught."

Look, Jensen got whatever he wanted, China got the GPUs it wanted - China also turned Jensen into a staunch advocate for selling GPUs to China - everything's good - everyone wins.

"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang challenged US export controls on advanced semiconductors, arguing that continued technology collaboration and access to the Chinese market are ultimately in America’s best interest. Speaking to reporters in South Korea this week, Huang described China as a “singular, vital, important, dynamic market, and nobody can replace that.” He asserted he would continue campaigning for full access to this market, stating he is "optimistic" that China will remain a key consumer of US chips."

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/nvi...

He's not a traitor or a spy he's a capitalist wanting to make money - that's the American way.

Do you have a lot of Nvidia stock? . Embarrassing reading this.

how is it refreshing to see if he had no other option. Wasn't he denying it just last week?

I dont get all the Jensen glazing. "we are all human and all of us make mistakes. " . ok so what?

He may be a victim, but note that he had to choose to participate.

Also note that his wife and children are victims of his unfaithful actions. He is the only one responsible for that - he just said so himself.

> The only newsworthy part of this is possibility he could've been blackmailed in the past about it and I assume this is what the investigation will be about.

What ? If she was in his house and was a real Chinese spy who knows what data she extracted. Sorry, that's news worthy.

> Personally I think if she's a spy he is a victim. Who knows what his relationship with his wife is. It's none of the public's business.

This is an interesting take. I'm not sure I agree with it. I understand the principal: that she might have been being dishonest towards him, so he's a victim of lies.

Anyone who's worked in and around any high value, high risk or regulated areas has done the training courses on these sorts of risks though: specifically, people will lie to you to get information out of you.

Sure, on a personal level, consider him a victim if you want. On a professional level, this is him ignoring training, at great risk to the business.

There are just some things that as the head of one of the world's largest companies you can't do. If Jensen Huang doesn't realise the geo-political importance of his chips, then he shouldn't be in the job. But we know he does because he spends all his time hanging around the white house lobbying Trump to let him sell his chips to America's geopolitical rivals.

It seems to have a political dimension: Jensen having a laissez-faire AI attitude and being a China dove.

Jensen also probably got too close to Trump and now the China hawks and maybe the dems are out to make an example.

Also Jensen does not have golden shares/full control unlike Musk, Zuckerberg etc. so he can be actually be unseated.

He’s absolutely the victim in one sense. On the other hand, the honeypot is the oldest trick in the book and he really should have known better.

I think the cheating is newsworthy as well, but separate: Lori likes to donate money and she would be a great target for donations if she leaves Jensen.

There's $50B at stake, so there's a huge incentive for foundations to ruin what's left of the family.

> if she's a spy he is a victim

I don't know; at some point “don't put your dick in people from the Other Side” should be a pretty well known rule if you're someone important. She didn't even hide her nationality.

> I think if she's a spy he is a victim

He's both a victim and a perpetrator.

And while I usually wouldn't care if he cheated on his wife, because that's between him and his family, in this case, he was also incredibly dumb. This guy could have cheated on his wife with any number of women, but he chose to do it with a Chinese spy. I think having somebody who makes incredibly dumb decisions be the CEO of the world's most important company is definitely newsworthy.

"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser, but you are talking to someone who woke up next to a Chinese spy."

He may be a victim of espionage, but he isn't a victim of adultery. He knew what he was doing, a spy didn't make him take his pants off against his will.

Defending a man cheating his wife because you probably have shares on the company is a great example on how messed up the world is.

A world in which Kings rule, and peasants defend their depraved way of life.

I really hope that you are a bot from a PR firm, because it his hard to image people being so servile to power.

> Who knows what his relationship with his wife is.

Best bet: not too good right now.

Or she's not a spy and both are victims of more yellow peril shenanigans. Like a Chinese national spins up SG proxy to legally buy Nvidia cards. Jenson wants to legally sell Nvidia cards to China within export control limits. He hardly needs pussy as incentive to sell more hardware. Business people running billion dollar companies (megaspeed is) talking to domestic politicians isn't a fucking espionage, just like Jensen phoning Trump isn't. Like is PRC going to lock up any western businesses men that's ever been to the white house? It's just business as usual except useful idiots will by the yellow peril narrative that a moderately attractive Chinese MILF is a spy and business friend with benefits being used undermine Jensen for following letter / not spirit of law, aka customary fiduciary duty stuff.

victim of cheating on his wife? hahhaha c'mon people is this place are hilarious.

On the other hand his family could have continued their private lives if not for an extremely public espionage-fueled affair.

Guess Jensen didn't read the terms and conditions...

No excuses or rationalizations here, but: Do we fire people for cheating on their spouse? Seems like a private, family matter.

Of course, the spy aspect could be relevant from a professional perspective (depending on what actions he took or what he knew), but I'm guessing you're talking about him having an affair.

A non-trivial % of people engage in this behavior themselves. Gotta remember that.

I’ve seen some wild opinions on HN. One that particularly lingers in my mind was a suggestion that we use immigrant women as incubators to solve the population crisis. Shockingly not downvoted into oblivion.

HN cares about money and tech. Don’t take morality or life advice from here.

Not sure these times are at all unique. If anything I imagine equivalent billionaires from the past were even greater philanderers. Hell, I was recently reading about Benjamin Guggenheim, who died on the Titanic and is known for "I played the game straight to the end and that no woman was left on board this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward. Tell her that my last thoughts will be of her and our girls" - and he was travelling with his mistress while those final words were recorded.

Agreed, and I'm not even that moralistic about the affair. It happens. This guy is in charge one of the most influential and important companies in the world. He owes the entire world a higher standard of conduct. Not for moral reasons, but for security, integrity, and consistency. If he's allowing himself to be influenced by China, the ramifications for Nvidia are staggering. If he wants some sex, use a hooker, or at least have an affair with NOT A SPY. Having an affair with a spy is unbelievable levels of incompetence, and calls into question his competence as a leader.

There was never a time when men didn't have affairs.

Well, I'm also disappointed to see the holier-than-thou bias in such full display here too. If you're unfamiliar:

> It’s the well-documented bias in which people systematically overestimate how morally they would behave compared with others—especially in high-pressure or ambiguous situations—while underestimating the situational forces that actually shape behavior.

I'm sure we're all paragons of moral virtue here but the reality is that unless you've been personally targeted by a nation state and successfully resisted, then you're really just fantasizing. Yeah bro, I'm sure you would have effortlessly resisted the Chinese sex trap, right after you benched 1000, got that hole in one and beat Hamilton at qualifying. You're just that good.

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.

"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.

I've interned at NVIDIA and my impression was, he is extremely vital to its past and ongoing success. I don't know about him personally and his character, but he knew how to foster a motivating work culture with a sense of excitement and purpose. Maybe Nvidia is now at a place where he could be replaced, but I don't think Nvidia would be where it is now without him.

> 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.

Navigating this political/diplomatic climate is key to Nvidia's success, and he appears to be driving that? In normal times maybe it would be different.

At the current state, maybe not much. He was integral to the journey, of course.

The bigger threat is Jensen selling all his stocks at peak (if he was fired). Then, this dude with $100B in the bank could've easily started an NVIIA competitor. He has every component needed for a success. This is why NVIDIA's board would never let this guy go.

I think his fear of failing is the reason for their success.

He's a vulnerable founder just like Steve Jobs was and he's also the closest to Jobs in terms of brilliance and impact in the current playing field.

He's been consistently showing up and proving himself over decades to be core to Nvidia's success - core as in leadership. I would look to sell my Nvidia shares without knowing him being at the helm.

I hope he at least gets a nice severance package in that scenario. Tough job market in tech right now.

What's this puritanical streak? Men in power have been having affairs from time immemorial. It's not great but it's also not original. The guy works for a corporation, not a church. Yawn.

We’re going to find out tomorrow and I suspect in this case the answer starts with a B.

I'm skeptical that he gets fired for this. The "Spy I loved" James bond style twist combined with his iconic leather jacket might actually come off as badass.

We can look across the aisle to AMD to see how much difference the CEO makes.

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.

My understanding is that he has something like 50 direct reports. Which would make him a pretty major single point of failure.

Not to sound too negative but IMO NVidia has largely been "right place, right time" and I don't think Huang has had much to do with it. NVidia made computer graphics cards and CUDA long ago; they just happened to be in the right place, twice, in quick succession: first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting. It's like they set up a general store that sells pickaxes and drills, then someone found gold in the mountain right next to them, and then the goldmine ran out but someone found oil right under them.

The one big thing I will given Huang credit for is not going all-in on blockchain and recognizing it as a bubble. NVidia never really pivoted from their core business/customers to support crypto miners, unlike what they're doing with AI.

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...

It boggles my mind that you think Singapore and China are the same thing. Because why? Lots of ethnically Chinese people? Is Taiwan and China the same thing too then?

It just seems like a coordinated crack down on Nvidia's relationship China.

Consider that the leak destroys the legitimacy of Huang's lobbying efforts efforts against tighter chips controls to China. In parallel the NYT released yesterday their investigation into commerce dept approvals of h200 chips to Chinese entities that the NYT claims are ghost offices linked to Chinese military contractors [1]. Also consider that these events put Nvidia under long term congressional security oversight with an installed watch dog. Nvidia is losing it's autonomy to cut international deals. Seems like the CIA/permeant state is getting nervous about China again.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/07/business/economy/nvidia-c...

It was known for months already.

(May 2026) https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...

I would think it’s timed to the market correction. Less stock drop when all ai stocks already dropped.

It could be just as simple as taking time to be confident. Or it could have been somebody wanted to use this as a bargaining chip and failed somehow... Who knows.

It has already leaked Trump and Rubio knew about this for 1 year.

I would guess it's to avoid Congressional investigations.

Maybe whomever knew wasn't sure of the election outcome of the revelation so they held it until reasonably afterwards.

Why assume it was a US leak?

The administration has known about it since at least May. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/08/us/politics/rubio-nvidia-...

This "what distraction are they trying to make" line is ridiculous conspiracism. It's completely obvious that someone leaked it to the NY Times because they are alarmed that the admin is doing nothing about what is obviously a huge national security problem.

He has a close relationship with Trump, so this could be an internal Whitehouse play to hurt Trump, or, he might have "disappointed" Trump, so this could be punishment.

Alternatively this could be a Chinese play designed to sow dissent and disruption in the USA post the mid-terms.

Or, it could just be a rather trivial story about an over confident and all to human titan of industry making the kind of mess in his personal life that a lot of people end up making - watch any TV mini series for example after example.

Spooks is a pretty knowing term to use. Not exactly a word the average person throws around. And yes, they likely knew long before now. Right after the midterms? Interesting timing. Seems the spooks are doing what spooks do.

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.

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.

Sure, if by high performing you mean fully assuming the lions share of risk when establishing monopoly via personal enmeshment with a corrupt political administration on the verge of sunset. His job for this board could very well be gone-rogue fall-guy. Doubly so when the regulatory bodies will be eagerly looking for those among the "thought you were one of the good ones" cohort of power.

> one public affair is probably not something most of the board (presumably largely male) is going to (privately) judge him for.

So male infidelity is not a big deal?

Unless they want to keep the focus on the affair on purpose. What if she just helped him circumvent the ban on selling Nvidia cards to China or, if you want to really push it, on selling Nvidia tech to China?

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.

There are some things shareholders have to legitimately reckon with, that warrant a statement:

- Is this person susceptible to blackmail from the secrets they're keeping?

- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?

- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?

Even when the alleged misconduct is private, #1 is of particular concern. Airing it out is an obvious way to lessen that specific concern. The allegations here raise the other concerns too, however.

So that no one can extort him in private. Same happened with Bezos when his phone was hacked. He was the one who came forward to speak about what was shared by his phone.

No one here is getting it right.

It's because the woman is a member of the PRC, and it's being made into a national security issue, regardless of whether he announces it or not.

The strategic thing is for him to come forward first.

I agree that cheating or not their private life is theirs, I'm not interested in their family drama.

However if he cheated with a chinese spy then he was targeted by China and that raises this to a national security risk.

It seems to be a combination of things First off, hhe person he was having an affair with has ties to Chinese Spy agencies (not sure the ties, but either way, not a great look for someone trying to be deeply involved with America's government)

It also sounds like it was known something was going on with foreign agencies and Jensen, do this puts it out in the open and clears the air.

Lastly, if anyone was trying to use the affair as leverage over him, the best way to break the leverage is to just come out and spill the tea yourself (so to speak)

it's a public company, he's ceo, large implications for stock movements, corporate strategy, volatility if it goes to us govt intervention, divorce court, etc

It's being reported that the girl he was involved with was spying for China and this was some kind of honey pot operation.

Because he got honey potted by a CCP spy which specifically puts himself and Nvidia at risk.

He's forced to - he would not make the statement unless he had to come clean with it.

Because its already public information. In your culture would you pretend like it never happened even though everybody else knows about it and are making their own narratives.

> why would a CEO talk about his private life publically?

Because it's already public. This is called "getting ahead of/seizing the narrative"

I could see how it’s rude for a CEO to be bringing up his affairs, but how is it rude to address public revelations?

He's kicking off a redemption tour. The world will now decide if his tone is sincere enough, and how long it should take to forgive him.

Not long I suspect, we don't expect much from tech CEOs. Nobody even remembers when Bezos cheated on his wife.

Generally speaking, it's normal to keep it private.

Unless the CEO happens to be the CEO of what is considered one of the most important company for national security and future, and his private life involves somebody who appears to be a spy for the biggest competitor for world hegemony. Then it's kind of big deal for everybody.

Because the purpose was to get leverage, and Intel. Once she couldn't gather passive Intel, they would use the affair as blackmail, ole school is the best school.

there are indications that he continued the affair even after being tipped off by the US intelligence agencies -- which would constitute treason. An apology would just be a first step to ward off serious charges, if there are serious charges levied. Not that anything would happen in the large scheme of things, given JH has bought off the orange turd.

Because there's a question whether this woman is working covertly for a country that's known to do a lot of industrial espionage.

I wrote in another thread here, this is extremely serious:

Bedding an adversarial entity's agent in a regulated field is a serious matter (for the company) with potentially serious consequences. It can lead to executive decapitation, it can even lead to / criminal investigations if the operative bypassed export controls using executive proximity.. the fallout can be great and widespread.

It can also be a nothingburger and an amusing page six divorce story in the end where we all read how rich cry as well. Time will tell. What's telling of where this might lead and how serious it is, is that it was US federal government that warned about this.

In this instance the two have become linked due to his choices, hence the need to explain.

To cut off the possibility of blackmail. At personal great cost, of course.

That's the real reason that this affair is a problem. It made him blackmailable.

When we give individuals the same power as people in highest legal positions of power - they deserve immense scrutiny.

Jensen is as powerful as any politician, if not more so. Same with Elon, etc.

If you don't want that then get rid of the ability for such individuals to amass so much power.

The person he has an affair with turned out to be a Chinese spy and he's being investigated by the government for this.

I swear this is a bot. I refuse to believe it's not a bot. It has to be a bot.

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.

There is a company called DarkMind that is doing personality detection to filter people who are susceptible to manipulation

Detection and prevention is key

https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...

> religious zealots on marriage.

It's not about religion, it's about trust and keeping promises. Like it or not, the default understanding in a marital relationship in many places in the world is monogamy. Some people, of course, engage in other practices, after an explicit discussion, and agreement and understanding. But presumably Huang's wife believed she and her husband were in a monogamous relationship, and trusted Huang to keep it that way. That's the issue; religion is irrelevant. (And different religious practices have different things to say about monogamy vs. polyamory, and atheists decide for themselves if they want to be monogamists or polyamorists; religion need not be involved at all.)

But regardless, I think his infidelity is not his employees' business; IMO it's weird to bring it up in this way. The bit about his affair partner possibly(?) being a spy is the thing that actually matters to NVIDIA and NVIDIA employees, but he only dedicates a few sentences to it.

Why would a trustworthy individual cheat someone they love? Would they cheat their customers?

It's mostly a US thing, I've seen a huge divide about marriage between old Europe and the US that's due to influence of puritanism. Only 20% of men in the US cheat, that's a relatively low figure.

The moralists also conveniently ignore that the vast majority of men is not very attractive. Cheating would take a lot of effort for them. In contrast, I knew some men who were attractive enough they had to fend off women almost daily. For them, not cheating takes a lot of effort. The bottomline is that most of the 5/10 guys who say "I would never cheat" would do so the very next day if a 9/10 woman suddenly got interested in them, which is exactly what happened in this case.

It would not be unethical if he agreed with his wife to an open relationship, but this email is proof that he did not.

If your wife can't trust you, why should anyone else?

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.

Good reminder to avoid those near occasions of sin.

Jensen carries the responsibility here for sure.

But I'm not sure how hard it would be to resist a honey trap.

I mean a state sponsored enterprise to get you to have sex with someone (or one of a group of people).

Getting him to have sex with her was literally this woman's day job and she was probably told it was a matter of national security.

It is quite absurd once you think about it.

One can't help but think of Sergey Brin who famously had an affair with an underling on Google Glass, Amanda Rosenberg [1]. This of course blew up his life and he divorced Anne Wojcicki in ~2014. Of course he got married again and divorced again with another expensive divorce (although neither was in the realm of the cost of Jeff Bezos's divorce).

I think it says a lot about what wealth does to you. A lot of people dream of wealth but I suspect many would be less than thrilled by the reality. It must be incredibly isolating. You constantly have to fend off people who are trying to use you. It must make it harder to trust anyone. A lot of ordinary life experiences are now barred to you.

For example, a lot of executives in these trillion dollar companies are forbidden from flying commercial for security reasons. Nobody would think about missing the airport and everything that entails. In most places it's an objectively awful experience but it's still a shared experience. Going to a private FBO by helicopter to take a Global 7500 direct to your destination is something only a tiny portion of the population can relate to.

So I think this kind of isolation makes such wealthy and/or powerful people more susceptible to this kind of thing because, in a way, they're starved from a lot of human interaction and experiences in a way most of us can't understand (and wouldn't want).

What really is the point of somebody hoarding this much wealth? You kind of have to have sociopathic tendencies (IMHO) because such wealth simply cannot exist without the impoverishment of millions of people. And for you it's kind of a golden prison.

[1]: https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2014/04/sergey-brin-amanda-...

Easier said than done. Especially when we’re not thinking logically which is surprisingly and disappointingly too often.

There is zero percent chance the board does anything to Jensen.

His likely ex-wife is about to be very rich tho.

Betcha this is going to turn into: He was being blackmailed but decided to pull a David Letterman on it...

I appreciate the sentiment, but literally speaking, we may need to have a conversation about what it means to have your "life ruined".

> I’m not sure if this will ruin Jensen’s life or not, but it’s a good opportunity for us all to remember that the short-term high is usually not worth it.

I think what you've just described is "post nut clarity". I'm sure he knew what he did immediately, but the gravity of the consequences might've taken a bit to catch up to him.

> the short-term high is usually not worth it.

People continue to under-value the spank bank. SMH.

I suspect that billionaires don't exactly hang around in normal spaces, so whomever they will run into will be "special" in some way or another.

If you're a spy you can be whatever they want you to be. You like abstract geometry? Oh my god I have a PHD in abstract geometry. Would you like to come back to my room and read my thesis? You're so funny! People don't normally get my abstract geometry references!

He has been openly advocating to selling to China.

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?

> parts of Asia

That's Japan. Don't make it sound like other parts of Asia are like this.

US probably cares about the 2bil worth of gpus she brought. This looks like it will get messy.

The owner of the 49ers, a billionaire, was recently arrested for trying to have sex with someone off craigslist in a trailer park.

Do i really need to remind you of all the orange team ?

These are just US companies in the graph tho?

Its priced in

Everyone knew exactly what jensen was as soon as he donned that slightly too tight leather jacket like 15 years ago

remember, the only evidence of any criminal activity here is the leak of this story, which is a felony unless directly authorized by a classified executive order.

> The close relationship between the president and Mr. Huang has impeded efforts to clamp down on Nvidia’s chip sales abroad, current and former U.S. officials said.

> This account is based on interviews with people briefed on the surveillance

https://archive.is/lwBvW

the most likely scenario here is that the faction that supports export bans leaked the initial story to try to blackmail Huang into dropping his support for free trade, he refused, so they released the package to damage him as much as possible. likely route, based on the named sources, is senate or house intel agency staffers, using elected officials and classified briefings as cover.

NY Times, Jonathan Swan, and Maggie Haberman would identify this as being firmly located in the anti-Trump faction, so unless it is some super devious reverse play, which seems unlikely for Trump, it is a criminal leak.

The moment I saw the leak I had that exact same thought.

I think everyone with a brain did.

It was done intentionally to send a message to him and to wrap him over the knuckles.

Great people all round.

I suspect that the "intention" behind the leak isn't really about Jensen or Nvidia, but is just more administration infighting - Jensen is just collateral damage.

Consider the timing of the reporting - the first report from NYT comes out on Nov 6th - just enough time after mid-terms. Consider that follow up reporting clearly identifying Rubio as the author of the in-administration warning memo.

JD and Rubio (and who knows who else) are clearly trying to find ways to distance themselves from Trump without being completely cut to pieces, now that it's completely clear that the Trump brand is toxic.

If that were the case I imagine he'd divorce his wife privately and not publicly admit to cheating on her.

As an Nvidian - Jensen is the single most important part of Nvidia. Speaking personally I couldn't care less about this particular lapse in judgement because every example if have seen in professional circumstances his judgement has been stellar. It sucks for his family life but that shouldn't become our business and should remain private. If she really is a spy that might suck a bit for our relationship with the US government for a short period but it's not something that can't be managed and overcome.

It's not a nothing burger but if it results in Jensen leaving Nvidia that would be a travesty IMO. We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake, especially one that should in any other circumstance not become public.

It's obviously not irrelevant for two reasons, one practical one moral. The practical one is that you don't need to 'spill' secrets to a spy. Having one around you in private means you can be bugged, blackmailed, have your means of communication compromised and so on. It makes you vulnerable by definition.

Secondly if he's willing to lie to his wife and family he's obviously willing to lie to anyone for much less. It tells you something about the character of a person, how can anyone trust a cheater?

its not really about his private life its about whteher he was manipulated into it wihtout his knowledge. Psychological manipulation is a thing and if they got him to do this what else happened?

https://foxandlion.pub/analysis/traitors-among-us-who-is-vul...

> A balanced, patient, and motivated Machiavellian can wait while they cultivate what they need. They may take 10 years to act; they may well wait 20 years. When the strike comes, it will come out of the blue – and their tracks will already be covered.

It's better than not having a statement and have rumours flying everywhere.

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.

Everyone was doing that at E3 in 2003. Everyone. Microsoft, Sony, EA, etc.

Most large US companies if they want to have the government as a client, have special rooms with employees with security clearances that work mostly on projects that the CEO and even their line managers do not know what they are. HR also have a special employees or a private section that deal with these people. There is some deniability also: the managers can tell the truth under oath and say they have no knowledge about the projects!

It's part of normal business operations not some secret illegal shady kick backs operation within some kind of spy movie.

There's no need to secretly infiltrate a company when the company is working happily with you. People underestimate how close big business and 3 letter agencies actually are in many cases.

The US intelligence agencies would have a hard time planting employees in US firms while remaining within the bounds of FISA. They certainly have assets inside major Chinese firms though, of course.

It doesn't quite work like that. You don't go off and find some super smart person who can easily get a job at Nvidia and tell them "Hey you, go work for this company". You find someone who already works at Nvidia, and you bump into them at their kids' little league game, and you get chatting and build a rapport and over time you build trust and before you know, you've got a trusted source inside Nvidia. They don't even need to know they're a plant. And then, if you really do need something more than information you can go further. But you start with someone already at the company and you target them, rather than the other way around.

And that's not even talking about the less clandestine methods of just ringing their General Counsel and saying "Hey buddy we're the US government we need X Y Z".

They do, according to Jonna Mendez, but those placed don’t collect a company salary, only a government salary. This causes some contention since they are paid far less than salaried employees and get no equity, so it leads to high turnover

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?

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.

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!

It's an issue, but vastly over stated in the press.

Why does it matter that one of the key leaders of our aI strategy was having an affair with a Chinese spy while advising the president on our policy of selling chips to China?

The investors probably care. If you’ll lie to your wife to get laid, you might also lie to your investors to get paid.

Integrity matters for maintaining corporate secrets. Someone who is having an extramarital affair is a target for blackmail. Most of getting a security clearance is not lying.

> Why is this an issue?

She was also a Chinese spy.

> It's 2026, we literally had a human child trafficking ring with multiple presidents involved and it didnt lead to anything or move the needle on stuff.

He admitted to the affair. No one has admitted to being a pedo. Much less forgivable.

The political move was to wait until after the midterms for this to come out, because data centers/AI has such a negative public perception. Turns out waiting didn’t help

lol what

i mean it is political in the sense that he slept with a chinese spy while also doing business deals with chinese companies.

but if you're suggesting this has something to do with the midterms, what would even be the gain

The Ethan one is especially shocking because his whole shtick is being the "better man" compared to all the people he reacts to and sues. Throwing it all away just to doink a coworker is pretty out there

love this comment. the ceo of one of the most influential companies in the world gets caught sleeping with a spy of a rival hegemonic nation state during a period of intense technological, political, and economical change, and OP is like "pfft nothing to see here". amazing

You're just making things up. From https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/19/business/andy-byron-astro...

> Andy Byron, the chief executive of New York-based tech company Astronomer, has resigned from his role after he was spotted embracing an employee at a Coldplay concert, according to a statement shared with CNN on Saturday.

Also from https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/coldplay-kiss-c...

> Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook was fired in November 2019 after it was discovered he had engaged in a consensual relationship with a subordinate, breaching company rules that prohibit managers from dating employees they oversee. Easterbrook admitted the relationship, calling it a mistake, and stepped down. Initially, he left with a $40 million severance package.

What other consequences do you want? Jail? Infidelity is not a crime in the US.

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.

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.

As apologies go it’s skillfully done. But it’s almost entirely about his personal failings (the affair), and it leaves plenty of room for a slow-walked board investigation that will end with a report designed to look thorough while concluding nothing.

Even if he didn’t know she was an intelligence asset, it’s hard to believe he didn’t at least suspect Megaspeed was a conduit to China. If you read the press reports, there were a ton of red flags.

Nvidia has also said he’ll stay on as CEO while the investigation runs. I can’t think of many CEOs who would survive this, let alone without taking any time off.

Its all calculated down to the pretend patriot lines near the end even though he's constantly looking for ways to bypass export restrictions to sell to china.

It's called prostitution.

So true: https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/04/16/musks-legio...

> the woman is fine, sure, but not cheating-worthy fine

ugh...

Supermicro is a company who has a massive scandal every 3 years...go check...

no. this is a national security failure, and reflects poorly on the administration considering there's reporting they've known for months and still had huang in close proximity to the white house.

china has to resort to honeypots because they have few legitimate political tools to influence decisions of an american company. not so for Trump et al - there are much more effective ways for the president to coerce a ceo than telling the world they let a potentially compromised individual help make policy decisions lol

If detecting spies required mere common sense, there would be no spies.

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.

>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.

At the beginning of the day too.

All he had to do was wear leather jackets and sell enough GPUs to cause a global economic crash*, but he wanted just a little more.

*Crash in progress.

Lol some of us are more "human" than others I guess.

Given the news article is paywalled can mods please replace the URL with this one ^

> If you are one of the most powerful man on earth you

In that case, you also have access to practically every resource on the planet to run a background check on the person of your interest. He didn't do it; that implies a lack of judgment, so he fell short of what's expected of him.

Jensen fell for convenience, or was blindsided by some trait of her personality. Otherwise, executives use escort services all the time.

The troubling part is the cover-up. Huang seems to have believed that if Republicans kept control of the Congress he wouldn’t have to come clean.

True, to some extent. But also, he should know and see it coming, and people in his entourage should also see it and be briefed/watched by services.

stop making excuses for these people.

Huh, makes you wonder why this isn't available overboard via expensive matchmaking. And if it is why doesn't he use it.

> 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.

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

Sign me up!

What if we maybe built legal and financial practices that prevented such a concentration of power and wealth that these honey pots would not be viable.

While the dynamic for the physical security of the rich and powerful has changed a bit due to drones, up until recently it was neigh impossible for the common person to threaten the physical security of someone like this, or for nation-states to do so without being noticed.

That meant that the only way to attack these people was a soft attack in the form of social interactions or social media and as such it's always struck me as extremely foolish for these kinds of people to let themselves be preyed upon in this manner.

Like they have teams of people who keep them physically safe, but not mentally safe, so in the age of social media a motivated attacker can, with enough cleverness[0][1] directly reach the mind of someone who otherwise couldn't be reached.

Why does that happen?

I think it's not so much because they're juicy targets that entities with unlimited resources can meticulously target like you describe but because people like Jensen Huang or Bill Gates are very technically competent they probably lack the social skills so they're too often the Michael Scott to the Todd Packer in situations like this[2] and when a hint of opportunity to be sexually promiscuous is presented to them they seize on it without thinking of the consequences.

Think of the married blue collar dudes who pick up bored divorcees at some dive sports bar after watching the big game and then drive home drunk, juggling multiple mistresses and a family life with relative ease for years.

A manager like Jensen Huang may be able to handle multiple business units but he can't manage a single mistress handling his unit because that just isn't his skill set.

[0] https://gwern.net/doc/www/web.archive.org/5e00c6993450adc597...

[1] https://www.npr.org/2010/06/08/127564512/for-the-love-of-goo...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Ci_oopVTk

> They will employ the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world to create the perfect Honey trap.

I heard stories of the CIA doing a class with new State Department employees, or ones at a certain level, that among other things involved the instructor "rating" everyone ("You're a 4, you're a 6, you're a 5..."), with the point being "If a woman comes up to you at a bar, and she's a 9 or a 10, she's either an escort or a foreign asset, and your safest assumption is the latter."

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.

Yet there are plenty of billionaires who do not, at least publicly, have tragic relationships. Steve Jobs? Warren Buffet? Gavin Newsom (for the past 20 years)?

Look at recent and current tech CEOs. Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg sure…but Amodie, Altman, Cook, Nadella seem to be in stable relationships, and stable in general.

No, not all men think with their dicks. Huang’s martial fidelity is below average.

What a load of bollocks. You make it sound like Jensen was some kind of victim here and had no choice. Please let's not normalize moral failings and weaknesses (especially of powerful people).

We’re all pretending that these people can’t afford NDAs, background checks or other people to manage these situations. What you’re saying is true and exactly the reason billionaires have an inner circle that manages all this. NFL players with a fraction of the money these people have manage that better. If you’re Jensen, there really ain’t that many excuses you can make.

I've been thinking about this issue a lot in terms of the influence on the US government. The NKVD then KGB coined the term "kompromat" for compromising material.

If you join a 3 letter agency or the military or probably many government departments and contractors, you'll have to go through a background check. The more sensitive the information you have access to, the more extensive the background check. The particular employer won't necessarily care what skeletons are in your closet. They're concerned with your ability to be blackmailed or bribed. So if you get in a lot of debt, you can lose your security clearance. Some of the most successful spies have recruited with a relative pittance of money in comparison to the damage they can do.

But there's one exception to all this: if you an elected politician, you don't need to go through any of this. The FBI can't disqualify you. Even if you're in the executive, the FBI might disqualify you but the president can overrule that. Case in point: Jared Kushner [1].

There are a bunch of politicians and senior staff who are DL (ie secretly gay). There's a running joke that Grindr has an outage every time the RNC Convention is in town (eg [2]). The ownership of and access to Grindr's platform and data is actually a national security concern.

And then there's the Jeffrey Epstein of it all.

So while things like honeypots have existed and will continue to exist (as might be the case here with NVidia), you might find yourself asking "how do these powerful people fall for this stuff or end up having dirt?" whereas I think you should be asking "do these people become powerful and/or rich because they're compromised or can be compromised?"

Someone who is compromised is on the team and won't rat you out. It's mutually assured destruction.

I'm really not sure what we do about it. Ideally politicians should be able to pass security clearance background checks but that's a moral hazard as the agency, whose head is a political appointee, could effectively veto certain candidates. This has the hallmarks of the J. Edgar Hoover years.

A system intentionally filtering out people with integrity who aren't compromised is a sobering and depressing thought.

[1]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/officials-reje...

[2]: https://www.newsweek.com/grindr-app-crashes-milwaukee-rnc-19...

A significant proportion of the people I know that won the startup lottery ended up losing the money when the girl they were into at high school flies themselves at them, has their kids, then goes back to the dude they were with before with the kids and child support, and this is relatively small fry and without any possible gov involvement.

The people in here acting like they would be immune to all this are kidding themselves.

But you know, she doesn’t really want you, unless you let yourself.

> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.

I think most normal people have tried Doritos at some point, which are the flavour-equivalent of what you’re describing here. It’s food designed to satisfy your human needs and desires.

I don't know... I mean I'm just a CEO of a one man company and even I get suspicious when a woman is too nice to me. Surely, with more responsibility you should get even more paranoid

So you keep it in your pants. I mean, come on.

> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.

She’s a woman, not a sweet from Willy Wonka’s factory. If you find yourself thinking “wow, she couldn’t be more perfect, it’s like she’s too good to be true” then perhaps as the CEO of a billion dollar company with national security concerns you should consider hey, maybe she is too good to be true? Maybe look into that?

All else aside, if you find yourself being tempted, you make sure she isn’t around you. The CEO compensation more than makes up for your sacrifice.

All that effort only to discover Jensen likes what every man likes.

> They are going to study you for years.

Lol. Jensen Hueng's case was likely figured out in a smoke filled room somewhere in the bowels of some intelligence agency in China, agents passing around pictures of Jensen while puffing on cigarettes. One them tosses a picture on the table and just says 'he always wears that leather jacket'. The others nod, and one them sucks in the air while shaking the ashes into an ashtray, 'We have a few candidates in mind'.

All of this makes sense assuming you aren't married. An affair is still an affair. If it was just about finding the perfect partner, he should have gotten a divorce first.

Sure, so its a given that they will fall to such tricks? If that's the case, may be don't develop a one person cult of personality and power. They're paid enough to look out for precisely for these things so that they don't make mistakes that'll ruin 100s of people's lives, yet they don't have such concerns when making stupid decisions. He is not designing chips, burning midnight oil on trying to figure out how to dissipate enough heat to get best performance from the chip, the kind of problems that actually are consequential. He is the pizza guy, yet cant do that well.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a -single- man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a -wife- bit on the side"

But somehow, it is his company that he brought to that point, and also why would he care for being spied on by a country or another? There is nothing that said that he had to swear fidelity to the US.

> 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.

The feds tried to disrupt the civil rights movement by faking a bunch of correspondence that made it seem like they were all cheating on their wives. They thought it would work because it worked on the commies in the 30s-50s. It didn't really do shit because their wives all already assumed they were from the get go.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

It would be nice if "the most powerful man on earth" actually had a brain and used it too?

> Normal people just can not imagine how sweet, specially when it has been customised around your needs and desires.

“It takes the machinations of an intelligence apparatus more powerful than you can comprehend to make a rich guy cheat on his wife” lmaooo

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/49712639/49ers-owner-jed...

Makes you wonder if this is why Elon just doesn’t stay attached to one person.

But another reason why as someone of such a high caliber you should never be alone with other women. Always have a bodyguard or something, surely you can afford someone…

Or the woman was in fact not a spy and that's the story to get this sympathetic reaction.

we will never know

I doubt this was even that sophisticated. These types of people live on deception and extracting benefits for themselves. Pretty woman walks up of course it's theirs for the taking. My God hasn't musk been paying women to birth his children? These people are more or less ill. That's why they are CEOs at high power companies.

Not only are you antisemitic, but your too much of a coward to say jew.

Unlike a "regular" affair. The spy may have used many tactics available to her including knowing all his weaknesses, having the ability to manipulate his relationship with his wife by her state hacking the phones etc. With enough resources you can probably manipulate anyone to cheat or at least 99% of the population.

> heterosexual

You mean, employing male prostitutes is somehow any better?

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.

I would love to see the prompt.

Isn't the letter too short to make any kind of accurate assessment of whether it's AI or not?

Shouldn't he eat his own dog food?

Per the article he was basically forced. He didn’t admit anything of his own free will.

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.

It’s possible to love someone and make mistakes

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?

$NVDA down 5%

sounds like an easy buy, if it wasnt already way expensive.

i guess we'll actually find out if he gave away useful nvidia secrets in years from now, but by then the tech might not matter all that much to Nvidia.

he was cheating on his wife before now, and Nvidia was doing just fine

Tell me you don't know how the stock market works without telling me you don't know how the stock market works.

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.