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.

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?

I think his answer was solid and seemed genuine. Doesn’t mean I think he’s got good judgment generally, but at least this was not a shitty thing to say.

Anyone who believes he personally agonised over this alone in a darkened room is being rather naive.

[0]https://www.wired.com/story/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-hired-a-...

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.

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

is it pre consumer level trading, with institutional trading happening on different time windows?

> 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.

They fragmented the information across two separate articles to lessen how bad it sounds

I mean, it's pretty clear it was a spy. Have a look at WSJ, NYT, etc. It isn't tabloidish to say so.

Whether tabloid, or completely inaccurate, Nvida make reference to it and that there is an independent investigation. It is not wrong for people to wonder what that is given they mention it.

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.

The US National Security blob certainly cares, but not because of the infidelity.

Technically, they collect the company salary, and then the CIA reduces their pay by the same amount.

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.

Infiltrated is not necessarily the right word. Company executives know, but few other employees do

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.

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)?

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.

I mean: dude is smart. Everyone just wants to deny him that because he’s now an anti-immigrationist and they can’t stand the thought of him being both awful and smarter than them.

The trap he and many other smart idiots fall into is believing that having a high degree of expertise in one area qualifies you to speak authoritatively in unrelated areas. These days maybe you could call it Claude-smart: pairing situational brilliance with unwarranted confidence at other times. The really properly smart people I've met are good at tempering their statements with their degree of certainly based on their own qualifications.

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

But CUDA, Ray tracing acceleration, DLSS? It's not luck anymore.

So, he is responsible for the crypto and AI bubbles? If tomorrow AI crashes and Nvidia share value with it would that make Nvidia CEO an idiot?

CEO worshiping is going too far.

Jensen is extremely hands on. If he is replaced NVidia is cooked.

Intel is apparently fine (it's not fine) with a rotating cast of CEOs.

You are right though. At least whoever is trying to oust Jensen is nice enough not to bring out the usual tools.

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.

If he knew / suspected she was a spy, yes, absolutely. If she was given access to confidential information, yes, absolutely.

If he thought it was a romantic relationship, fine, that doesn't affect me / NVDA / America.

Obviously he should stop now that he knows! But if he didn't at the time, you know, I think I can still trust him to make computer chips.

"Bad judgement" is a tool used in political rhetoric used to blame someone when there's nothing of any substance to blame them for.

However, all of this changes if it turns out that he gave his lover's company any kind of preferential treatment or that she was involved in China related lobbying.

This is what the investigation will focus on in my opinion. If they find anything at all then he will have to resign.

> 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.

Most investors don't care.

Unless there was some 'materially detrimental disclosure' this is just tabloid.

The fact that Elon has a literal harem, Tesla has $500M loan from Chinese banks with all sorts of conditions etc.

Elon literally does Zoom calls with Vladimir freaking Putin.

I think this is a nothing burger.

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.

Do we know that yet for sure? There's a closed-door US congressional hearing scheduled for nov/18

I think it's very unfair to suggest they are targeting him, when there isn't even mention if it.

He's obviously entangled in this so he'll at least be the subject but beyond that it's not fair to say.

It would have to be 'very, very serious' for the US Gov under a super pro-AI/pro-business agenda to take down their #1 CEO over something indirect.

Musk has direct meetings with Putin for gosh sakes.

You mean over the phone?

He admitted having talks with Putin during 2023/2024.

His Tesla China can help him circumvent any investigation or questioning from US authorities

This would have generated extra profit for Nvidia. So I doubt they'd care unless the US government chose to take legal action against Nvidia. And that's unlikely to happen under the current US administration.

Have you considered how many billions of dollars of Nvidia sales were through entities diverting chips to China?

While there's no doubt that this is not the majority of the company's revenue, it's also not an insignificant amount.

If you had to pin Nvidia's success on one thing, the honest answer would be "right technology, right time." Without AI...And the questions about how sustainable that market is are now being asked by the market.

The first papers on using GPUs to accelerate scientific tasks came out at the turn of the century. Initially it was molecular dynamics, which led Nvidia to release their first scientific-focused line, the Tesla.

Then in 2010 or so, someone realized you could train a neural network very fast on these things.

The reason they are the leader here goes all the way back to the 2000s when they released CUDA. Because of that, the neural network (and therefore AI) ecosystem went with them.

Nvidia released CUDA in 2006-2007, which made that discovery possible, but Nvidia wasn't targeting AI with CUDA. It was targeting general high-performance computing (physics simulations, molecular dynamics, medical imaging, etc.).

There's no doubt the company seized on the AI opportunity superbly but the suitability of its product for AI, and the AI boom, was absolutely a "happy accident".

its always been well known. its that line item of suspiciously high sales to singpapore. its never been a real concern.

Except it has been. There are people in multiple countries, including the US, Singapore and Taiwan, facing lengthy prison sentences for this. In the US in particular, violating export controls is a game you only play if you're looking for years of free federal accommodation.

Examples:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-authorities-shut-down-majo...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/chinese-national-and-tw...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/california-man-arrested-smugg...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2d9y18g73o

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/25/taiwan-ch...

https://asiatimes.com/2026/11/taiwan-to-criminalize-nvidia-a...

What changed today?

Every major leader and CEO has obvious blind spots. They're geniuses at X but idiots at Y.

Look at all the great CEOs with ridiculous political views. It's fine: they do have vastly superior judgement, just not in areas where it doesn't directly affect their business.

For the NVDA CEO, it happens to be a honeypot. That puts him in probably the 80-90% of great leaders on whom that works.

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.

I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.

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 these trends happened to them despite Huang.

No, you do not.

He's been with the same woman for decades. He's on top of the world. It's understandable, if not condoned.

What I want to see is how hot this woman is and if it was worth it.

Edit: https://biz.chosun.com/resizer/v2/476NVJDIOJCWHPRF6F5F5RIP2Q...

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.

Looking at her picture might provide a hint.

[1]https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/shanghai-to-s-f-flig...

[2]https://www.macrumors.com/2019/01/11/apple-united-airline-pu...

From the book: Apple in China

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.

Would that count?

So how much of a security issue is there if the government hasn't cared so far?

This letter is just part of the ceremony of events that is expected to happen afterwards.

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.

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

Jensen Huang's case is even more high profile because of the spying accusation.

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.

There could be only 2 options: 1. There is no national security issue -> all a nothing burger 2. US government looked the other way -> THE REAL SCANDAL HERE

Trump himself relaxed laws on chip exports to China.

P.S. If you have any other liquidity available, maybe 'buy the dip'?

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.

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, through an arm around their neck, and share seats for one at lounges?

[0] https://www.thetimes.com/world/asia/article/jensen-huang-rom...

Giving a source to someone who hasn't done any checking is not inhumane.

"shallow dismissals" are against HN guidelines [0]. Worse, the article dates the paparazzi photos pre-2026.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Given the celebrity status of Jensen, it seemed unlikely that scandalous photos of him would be publicly distributed and it not already have been a huge story.

It is possible the scandalous pictures (not just him walking in front of her or sitting next to her) were already floating around, and I am not up-to-date on celebrity scandals, and the wife was already planning a divorce, as you claim.

I figured you were acting in bad faith because the article addressed your question and you didn't mention you skipped the article.

Not mentioning is categorical bad faith-- another HN guidelines faux pas.

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.

Don't kid yourself about the reason he wrote the letter. He's only writing this because of national security optics and covers it in a shit sandwich format.

This video of Lex Friedman and Jensen hanging out and drinking in Taiwan came out 3 weeks ago. Jensen and his wife seem pretty happy together in it. So today’s news is genuinely new news or they’d already gone over it and sorted it out. Jensen seems to do a lot of booze fuelled entertaining…

Why?

They'd been photod publicly since 2024.

But I agree with you that both of them or one of them will be very rich because they will get to sell at the top without upsetting the market.

OH NO WE HAVE TO SELL BECAUSE OF THE DIVORCE NOW. BEFORE THE DEMOCRATS NUKE AI COMPANIES. OH NO. [insert croc tears here]

You can google Luo Pai (from Enron) to learn more.

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.

It's easy for a professional with china backend to play with your feelings, much easier if you have normal family life or worse.

Is the woman likable it's just a matter of times. (Independent of the gender)

If this happens within a week, I would agree, if this happens within months the gender you like can makes your heart jump if you are I a very long term relationship.

The guy has enough money to have sex parties with the prettiest girls on Earth every single night until the end of his life, I'm pretty sure resisting a state-sponsored honeypot is not the hardest thing ever.

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

AI and chips are, for better or worse, considered a national security matter.

Spy is rather easy to define though, and it hardly depends on what the State Department decides (although of course, they can call anybody a spy, for political or other reasons, I agree on that).

It is perfectly reasonable to suspect similar claims of catching "spies".

Will you next claim that the police have never really prevented a murder?

Not only that you think the reporting is not reliable because of the reporter without pointing out what is wrong with the actual report.

But I'll humor you.

- Here is the judge calling the US government the co-conspirator in the same case: https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/07/27/judge-quest...

- The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot:

- https://www.rawstory.com/plot-to-kidnap-michigan-governor/

- https://reason.com/2022/04/08/gretchen-whitmer-kidnapping-pl...

- The liberty city seven: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22249838

- The cleveland bomb plot: https://truthout.org/articles/cleveland-anarchist-bomb-plot-...

- Sami Osmakac: https://archive.is/NINN0

---

These are all the cases that had some investigative reporter poking, or the jury/judge seeing through the bullshit. Here is initial reporting on recent cases. The "Iranian Agent" sent to "Assassinate Donald Trump"(emphasis mine):

>Asif Merchant traveled to New York in June for the purpose of meeting with men he thought he was recruiting to carry out the killings, even paying a $5,000 advance to two would-be assassins who were actually undercover law enforcement officers, federal officials said

https://www.ksat.com/news/politics/2024/08/06/pakistani-man-...

The woman arrested for "plotting to bomb the NY state capital":

>According to the criminal complaint, an FBI confidential source drove Bowie to the Home Depot in Rensselaer and gave her $200 to buy bomb parts. It’s not clear if they told her what items to buy.

https://cbs6albany.com/news/local/feds-say-capital-bombing-t...

---

This is not some fringe idea even here on HN. Here is a clear fed trying incite people to commit violence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49629430

This common in most internet forums. It is called fedposting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fedpost

I hope all of these sources are of sound character by your standards. Now I would ask you; can you give me an example of the FBI catching a terrorist that:

a) They did not recruit, or b) Did not provide materials, or c) did not provide the target

AS for the police in the US, they are indeed very bad at preventing crime. Though that is due to multiple reasons, mostly policy related, rather than institutional malfeasance like the FBI.

It might if he loves his wife.

Are you saying this was an accident and he didn't have control over himself?

If he doesn't have control over himself and he isn't accountable for his actions, then how does that factor into him being the CEO of the most important globally strategic company in the world? Are you saying that he is capable of making actions that he isn't in full control over? Does Nvidia need to have a CEO that doesn't accidentally make mistakes like potentially giving secret information to Chinese spies?

meaning that women are more likely to be robots? wasn't aware of this, gotta try doing turing tests on women around me.

It is, of course, not an automatic fact. The context here is emotions, so it makes no sense to point only to agency as proof of an emotional "fact". Such a thing doesn't even exist.

Lamentably, people don't have cartoon emotions. Life would be so much easier if they did.

I agree, though.

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.

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-...

I might not like airport lines but I'd hate to be forbidden from going through that process. I also couldn't just walk down the street to get a pizza. Or go out dancing at night. Or to play board games. Or take a random walk or bike ride around the city. If I was rich and everyone knew it, I'd have to live in a bubble.

That's different from "comfortable rich" where you own your own home and a retirement fund and live mostly normally.

Well, not necessarily. Jensen Huang was famous for going to random food stalls in Taiwan and eating street food.

It might be harder and riskier, and I get what you mean, but it's not like you actually can't do those things.

Also maybe it's not necessarily a billionaire thing, but more like a fame thing. Billionaires tend to get famous just due to being rich, but I'd imagine a random person wouldn't recognize 80+% of the people on the billionaire list if they saw the billionaire chomping down a pizza in the local pizza place.

If asked he could say he works for a company that makes some computer part.

“Are they well known?”

“Kinda, but mostly datacenters buy them, you probably don’t own one.”

And it really doesn't help that all these tech bro billionaires think Ayn Rand was a good writer with some fine ideas.

The last paragraph of my comment basically calls these billionaires sociopaths because you have to be to enrich yourself off the backs of making millions of people poor. How is that a defense of billionaires?

My point is that the "prize" isn't even worth it. It doesn't make you happy. Actually there's one way it seems to make them happy: by enjoying the suffering of others and having the power to influence people and even governments. But to what end?

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

You’re saying here that they’re “starved” of the human contact most of us take for granted (for example in standing around an airport and being squeezed into economy). This is thus a cause for heart-bleeding.

Ingvar Kamprad flew economy and drove and old Volvo. Being extremely wealthy doesn’t have to come with this kind of isolation. If Sergei Brin was flying economy, most of the plane wouldn’t realise who he was and the few who did would be like “oh look it’s Sergei Brin, weird.”

I don’t think there is anyway to justify that position.

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?

If it was so extraordinary, it wouldn’t be so blatant.

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.

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.

Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.

Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ... . Jensen 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 , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.

This is of course conspiracy theory territory, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this was an intentional leak.

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.

It came out on Oct/29 instead; the date is there in the URL itself if you find the article behind a paywall.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/29/us/politics/nvidia-china-...

I still think its possible the leak is due to administration infighting, but definitely less evidence now.

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.

> 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.

His fate will probably follow the Boston tech company CEO that got caught cheating with HR executive at a Coldplay concert.

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?

Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new company. This would cause NVIDIA a bigger issue.

Also, this means Jensen would get to unload the stock at the peak.... Democrats won and is about to be way more responsible than Trump. Cue Luo Pei from Enron... the luckiest guy on the planet.

Dating a customer who isn't a big customer isn't really a big deal. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.

He cofounded the company over 30 years ago. He isn't just a rich person with a desk job he doesn't care about.

Uh... no... it would not be considered appropriate for Jensen to be having an affair with a child, which is the current subtext.

... only if she hates the word 'girl', I guess. Which we don't know. Personally, I know many grown women (30's, 40's+) who are perfectly alright with the word "girl". It is contextual, and often times cultural (i.e. your background).

No offense, but this is why it can often be pernicious to do drive-by virtue-signaling online.

> Unlike some other Americans Huang seems to at least have a preference for people who are no longer minors

What does this even mean?... do you think what you're implying is exclusive to Americans? Honestly that's what it sounds like.

But this isn't the workplace slack. And again, correcting is one thing, but only if you're unequivocally correct, which the above poster is not.

To be honest, it seems what they've mainly accomplished is cause a distraction from the substance of what the person was trying to convey.

You are also not “unequivocally correct” so perhaps you are applying a standard to others you can’t live up to yourself.

And instead of a clarification, you replied with a straw-man:

> perhaps you are applying a standard to others you can’t live up to yourself.

I never claimed to be "unequivocally correct”.

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.

thank you for maintining the WW1->Cold War era great-game / hegemonic frame. Nation-states love you for it.

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)

- 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.

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.

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

> “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

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

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."

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 outside of publicly voted anointed positions.

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

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.

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

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.

If you cause a data leak at NVDIA, or say making decisions at your level based on an external entity blackmailing you and got caught, would your boss still say, "We shouldn't push people out for making a mistake"?

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.

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…

I mean, each to his own, but there are times when I would not want a bodyguard involved.

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.

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.

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.

When men suddenly get more attention from women, they're more likely to cheat. Interestingly, women who earn Oscars are more likely to keep their husbands than other actresses.

https://newrepublic.com/article/121108/oscar-curse-myth

fair observation and sad society’s current script still demands it be posted under anon throwaway account.

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.

I don't know of that was your case, but many times, its a series of small, seemingly justifiable yet ill-advised, boundary-pushing (yet thrilling!) decisions that lead to somewhere messy.

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.

> 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. You just say no.

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 agree with you, but, brain chemistry is weird, and "wouldn't cheat on them" is easier said than done and requires a lot of discipline in the heat of the moment when the situation arises and your own hind-brain and hormones are fighting you.

I don't even care that much about what Jensen did, I don't even know what his marriage is like. It wouldn't bother me if he stayed on Nvidia. But people are defending him in a way that comes off less like "we can all make a dumb mistake on the wrong day" and more like "all men want secretly to ditch their wives, and his mistake was doing it with a spy."

Perhaps as far as to say, the only suspicious thing about the perfect agent would be the lack of anything to be suspicious of.

we will never know

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

What in the world are you talking about? Most successful people you know get honeypotted by their high school crush? How did you determine it was a honeypot and not just a regular divorce? This doesn't come off like a genuine insight into how the world works, this looks like someone determined to only view women as temptress succubi.

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

Maybe speak for yourself.

That principle works for anyone with means to seize.

Believing that is the first step to a compromise. This principle works for anyone period.

Just think everyone should consider the possibility that no one really needs the head of R&D. For good intelligence agencies, the guy who does low level IT will do nicely thank you very much.

No one, man or woman, grows closer to being a 10 as they age. So if you work for some of these critical companies and your perfect man or woman shows up, you should be on your guard.

TBH if I was higher up the chain of command, I'd actually give less fucks. If I have a mortgage I cannot afford to lose job or money so I'm on guard because I'm one failed marriage away from homelessness. But if I have ten million dollars to my name, and a Chinese spy shows up then what exactly do I have to lose? If the company kicks me out then good riddance, I can already retire to perfect comfort and nobody can take away the memory of spending a year with a 10/10 partner.

You just need to know few people to qualify for "multiple times"

Just saying that being a startup founder is not particularly rare or special the past twenty years. You don't even have to do particularly well with your startup. People probably get targeted for a measly 750K exit. I think on HN we get a twisted opinion of what is big money to most people.

>"a measly 750K exit"

No kidding, lol.

You say this like 2/3 of divorce is the fault of women, but IME they usually have good reason to do so.

Divorce implies involvement of a government institution and women feel like a fish in water when it comes to bureaucracy, while men avoid it

That's why in same-sex pairs women are twice likely to call cops and file a lawsuit regarding house abuse and men half as often

And let’s face it, nerds are especially vulnerable.

On the chance that I might one day become the CEO of a very important company, could you forward me my dream girl in advance? Thanks.

PH.

People in here are probably salty that they are not valuable enough to be targeted by some sexy Chinese spy.

- anyone with enough money to be targeted like this has enough money to get a prenup.

- most states do 50-50 custody these days unless one parent gives up their rights. So any child support would be decent, but not life-changing. Doubly so if the guy is rich enough to be targeted, in which case he's also rich enough to hire a good lawyer. The woman in this scenario has less money, so she can't get as strong a lawyer unless she's gambling that he'll have to pay her legal fees.

- With 50-50 custody the woman can't fly out of state to raise the kids, the court frowns on uprooting them from their hometown / school system.

The only way this makes sense is if the guy relinquishes all his rights to the kid, in which case he's hardly a hero either.

This isn't even considering the ridiculous notion that this woman has a man on the side just waiting for her to get knocked up with some millionaire's child.

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.

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.

But that's not really a defense of the behavior, and it's perhaps a sign that we should stop valorizing billionaires.

Nothing unethical about it.

What if Huang wasn't married/with family? Does he just never get to form close relationships after becoming successful?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_Healing_(South_Park)

exactly, although I would double down that that is precisely the kind of personality being selected for by the system

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

The point I'm trying to make is that people at this level can and often do have absolute physical security but have almost comical[0] lapses in psychological/mental security that lead to the kinds of things that you're describing.

The severity of this issue makes me wonder why it seemingly isn't accounted for appropriately in security threat modelling. You'd think that that the handlers for a dweeb like Huang or Gates would take the appropriate steps to mitigate the threat, if only by adopting harm-reduction principles and getting their CEO honey-pot an in-house honey pot to proactively fend off external threats.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP4d74Qk3ac

I’m not sure somebody with an infatuation and ultimate authority over you is something a security person can work into the threat model.

> Public opinion regarding Klein's alcohol consumption reached a boiling point in December 2001 when he visited the Herb Jamieson Centre, a 249-bed homeless shelter in Edmonton while intoxicated. An argument ensued between Klein and homeless men sleeping in the hallway who were denied a bed because they had been drinking.[153] During the argument Klein told the men to get a job, which was rebuked by some of the men who stated they had jobs but could still not afford housing.[154] An argumentative Klein was shuffled out of the centre while he tossed money at a homeless man on the way out.[154][155] According to biographer Don Martin, Klein continued with his normal schedule in the following days, and when rumors of the event began to pop-up amongst the media, Klein was unable to remember the event.[154] After the event Klein called a press conference and emotionally acknowledged he had an alcohol problem and pledged to curb or stop his drinking. He called alcohol "the devil" and an "awful beast", but did not go as far as acknowledging he suffered from alcoholism.[156] Klein admitted to being intoxicated at many moments in his life, visibly during his 2001 general election party, a month earlier when he introduced former US President Bill Clinton, and at the public memorial for Calgary sportscasting legend Ed Whalen.[154]

As I understand it Klein had a security guard / handler whose job was to keep the public safe from Klein as much as it was to keep Klein safe from the public but apparently he wasn't able to dissuade Klein from drunkenly throwing money at a homeless person and telling him to get a job that night.

I would imagine that it is an interesting dynamic being the handler for a person with a lot of power, there's an interesting level of self-awareness needed by the person in power where they have to understand that they are wilfully giving some of that power up to a person that they can trust to make these judgment calls when needed and give them the feeling that they can do so when needed without long-term consequences to their personal lives.

A way to do that is to pay them well enough so that they don't depend on you to feed their family so that they can always choose to be the person that has to put their foot down and tell you what you need to hear when you need to hear it even if you don't want to hear it in that moment.

But at the end of the day it comes down to the ability of the CEO to wilfully give personal power to another person, and time and time again that seems to be single largest failing of the people in these positions -- they just can't do that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Ralph

So just hire women? Sounds like an incredibly simple solution to being security compromised.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

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'.

dude should resign in shame.

“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...

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.

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 happen to like the same SciFi you do ...and no ...you are not ohh so funny...

That

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.

"even"? Barring the fact that power makes you dumber, those in power at least for the last ~40 years or so had been actually selected to be dumber

mr. Huang case here is a shining example

This is literally a state actor running sexpionage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexpionage).

Again, this isn't some low-level clerk that just needs a handjob or some Grindr kompromat--this is the CEO of the second largest company in the world by market cap.

Is it the assertion was that they'll do research on you (which is why having a gambling problem, large debts, or lying during a clearance interview is an issue)?

Is it the assertion that they'll pick a very pretty woman instead of some plain-looking one (which is why historically the NKVD recruited from theater and ballet schools)?

The "Hollywood fantasy" is real, it just happens in a vanishingly small set of cases.

For a truly bizarre version (even stranger than this!), see the case of Shi Pei Pu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shi_Pei_Pu).

> 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.

I appreciate the link to Shi Pei Pu, that was an interesting read! Less strange than a literal Greek siren, but much stranger than the truth of Jensen's situation.

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.

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."

This is true.

Those of us working on classified programs get briefed on this sort of stuff and this is exactly what they tell us.

These operatives are highly trained, research their targets extensively, and are very good at their jobs. Once they get leverage over their targets they're most of the way there. Sex, money, fame, are all very enticing to some people and once the leverage is established most people will do anything to keep it going and keep it private.

Huang's coming forward and publicly admitting the affair effectively zeroes out the leverage. It's probably the best thing he could do once the full gravity of the situation came out.

I don't know if high-level leadership at every company with export-restricted products gets the security briefings they should. I bet Mr. Huang and the rest of the leadership team at Nvidia is getting it now.

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...

Maybe when you're an old man, it's not enough to be a billionaire to find an attractive partner, she has to be a spy or an obvious gold digger. I find it pretty demoralizing.

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.

Also, (just kind of pointing this out as a relevant factor, not really trying to insult the others), but Steve Jobs is tall and good looking. The guy would have gotten plenty of women with just a guitar and not a nickel to his name. I'm thinking Musk and Gates were very likely not in that league of raw attractiveness.

.. whatever this is: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/teen-beat/

6 of 8. And they’re politicians, so if they had any embarrassing martial info we’d surely know about it.

Small beer stuff today, titillating gossip for some.

This doesn’t read “groomed by intelligence agencies” to me. He had relationship troubles, but they were before Apple blew up. He met Laurene Powell in 1989 and they stayed together until his death in 2011.

I also don’t think it’s an excuse that he was particularly attractive, since plenty of other men on this list are less so. Buffet married a 60-year old woman in his 70s, if he cared about looks he could’ve dated a 20-year old.

Maybe you thought the context was clear, but I honestly had no idea that was what you were trying to convey.

He chose to start a business, stay in charge, grow it to its current state. He chose to meet politicians and world leaders and get involved in global affairs. Those choices, as lucky as he’s been, have put a target on his back.

He chose to talk to these women. He chose to have the affair. He chose those actions. He should have known the prior choices (be a major and visible CEO) would lead to a world where future choices (have affair with random women) may be complicated.

He is no victim to anything but his own ego and foolishness. Taking no moral stance of having an affair, he should have known better because he had made his choices already.

However if you lack the common sense to not fall for Chinese spies then your judgement really must be questioned.

It's not hard to guess.

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.

But bonus instructive irony points if (de-facto gpu-based) LLMs were used by the malicious actors to psych-profile him to probe for which of the many character vulnerabilities we all share assortment of that he would be more receptive to.

As if it were that easy? Being that rich and influental means someone out there will attempt (and succeed) to game you.

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.

Im curious more about that. He was just some regular businessman acquaintance with no special knowledge? Was he fairly accurate and specific in his predictions?

Detection and prevention is key

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

Statement from NVIDIA Board of Directors

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50416801

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.

What you need to be a smuggler is to avoid prison.

When one side is fully aware that you are a smuggler that they can rat on to the other side whenever they want, even a child could blackmail you.

So that's one (fairly realistic imo) pathway from smuggler -> to espionage.

This is a hypothetical anyways.

Contra-ry to common conspiracy theories, I'm certain any government-led self-investigation into culpability was all very aboveboard and well-substantiated.

North Korea has entered the chat ...

IMHO, I’m speculating, but I think the affair happened first, and then the MSS got involved for access and blackmail.

If you look at Megaspeed, it has Chinese state asset written all over it.

2. The company was originally set up as the subsidiary of a Chinese gaming company.

3. When the US added stricter export controls for Nvidia chips in 2023, it was spun off and ownership reportedly moved to a BVI shell company.

4. Later it was sold to a company that is apparently owned by one person who is believed to live in China.

5. The Singapore offices of the company and others he is an owner or director of show little activity and according to one report, the co-working space at the address listed for one didn't even have a record of the company.

6. Despite the fact that Megaspeed showed less than $6 million in cash at the end of 2023, it somehow became an Nvidia Cloud Partner and between 2024 and 2026 purchased $4.8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia chips, making it the top Nvidia chip buyer in ASEAN.

This company was on the radar of people in the industry well before this scandal because basically nobody had any idea who it was and where the money was coming from.

https://en.thairath.co.th/money/tech_innovation/tech_compani...

Very "normal" for what? None of this is "normal" for a legitimate company supposedly running a neocloud business on $4+ billion worth of Nvidia chips.

Singapore-based companies with this type of footprint run by Chinese nationals are almost always fronts for shady stuff.

I don't know what sort of work you do/what industry you're in, but that's not how legitimate business operates in the region.

Yet still they sold them the chips. Shows just how much Nvidia care about the restrictions placed on their clients.

What is interesting is the woman appears to be extremely mid-looking.

If there is a lesson to be learned from all these extremely powerful men cheating on their wives with objectively ordinary women (e.g. Gates, Bezos, Tiger Woods) it's that the most beautiful woman in the world is worth about the same as the woman that works at McDonald's.

P = P

Men — in particular, powerful men — want to stick it in the hole.

Above all else, even if it means risking everything, they'll do it anyway.

https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/swalwell-and-fang-fan...

Diane Feinstein also had a Chinese spy for a driver for 20 years, though I'm going to assume for my own sanity that wasn't a sexual relationship.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/details-chinese-sp...

I think this has been going on a very long time, it's just that these were politicians so I think everyone just brushed it off as "business as usual."

There are memes that super-model looking women dating nerds are almost always spies of some sort. For this spy to have any chance at gaining real information she needed to have an actual relationship with Huang - which, see above, is more than looks alone.

* Corps maximize shareholder value

* Govs make laws/penalties to avoid too much harm/risk by corps

* Press keeps everybody accountable

It's great when everybody's doing what they're supposed to do.

Unfortunate is when corps are so in bed with gov that they don't bother innovating or growing

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.

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

Also the French, so it’s not exclusively a practice of East Asian people.

What kind of reasoning is this? Americans sexually exploit their children and later shoot them. So by your logic, rest of the world can now do the same and justify this by saying the greatest country in the world does the same as well?

What a retarted comment!

Jensen’s was suppose to hold himself to a higher standard, considering his position. Only reason he is apologising is he got caught.

Nothing makes you look dumber than misspelling an insult to someone else’s intelligence.

What kind of reasoning is this? Americans sexually exploit their children and later shoot them. So by your logic, rest of the world can now do the same and justify this by saying the greatest country in the world does the same as well?

What a retarded comment!

Jensen was suppose to hold himself to a higher standard, considering his position. Only reason he is apologising is he got caught

Because power is an ability to do what one wants, and a lot of people want sex.

I didn't like the book when I first read it (mostly because I seriously dislike Anna, and the book naturally spends a lot of time being told from her POV), but in retrospect, it's brilliant. Tolstoy has, without a single bit of moralizing, presented one of the best arguments I've seen in literature for being faithful to one's spouse and not engaging in affairs.

In South Africa, men marrying multiple wives is still accepted as long as they are "traditional". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_South_Africa.

Most Muslim-majority countries currently allow polygamy. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

Now whether it was directly admitted to is a different thing, versus a nudge nudge wink wink thing....cue British aristocracy.

We might all have our personal views on whether it's right or wrong. Or whether it's sinful, etc. But that's orthogonal to reality.

I mean... seriously, look at literature, look at music... Heck, read the Bible? It's been a feature of all of recorded human history, that people will stray. We are human as they say...

Of course, the spy aspect could be relevant from a professional perspective, but I'm guessing you're talking about him having an affair.

It is not so clear, if this is about his character and can he be trusted. This is evidence that someone is capable for lying and doing something that might not be in line with company ethics either. I don't think we can assume from humans that "he lies only in his private life, but can be totally trusted on business side".

Yes, in many places, absolutely. Bad decisions in your personal live suggest bad decisions in your professional life.

Now take the same point and apply it to every other crime, misdemeanor, and breaking of rules. Should companies really operate based on that? Or should we maybe draw a boundary around professional life and only consider the professional life?

Most CEOs are gone the moment any affair comes to light, nevermind one supposedly with a Chinese spy.

Does it work the other way as well, so you're forced to divorce your spouse if you make a bad business decision?

But that's ironically a non issue now that's it's front page press...lol.

It's a bit like celebrities who release embarassing photos themselves, to bypass hackers leaking them. (To be clear, I don't think the photos should be out either way, your private matters should stay private, celebrity or not, and it's horrid to have it dragged out in public. But I do admire the ballsiness in just releasing it themselves. And in this post-modern era, perversely some people seem to benefit from the exposure)

I am realizing that this is very foreign to some people and cultures. Among those who value honor, reputation, and trust the world is different.

Nowadays, we make them president.

In fact, the affair was less important. Even if they were just a very close but unromantic professional relationship it would be a serious scandal.

Most posters in HN don't think "poor corporations are the victims when they are hacked". They think "the corporations should be liable because they did not invest enough in security". This is morally the same.

Only shallow and unimportant people are focused on sex and cheating here. The problem is who he was influenced by and who he went on to influence, whether this relationship was romantic or not. This is a problem of judgement and damage control now.

I can't even remember how many times I read a permutation of the following in company trainings:

"Failure to adhere to this policy will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment, and may also subject the individual to civil or criminal legal proceedings."

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

Regardless of how much you think we can or cannot resist actions from a foreign nation state, the ultimate fact of the matter is that he failed and thus is no longer suited for his position. If I would face worse consequences for such an action, then I damn well expect someone who's paid far above my pay grade to represent a company to face those damn consequences as well.

There's somewhat of a difference between 1:4 and 1:200 (US) or 1:300-500(most countries)

The problem is the spying and Chinese influence - which doesn't happen all the time and is a big deal because he runs the biggest chip company in the world at a time we're trying to keep that tech away from China.

Security clearance applications have a whole section asking about extra-marital affairs, money problems, and whatnot precisely because spys use those types of things to bribe, blackmail, and pressure people. It sounds like a cheesy Cold War spy movie - but it happens in real life, as we're seeing.

My opinion is that - particularly with the wisdom of hindsight - it is right to say this is a serious lapse in judgement of Jensen. Especially given the potential security/strategic implications.

However to then make the jump to this saying something about his qualities of leadership is a big leap. His leadership record is exceptional: decades of foresight, strategic risk-taking, and execution. It seems wrong to allow one episode to outweigh three decades of evidence.

And from the reporting I've read, it isn't actually clear if she was a spy (i.e. directly trained and employed by a PRC intelligence agency).

The details (businessperson working in a viable business) make it seem more like she was a willing asset, who likely had a PRC intelligence handler.