Or, you know, you could be a stand up person and be genuinely contrite.

He's a big time CEO and his company is impacted by how well he handles it. So of course there are PR/crisis people around. They specialize in making psychopaths look human.

But leaders are where they are because they make good decisions - their character does matter. Calling in the image-fixer types to clean up your mistakes is easy mode.

Being seduced by a foreign agent was neither a good decision, nor evidence of good character, nor proof of situational awareness.

Can we assume this was a one-off because she was uniquely persistent and persuasive?

Yes, total failure on many counts. But when called to answer for it, you can respond like a flawed human or you can have a pr crisis firm present you as a bland corporate robot who says things like “if anyone was offended I apologize” or “we’re going to investigate how this happened.”

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.

Indeed.

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

Owning a mistake is especially hard in the East Asian culture. It’s been a long time I have seen a public figure admitting his wrongdoings.

Info on Jensen's PR firm, which it looks like he chose specifically because he knew this news was likely to come out[0].

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