News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kphorn on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:08AM (#50467349)
The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here. Endless congressional hearings on that topic starting in Jan. The Nvidia corp still has to answer for that even when Jensen is out.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by verramilli on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:14AM (#50467505)
+1. Jensen getting really heated when pressed by Dwarkesh over China during his interview can be seen in new light now.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericmay on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:37AM (#50468005)
I remember listening to that and thinking, this sounds like a guy who is primarily focused on selling chips and is brushing away legitimate concerns in a way that, I just did not find very compelling. A little bit too much protest you might say. Not to say there isn't or wasn't validity to his arguments, but in light of the current circumstances it seems to me that those arguments are quite a bit less valid than they were, and I've certainly swung my personal opinion from being on the fence to a hard no to selling these chips to Chinese buyers.

If the Chinese Communist Party are going through such great lengths to obtain these advanced Nvidia chips, it further invalidates a lot of what I've been reading here and elsewhere about China "catching up" or that being the leading models isn't what matters (commoditization). You don't do stuff like this unless you really need something.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ricardobeat on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:47AM (#50468185)
But what’s the point ultimately? Delaying their progress by a couple years?

Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA - and leave Taiwan in a much weaker position in the near future.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by thenthenthen on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:52AM (#50468286)
This. And this happened before, see the China Sovjet split
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericmay on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:55AM (#50468343)
Who says we won't just progress as well and they stay behind a couple of years?

Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?

Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese Exceptionalism to me.

If they could just "catch up" they would, and whether we sell them chips wouldn't matter because they would want to create their own Nvidia and export chips and make money too.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dudefeliciano on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:04AM (#50468518)
> Where is the evidence that China is catching up considered a fiat d accompli?

The ever closing gap between the capabilities of frontier models vs chinese open weight models.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kridsdale1 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:18AM (#50468799)
Models aren’t everything. You need physical infrastructure at scale for inference, which is where the economic power comes from. Chinese hardware makes double the heat and needs at least double the energy input.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ImPostingOnHN on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:39AM (#50469178)
even if true, luckily for them, double the heat and double the energy input aren't an issue, and they have more physical infrastructure at scale too
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Kbelicius on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:56AM (#50469474)
And 3 years ago they were producing no heat and required no energy because they did not exist. Clearly they are catching up
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by earthdeity on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:44AM (#50469297)
It's like the ever closing gap between the smartest kid in class and the kid who sits behind him copying his work.

That's not a strategy that leads to actually being the best.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by chucklenorris on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:07AM (#50469661)
Exactly. And we better keep it this way. The fact that we can block them from copying us today means that they will try that much harder to come up with their own answers. Remember, they are miles ahead in manufacturing hardware and the software is not a problem anymore. Whatever moat cuda represented is gone now.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by stackghost on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:38AM (#50469175)
> fiat d accompli

The phrase is “fait accompli”, without a D, and is French for “accomplished feat”.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by balarjin on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:02AM (#50469578)
> Do you presume that China is destined to always at least catch > up in every sector or field ever? That stinks of Chinese > Exceptionalism to me.

Suppose you want to build something that requires technical knowledge (a GPU, a fighter jet, ...). You have engineers, but they don't yet know how to build it.

If no one on earth has ever built this thing, you need to consider the possibility that it can't be done at a cost you can pay. Perhaps it violates some law of physics, or it can't be manufactured without knowing some chemistry/physics that we are 100+ years from discovering.

If a company in some other country is already building this thing, you can be sure it is possible to build it. That is a critical piece of information! It means you don't need to discover (much) new physics. It means you can buy/steal a working copy and look at it to learn about it. It means there are engineers you can hire/spy on to understand their design process. It means you can more easily convince a bank/government to fund development, as they have proof your goals are achievable.

Inventing a thing is much harder than inventing a clone of a thing. The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericmay on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:28PM (#50471883)
> The idea that China doesn't have the people and organization to copy things other countries make is the opposite of Chinese Exceptionalism. It is the belief that the Chinese are uniquely incapable of engineering work. This is obviously not true.

Which broadly leads to two conclusions:

They can't do it. If they could they would. If you could invest and create your own Nvidia, ASML, TSMC, &c. you would do that especially if you are China due to its stated goals and actions it takes that we can all see toward those goals.

They can do it and so selling them the chips doesn't matter other than helping to speed up their ability to do it, so we don't want to sell them the chips and thus speed up their capabilities.

But your viewpoint also holds true for the United States and Europe. Anything China can do we can also do, otherwise you're just supposing Chinese Exceptionalism.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by teeray on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:59AM (#50468429)
[delayed]
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by StableAlkyne on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:17AM (#50468773)
It's much closer to nuclear arms-race thinking.

If the US or China developes an AGI that can leverage RSI, the game is over. It is over in the same way that WW3 is over as soon as the missiles are in the air: it doesn't matter who has the fastest or highest yield missiles, because there is a finite amount of time before the is nobody left to care about the advantages of one side. Except at least WW3 is over in about an hour, whereas an AGI could take years or decades to complete whatever thing it has misaligned to desire.

AI alignment research is still in its alchemy era, and global cyber security is underfunded and bad. As a species, we simply do not have the tools to deal with AGI that can self-improve.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by gabucino on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:38AM (#50469171)
hi dariobot
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by faidit on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:50AM (#50469387)
What stops another power from developing its own AGI a year or two later? Or from catching up once there are two competing RSI AGIs? The Soviets were a few years behind on getting nukes but they still got them.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by NetMageSCW on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:18AM (#50469822)
The first AGI protecting its turf and sabotaging or corrupting the second AI to be its agent.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Fricken on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:26PM (#50471844)
I think the verdict is still out on whether having an AGI God fly out of your butt would serve as a strategic advantage in the great power struggle.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Spooky23 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:02AM (#50468486)
[delayed]
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by techpression on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:14AM (#50468708)
Why wouldn’t they have done that by now then? Where is their ASML or TSMC? They’ve had decades to catch up already.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dboreham on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:23AM (#50468898)
Their ASML and TSMC are...ASML and TSMC.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by delta_p_delta_x on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:24AM (#50468919)
> They’ve had decades to catch up already

No, they haven't. They spent the first decade after WW2 repairing the damage left behind by the Japanese and their Civil War, and then managed to subsequently starve tens of millions afterwards in several missteps, and then managed to right themselves. They then spent three to four decades lifting about thrice the US population out of extreme abject poverty, and then in the last 20 years catching up. And catch up they have; they are already the leaders in green technology and EVs, already manufacture some of their own chips, already have indigenous military aerospace capability, which they are now expanding to civilian use.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by not_a_bot_4sho on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:43AM (#50469271)
> Not selling them chips virtually guarantees that they will learn how to make their own, very quickly. The end result of that is much, much worse for the USA.

Are you proposing we guarantee access to avoid potential access?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by somenameforme on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:54AM (#50469451)
Keeping them dependent upon you guarantees that they never surpass you and that you can milk the relationship for all its worth economically and geopolitically. When they have their own fabs spun up it's possible that you are the one eventually stuck with inferior tech, and you lose all sort of revenue + leverage you'd otherwise have from the relationship.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by umbra07 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:57PM (#50472339)
Except it's not a guarantee. They can still surpass you. It might be a little harder, a little less likely - but it's still completely possible.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by hattmall on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:01AM (#50469555)
It make sense. China had X amount of demand. If the demand is met they are satisfied, if the demand remains unmet they seek alternatives. That seeking of alternatives primarily means huge amounts of money, that would go to Nvidia, going to direct competitors of Nvidia to "chip" away at their competitive advantage.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by wildzzz on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:47PM (#50471211)
The long term result is the same regardless of who makes the chips but the real strategy is delaying China's ability to surpass the US. It takes a lot of time and money to essentially copy the entire infrastructure required to build an Nvidia GPU. Nvidia has enough demand as is.

China is a trading partner but there is still a serious catalyst for war in the form of the South China Sea. If we went to war with China in 5 years time, why would we sell them the tech they need to match our ability now? Let them figure it out on their own.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dr_kiszonka on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:08PM (#50472535)
If the US wanted to delay "China's ability," wouldn't the strategy be to give them just enough GPUs to keep them reliant on Nvidia (and make developing alternative tech locally seem less critical), but not enough to develop superior models?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jazzyjackson on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:14AM (#50469780)
Friends close and enemies closer.

An economy kept dependent on American tech is unlikely to drop bombs on America and vice versa. Co dependency prevents war.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by chasd00 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:28AM (#50469990)
This isn’t what China does though, the moment new tech crosses the border they reverse engineer and start producing it locally. IP protections are meaningless there. How many times does this have to happen to sink in?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by schiffern on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:03PM (#50470497)
Yep.

"Good thing China doesn't have a long memory or anything!!"

Good luck with that folks...

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Avicebron on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:47PM (#50471213)
What needs to happen is that the people who are getting wealthy from the offshoring of manufacturing and labor to China need to stop getting wealthy. Until then any and all excuses to pretend that China will operate in good faith will be levied to try and make people seem like it's in their best interest to hollow out the USA to hand over to China.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:50PM (#50472226)
The problem is, the man in the mirror and it ain’t just the Chinese that have taken advantage, the Japanese and the Koreans are pretty good too, and so are the Taiwanese and it’s only a matter of time for one or two countries in Southeast Asia to rise up too, and if it wasn’t for Russia’s stupidity, both Russia and the Ukraine would have certainly produced what three or four very, very good AI models to the mix…

Soon, China, if they aren’t already, will be the premier developer of Thorium reactors courtesy of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and they also are now number one or at the least 1A when it comes to high-speed rail, and if the Russians and the Ukrainians weren’t fighting each other, that high-speed rail probably would be already built out all the way to eastern Europe.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:43PM (#50472108)
Huawei has become a super company basically because of all the sanctions, Wxmt will become the dominant memory maker worldwide in the next five years due to shortsighted thinking in the West.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by somenameforme on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:51AM (#50469403)
People are bending over backwards to come to try to find some deep reason, but I think the reason is simple - the people in charge are not particularly farsighted nor insightful. It's simply short-term thinking without consideration of long-term consequences - it's not limited to just businesses.

For another example, the reason Chinese are not allowed on the 'international' ISS is because of the Wolf Amendment. [1] The idea was that if we just allowed them onto the ISS they'd steal all of our elite tech or something. Within a decade they had launched their own space station and carried out various revolutionary space activities.

And of course all of that happened while the ISS itself continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight. And when China did an unprecedented sample return mission from the far side of the Moon and offered the whole world access to samples, US researchers had to jump through a bunch of hoops to receive them, again thanks to the same law.

It's just myopia.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by FuriouslyAdrift on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:26PM (#50470878)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by hobo123 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:53AM (#50468298)
Going to "such great lengths"? Buying a few wh0res for Western leaders isn't exactly complicated.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by zoeysmithe on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:59AM (#50468420)
This is good evidence sanctions don't really work. Critical sectors will find ways around them and it only punishes the rank and file working class. If China or any sanctioned nation wanted those nvidia chips, it has ways to get them. So the military and intelligence get them, but the people don't. Same with sanctions on Russia now, which has not significantly slowed its military machine, but in fact its military machine is coming out with constant innovations (new Gerans, better EW, more spy sats, etc).

Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jurgenburgen on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:10AM (#50469702)
> Same when you sanction food imports. The elites who make decisions will always be fed. Sanctions are almost always an attack on the working class who do not make the high-level political decisions the sanctions are trying to address. Not to mention the idea of "making life hard on them so they revolt" almost never works.

There’s also the minor quibble that restricting food exports to starve another country are illegal under international law.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bigfudge on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:53AM (#50470359)
Nobody is starving in Russia (at least unavoidably).

That sanctions only harm the civilian economy is not an argument against them. Kinetic sanctions agains oil refining are also primarily impacting the general population and the military have enough oil. But they still impact the ability of the Russians to fund the war. Civilian infrastructure and economic assets are used by militaries too.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by sugarkjube on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:04AM (#50468533)
> invalidates . . . . China "catching up"

China catching up does not mean they are not still behind.

Also, China is a big country with many companies. While some may be trying to catch up via local development, others may still prefer getting western hardware right now e.g. in order to get a competitive advantage over those catching up.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:35PM (#50471981)
Over the last 40-50 years they haven’t had the try that hard to get that technology, the overwhelming majority was served up on a plate.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by johnbellone on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:08AM (#50468604)
I am trying to separate the current situation from his comments. Perhaps that is a mistake. He's trying to sell chips but that doesn't make him wrong.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kraftman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:15AM (#50468741)
I'm a bit out of the loop, what part of what he said is wrong? He said they have more power and the more capability to produce chips, so they can essentially just brute force things vs the US if they wanted to: is that not the case?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericmay on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:50AM (#50469385)
No it's not the case because if they could do it they would already have done it. Selling them Nvidia chips doesn't change that.

But here's a link to the podcast episode if you want to give it a listen. It will inform a lot to the discussion taking place here and help you understand a few of the things he said that are probably now wrong: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/jensen-huang

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by midas89 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:56AM (#50469484)
If they don't need NVIDIA then why are they attempting so hard to bypass export controls.

If they don't need NVIDIA then why is the now former CEO of NVIDIA trying so hard to allow exprt controls to be relaxed.

And it's because brute forcing only allows you to not fall behind, but you can't catch up to frontier models or surpass.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kraftman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:06AM (#50469649)
Could it not be true that they could brute force it if need be, but it would be much easier to use the better chips if they can get them?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by arw0n on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:55AM (#50470391)
That's like asking why China is building nuclear and coal power plants when solar is so much cheaper. They are doing all of the above.

Let's assume for a second that the compromat story on Huang is true, how much would that have cost? It could be everywhere from 10k to 10m $, depending on how difficult it was to get access, but it would still be a rounding error for AI invest.

Chips aren't what maketh SI anyway. The US is ahead because of a trifecta of having the best (most) hardware, best data, and best talent. You might also throw in business culture. But the same way Google is leading from behind in the US AI eco system, China is behind the frontier on LLMs, but laying foundational work in robotics, multi-modal models and integrated factories that might prove a big advantage down the line.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:38PM (#50472034)
Best talent, doubtful keep holding that belief. Right up until 2050…
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by gampleman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:25AM (#50468934)
Talking to friends who worked in diplomacy - honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely. It makes sense if you think about it. The failure rate on these is going to be fairly high and even if it’s a small success (ie a one night stand sort of thing) you can get a little compromat. The cost is probably fairly negligible, a lot of this will be fairly low risk as far as spying goes.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by cyanydeez on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:13AM (#50469761)
also, men are redickulous. And they can go in any number of beneficial direction from turning informant, selling GPUs to the chinese, or just a pee tape, etc. Just like a lottery of fun ways to screw with an adversary.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:33PM (#50471954)
Jensen was a tech geek? who had a midlife crisis…
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by mrandish on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:56AM (#50470397)
> honey traps are extremely common and often tried quite routinely.

WSJ reports that U.S. intelligence says Chinese intelligence approached Alice to become an asset after she met Jensen in March 2024. So, she wasn't targeted.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by backhold on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:34PM (#50471020)
My favourite honey trap story comes from the cold war. A Russian diplomat in Denmark was the target of Danish intelligence. They tried to honey trap him at a party, but he didn't respond to their agent's advances. So, the Danes supposed that he might be gay, and sent a male honey trap to the next party, but again got no response from the Russian. They shrugged their shoulders and gave it up.

Unbeknownst to them, the Russian was actually at that time trying to make contact with western intelligence, as he was keen to defect! He was just a bit too awkward to respond to flirting.

He did eventually manage to defect to Britain, and died in 2025. His name was Oleg Gordievsky.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericd on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:26AM (#50468953)
I think it's worth remembering that China isn't a monolithic bloc, and CCP doesn't drive everything, that there are tons of private enterprises there that would benefit, even if the Chinese government strategically would prefer to push Huawei to grow the domestic capability. There being a ton of private demand internal to China doesn't invalidate Jensen's view that it's a strategic blunder to let Huawei get a foothold in the market.

That said, I don't have any special insight into the specifics of who was driving the demand backing Megaspeed.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by chasd00 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:25AM (#50469928)
I find this hard to believe. Covid made it clear the CCP is very much in charge and in control.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ericd on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:30AM (#50470012)
Which part? You find it hard to believe that there are private enterprises there that don't always do exactly what CCP wants? Or that there're conflicting incentives inside the CCP, so that "what CCP wants" isn't simple?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by creaturemachine on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:12PM (#50471593)
You can't just take away someone's boogeyman like that.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kevin_thibedeau on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:13PM (#50471616)
Political officers are assigned to most Chinese tech companies.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by markhahn on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:31PM (#50470956)
there's a good analysis that says Alice was a fixer and/or white-glove. those are common-in-China roles that have to do with obfuscating big financial operations, not necessarily with any political (CCP) involvement. obviously, CCP approves, if tacitly, everything that happens in China.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:31PM (#50471918)
They are catching up. Don’t delude yourself. This minor innocent little faux pas is the start of the AI bubble, it is in some ways poetic…

One other little crack in the dike. Was Sam Altman saying regular computer users shouldn’t have memory all memory should be allocated to data centers.

What will be the third crack in the dike?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Betelbuddy on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:46AM (#50468161)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by baobabKoodaa on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:14AM (#50468707)
Wrong interview
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Betelbuddy on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:43AM (#50469266)
Its about is push for China. No intention of posting the other interview.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by baobabKoodaa on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:32PM (#50471941)
Why are you posting random unrelated things? The comment you were responding to: "Jensen getting really heated when pressed by Dwarkesh over China during his interview". Jensen's push for China in some other interview where he didn't lose his composure is unrelated.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Betelbuddy on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:22PM (#50472755)
Is related to the subject of him being a chill for China. Anybody would guess the context, people dont need somebody to find the link to an interview being mentioned. But they will be interested in another similar one, and I posted it at the exact relevant second.

Now that I explained it detail for you, shall move on to addition and subtraction? Or do you need a short pause because your head is hurting you?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ciupicri on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:49AM (#50468238)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by DrScientist on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:21AM (#50468846)
Thanks for the link.

Watched the interview and as far as I see he was getting 'heated' because he was speaking the obvious truth and being frustrated by poorly informed questions.

This is entirely expected from somebody like him who has a long history of being on the right side of technical argument.

He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US - replaced by a ex-CFO.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by falsemyrmidon on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:40AM (#50469195)
He clearly made some very bad decisions or we wouldn't be having this discussion
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by philistine on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:45AM (#50469317)
The US had put an export ban, and he clearly skirted it while at the same time banging a suspected Chinese spy. The company he ran like a fiefdom broke the rules set in place by the same country for which he's supposedly a loss.

I don't see it. Nvidia has a lot to answer for, and the fact that Jensen was very successful as a CEO does not shy away from the cracks in the structure.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by pj_mukh on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:04AM (#50469622)
Are we saying he was skirting the ban because he was having an affair with a Chinese spy? That seems like a stretch. Jensen was ideologically opposed to a ban, he didn't need any coaxing in that regard.

It was illegal, and I'm sure if this comes to light there will be (major) repercussions, but I don't see it as an immoral move.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by scott_w on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:10AM (#50469715)
However the fact he was having an affair muddies the waters on the two. At best, the optics look bad to someone outside. Yes, he could have been opposed for money reasons, and that’s a position that needs no more explanation.

But how do we know he wasn’t being whispered to by the smoking baddie he was trying to impress? Maybe he’d not have taken the risk were he not having this affair but we know what men do when their ego is on the line. Case in point: Musk paying people to play PoE for him and losing his shit when he was caught.

Do I think money is a good enough explanation? Yes. Could I believe that what’s in his pants also played a part? Also yes.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by SoftTalker on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:03PM (#50470499)
People at this level get intoxicated with their power. They think they are invincible and can do whatever they want. Often they can. Sometimes it all comes crashing down, here for example, or the case of Eric Swalwell. But they never think it will happen to them.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jappgar on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:26PM (#50470862)
"It's not immoral to violate trade sanctions if you don't think they should exist".
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ifyoubuildit on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:44PM (#50471163)
Can you make the case for trade sanctions being a moral issue?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by toast0 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:57PM (#50471364)
It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...

If the sanctions are to prevent buying the products of slavery, that's a moral issue, and violating the sactions is also a moral issue.

Same deal if the sanctions are to prevent selling things that will be used to carry out genocide/etc. That's a moral issue, so violating the sanctions is a moral issue.

I don't think there's an alegation that the GPUs will be used for immoral purposes, just that the US government has national security concerns. Those concerns may or may not be valid, and may or may not be served by having trade sanctions applied effectively, but I don't think that's a question of morality.

It's not de facto immoral to violate the law. It could be immoral to violate the law and conceal it.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ifyoubuildit on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:04PM (#50471467)
> It would depend on the reason for the sanctions...

But then it would be the thing that is sanctioned that is the immoral activity, not the breaking of a sanction, right?

It's like you said, unlawful != immoral.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by toast0 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:19PM (#50471697)
I think you can make a case that breaking a rule intended to prevent immoral activity is in and of itself immoral, even if breaking the rule didn't result in the immoral activity.

It's arguable either way, morality isn't a formal logic. There's no right answer, and it's mostly judged by popular consensus... If there is a final authority, they don't publish their notes. :p

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jappgar on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:05PM (#50472483)
It would be immoral to sell weapons to your nation's enemies but not to your allies.

Unless you're saying that disloyalty and betrayal are not issues of morality.

It's very interesting to read here that Jensen is immoral for betraying his wife but not for betraying his country.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by SR2Z on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:44PM (#50472124)
Isn't the specific trade law being broken related to arms control and dual-use technology?

IMO it's not a terribly strong case to make while Boeing sells whole jetliners to China, but the law was put in place for both moral and practical reasons.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by d1sxeyes on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:50PM (#50471257)
Absolutely. Immoral and illegal/unlawful are separate things alogether.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kelnos on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:20PM (#50471711)
Sure, why not? Morality and law are not always aligned. I'm not sure I would go so far to consider these sorts of trade sanctions "immoral", but I wouldn't fault someone for believing so.

In this case, though, I think Huang just believed these sanctions were the wrong move, and would end up long-term helping China and hurting the US. Which is fair to believe, but believing a law is counterproductive doesn't give you immunity if you break it.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by adolph on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:37PM (#50472014)
> Morality and law are not always aligned

This is a significant philosophical point.

  The thing about that Lord Moulton said is that there are a bunch of things that are wrong that are not illegal, and we have to do that because people have to be capable of self-control. Patrick Deneen, in . . . The Failure of Liberalism said that he thinks liberalism is failing because it has come to the view that anything that is not illegal is moral. 
https://www.econtalk.org/public-choice-and-politics-without-....
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jappgar on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:07PM (#50472528)
Is it immoral for Jensen to cheat on his wife?

What if he "believed fidelity was the wrong move" and that he'd end up divorced eventually anyways?

When is disloyalty and dishonesty immoral?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kergonath on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:20PM (#50473602)
It’s something you are not equipped to judge. You don’t know much about his private life and the private life of the people around him. Having sex in itself is not the problem, and so far what was demonstrated was that he had sex, at least one with an alleged spy evading trade sanctions, and once with a subordinate. Either are improper and ground for firing; both together are untenable (plus the possibility that there are other skeletons; we don’t know for now).

The relationship with his wife is neither here nor there, unless she wants to make it public. If she feels betrayed, wants a quick buck, or otherwise wants to for any reason, she will sue for divorce and, considering the publicity of the cases, she should get a favourable judgement.

It’s easy to impose our morals on others. But more than half of republicans believe that gay sex is immoral just as strongly as you believe that adultery is.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Ydarbleoj on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:35PM (#50471034)
He was playing both sides and got caught. Nothing more.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by consensus1 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:04PM (#50472476)
No, he probably wasn't doing it because of the Chinese spy. But when you are sleeping with a Chinese spy people are going to have questions.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by outside1234 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:39AM (#50470133)
The board should be fired next for allowing a CEO to have 60 direct reports and no succession plan.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by riddlemethat on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:11PM (#50470639)
It turned them into one of the most valuable companies in history. The board can figure out succession now.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by buellerbueller on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:16PM (#50470708)
Is that the reason? Or is it that they happened to make a product that became very in demand?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by drysine on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:34PM (#50471028)
"happened"?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by krisoft on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:22PM (#50471773)
You say that as if a lottery assigns companies what product they shall make. Or that they found their product designs in a kinder egg.

They had an idea which they thought will be valuable. And they worked bery hard on making that idea a reality.

People complain that companies don’t have leadership with long term vision. The leadership of NVIDIA heard the idea of GGPU computation and put the resources behind the idea to make it a practical reality. Here the gap between “nerdy idea” to “product sells like hot-cakes”, is measured in decades. That is not just luck.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by SR2Z on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:52PM (#50472262)
This take is crazy; NVIDIA not only built the GPU, *they created the demand.* For a very long time there was nothing like CUDA. They're working on an open-source self-driving car. Back when they were a gaming company, they sponsored the gaming ecosystem.

Jensen Huang cheated on his wife AND conspired to evade arms control regulations, but he's still a genius.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by UncleOxidant on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:51PM (#50472248)
You're getting downvoted for this, but it has some merit. It could be argued that NVDA's flat structure is what led to the company's success - Jensen himself greenlit the development of CUDA from the anecdotes I've heard. However, in the last 2 or 3 years the board should have pushed for more redundancy and a succession plan.

Since NVDA had such a flat corporate structure with Huang having ~60 direct reports, I expect that the company will be lost for a period of time as they try to get their bearings. This is an opportunity for AMD, INTC and others.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by burnerthrow008 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:23PM (#50470822)
Ok, but the goalposts are shifting. This started as "look how flustered he got when asked about China. That means he did it".
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by buttslut5099 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:59PM (#50471401)
Um it's absolutely possible to break the rules set in place by a country and help it in doing so. No clue whether that's the case here
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jeanlou on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:21PM (#50471744)
Sure but that's not the point here: he was getting frustrated in the interview because he was getting second guessed by someone who doesn't have as much insight has he does. Dude is the founder of Nvidia by the way.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bdelmas on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:55AM (#50469463)
Replaced by a CFO… this is what they always do. And that sign the slow death of the any company.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by skullone on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:21AM (#50469866)
All of the sudden people care about keeping Nvidia around? Theyve been jerking people around for decades, screwing customers, shitty drivers, exploding power connectors, anti competitive practices for miles.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by smallmancontrov on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:40AM (#50470163)
Opinions on Nvidia depend heavily on one's shares:gpus ratio.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by m4rtink on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:44AM (#50470223)
Yeah, its just their karma finally paying dividends.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by markhahn on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:29PM (#50470919)
those are mere gamer issues. perhaps more relevant ten year ago, but these days, the only question is the rack-scale products (and in that market, Nvidia's driver game has been pretty OK, though unfortunately closed-source).
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by serf on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:53PM (#50471299)
"let's ignore how shitty the consumer facing company has been for thirty years, they're too big to fail."

Ma Bell without the anti-trust (yet!).

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by skullone on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:12PM (#50471600)
We used their GPUs at scale before there was AI, and nvidia has always been a hostile vendor to deal with. I'm so ecstatic that at least huangs reputation is now in the trash, and I hope nvidia suffers severe consequences for all the decades of crap they've put us through
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by OCASMv2 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:41PM (#50471126)
And yet their products are superior to the competition. Yes, it's a sad day.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by skullone on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:11PM (#50471570)
Sad? How? Self dealing CEO who cheats on his family after decades of being a shit to their customers as well, seems... deserved
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by internet101010 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:32AM (#50470043)
A CFO as interim CEO is fine. Their job is to keep the house in order and Wall Street at bay while the search for a new CEO is underway.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by peezd on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:57AM (#50470420)
Yeah, this is the standard/textbook move. Keep things moving forward and the financials in order during the search.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by coffeebeqn on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:11PM (#50470646)
Interim. They just need someone to crisis manage. I’m sure they have veteran capable executives other than Jensen. Maybe the AI focus wasn’t all Jensens idea even
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by alcomatt on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:32PM (#50470972)
Quite surprised they did not replace him with AI CEO-Class Agent. This would be sweet irony...
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by hn_throwaway_99 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:00AM (#50469551)
> replaced by a ex-CFO.

Let's be clear, she is just the interim CEO (primarily because Huang neglected to ever even start a transition plan) while NVidia searches for a permanent CEO. The names I've seen floated are Rene Haas, CEO of ARM, and Ian Buck, the creator of CUDA.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by gilrain on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:02AM (#50469587)
> He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US

Let's expect better of leadership than to be criminal.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by julianeon on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:03AM (#50469597)
Replaced for like 10 minutes until the new CEO comes in. This isn't the time to announce the permanent next-20-years CEO.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dylan604 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:27PM (#50470894)
Yeah, you always want someone sacrificial to be the immediate next person in the hot seat. Too much emotional expectations will be attached to whoever is next. Let the next person take all of the crap long enough so that the person you actually want has a clear path. You see this in sports franchises as well.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by strofocles on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:07AM (#50469656)
I am curious which questions you found poorly informed? Jensen Huang started with "China could have trained a Mythos level model" because the resources needed for that were "mundane". Maybe you believe him on that or you know that to be true but maybe mundane is not the right word. Also the rest of his answer did not age well. I think Dwarkesh genuinely wanted to have a deep conversation and not to be a troll.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by lern_too_spel on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:55AM (#50470385)
It's refreshing to see a podcaster push their guest to defend their positions, after having had the displeasure of listening to clips of Lex Fridman just accepting even obvious bullshit from his guests without any follow up. It sounds like Dwarkesh did the same with Dario, who argued the other side.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by DrScientist on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:51PM (#50471283)
The uninformed part was a rather dismissive attitude to Chinese capabilities and the assumption that access to NVidia chips was the only important success factor.

Jensen has two core points:

- stopping selling NVidia chips to China isn't going to stop China developing AI

- stopping NVidia selling to China will ultimately ceed US leadership in chips as Nvidia's commercial edge is as much about the dominant developer ecosystem as it is the chips per se.

ie the real risk is the default world tech stack shifts to open models on Chinese chips. End result Chinese lead in both. I'd be animated.

He has spent his entire career competing and winning and he is being told he has to stop competing in order to achieve a goal that he knows won't actually be achieved by sacrificing NVidia.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bitfilped on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:14AM (#50469777)
I'm not sure what to make of the idol worshipping going on here. He was an average CEO and the train will continue right along. NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by AlphaSite on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:25AM (#50469935)
He has poor judgement but I’ve yet to see any of the major consumer hardware companies that understand both hardware and software in the way he did. Or really the value of a fully vertically integrated stack.

Nvidia thrived because it paired great hardware with great software.

AMD and Intel think hardware is enough; it’s not. There’s a reason neither has ever been able to compete with Nvidia.

They have a giant ego, but I’d argue it’s probably well deserved.

Apple is/was similar. They also see that hardware without great software is useless. Spend as much; if not more on software to make your hardware shine.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by soulofmischief on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:26PM (#50470875)
Apple's software quality has jumped off a cliff in the last few years, unfortunately.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:58PM (#50471379)
According to you, in comparison to the current competition, hardly Microsoft Google, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, the Koreans, the Chinese, the Linux world, they don’t add up not when it comes to hardware and software and the ability to create an ecosystem, you’re actually dead wrong.

Another thing is wrong was thinking that Apple should run in and build some type of AI model that’s proving to be well wrong the only thing in Apple’s way right now is memory. certainly isn’t money, and they certainly have the talent and house to fix the memory problem. The question is whether or not they have the will to do so.

No one equals Apple at this point in time when it comes to seamlessly integrating multiple devices in a useful way. Be it a desktop computer, laptop a smartphone, tablet, smartwatch, Apple Vision, AirPods with each iteration, once again in comparison to their competition, they seem to have the best hand at this time.

Memory cost is the biggest problem Apple has right now and it’s not like they don’t lack the money and with the Apple Silicon design group they certainly have the capability to fix it, or I should say design around it.

Yes, it might take 2 to 5 years to do it, but it’s not impossible, the main question is, do they have the will? And they’ve certainly shown it when it comes to processors, GPUs, modems, and other support chips that they can execute over time.

They may not execute on what you want or what I want, but in comparison to their competition, who is out there right now that can combine both the software and the hardware at a high level across the board?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by vondur on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:44PM (#50471166)
Intel has some good compilers that take advantage of their hardware don't they? I think AMD now understands the software side of things, and is trying to fix it. Wonder how long it will take for them to get close to Nvidia's software side?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:44PM (#50471169)
Yes, we’re gonna find out how important he was. If he is on the level as some of the other great CEOs Nvidia gonna have trouble, this little flare could be the beginning of the AI bubble bursting. Because I don’t see Intel or AMD rising to the same level as Nvidia. Microsoft seems to be having bad luck with their team-ups.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by nixon_why69 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:30AM (#50470014)
He saw the promise in GPGPU 10 years ahead of time and kept funding it out of a stubborness despite a lack of returns until it 1000xd the business.

You can say it was luck but it was definitely not "average".

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by CrimsonCape on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:44PM (#50472121)
He also fostered shifting the product line to enterprise- dominant and therefore fostered the acceleration of decline of personal computing. There’s no nuance that I can see reflected in his actions; big money AI spenders come, he jumps in feet first. If “democratization of AI” is even a concept, it’s pretty insulting that the personal consumer is cut out (but let’s make sure China is still getting hardware)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by CamperBob2 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:53AM (#50470349)
NVIDIA doesn't exist because of some inherent greatness of a single person.

Yeah, it pretty much does. CUDA is why they are positioned where they are. Other players like AMD and Intel could have done that, but they didn't, and if they had, they wouldn't have persevered for 10+ years with essentially nothing to show for it.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by keybrd-intrrpt on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:48PM (#50471231)
Exactly.

He may not have 'invented' CUDA but he saw the potential and gave it resources to be created and continually developed.

How many "CUDA-like" ideas have be squashed at other companies by leaders that don't see the potential or are willing to take a multi-year loss?

IMO, it's like SpaceX vs other rocket companies - especially Blue Origin.

Bezos, at least at first, had just as much money if not more than Musk. So why did SpaceX do so much better than them and every other rocket company. I despise Musk personally, and he's generally not as smart as he makes himself out to be - but there is something there he does differently than others in his position, some with similar resources as he does as well.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:22PM (#50471771)
Bezos is a genius and an another direction? a direction that is 180° different than Elon? and neither one probably will ever do well on the other person’s home field.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:17PM (#50471679)
It is because of his vision. And with him gone, we shall find out about Nvidia, when Apple computer went through a succession of mediocre CEOs, they were on the ropes if it wasn’t for the founder CEO coming back, Apple would’ve been history like Sun, SGI, Acorn, Commodore, Digital and a host of other computer companies from the 1980s and mid-1990s.

Western companies have had that problem. when the visionary CEO bites the dust. I think the Eastern companies are even more susceptible.

Note: Nvidia is the very definition of a one trick company I think they were in trouble long-term no operating system, Microsoft is in trouble in the other direction. No real in-house hardware ability. Long-term you have to have the ability of both in-house to adjust and iterate over the long haul with the changing conditions in tech.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by peezd on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:59AM (#50470451)
I can't say it was solely his choice but Nvidia continually made fantastic market moves. CUDA, then their positioning to ride the crypto boom, and then the AI boom. all of that required deliberate planning with a strong long term vision.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by spunker540 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:30PM (#50470946)
Self founds one of the most valuable companies of all time - average CEO, sure

You can criticize his recent question actions all you want, but you can’t believe he is “average”.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:05PM (#50471489)
Definitely not average, but Nvidia is the definition of one trick, and that one trick long-term will be their downfall, Intel is in the same position and so is AMD and Microsoft.

Due to sanctions there’s one Chinese company that seems to have become a multi-dimensional company we won’t know for sure for another two years.

Being a vertical computer company appears to be coming back in style bring on the 1980s. early 1990s.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Danox on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:39PM (#50471100)
Not true. The decisions always come out of the person at the top. See what happened to Intel recently when they had a succession of MBA bad CEOs…

Nvidia is a highly technical company we’re gonna find out how important Jensen really was to that company tech wise?

And if you look closely at their company, what have they really innovated on over the last five or six years? from a distance, like Intel, it seems like they just turn up the juice/Wattage in short, they are just cruising along.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by viklove on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:03PM (#50471447)
The temporarily embarrassed billionaires have swarmed your comment to remind you that success is based on a single person, which is why they should get to do whatever they want when they're running their own Nvidia-sized corp one day.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ryan_n on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:17AM (#50469811)
The questions weren't poorly informed just because you agree with what Jensen was saying. He seems pretty obviously to have made drastically poor judgement decisions that potentially affect national security of the US. I don't know if I would consider that to be a huge loss to the US.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by JohnMakin on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:41AM (#50470174)
What do you think an operative got from Jensen that 1) The Chinese government was not already aware of and 2) wouldn't be vastly easier and more effective from honeypotting an actual engineer?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by DrScientist on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:01PM (#50471429)
The poorly informed part is the assumption that if Nvidia doesn't sell chips China AI dev will stop.

It clearly didn't - don't you remember the Deepseek launch where it came as a rude shock that the much vaunted concept of a compute capacity moat was blown away?

He kept repeating that while he made the best chips, computer science was more important.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ipaddr on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:05PM (#50470554)
There are so many people who could fill his position. Not such a big loss
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by NetMageSCW on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:31PM (#50473777)
Tell me you know nothing about nVidia without saying it.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Andrex on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:28PM (#50470898)
"He is a huge loss to Nvidia and the US - replaced by a ex-CFO."

Oh no.

Anyways...

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by skrebbel on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:41AM (#50469220)
I'm not sure how long I should've kept watching but so far that looks like very good and knowledgeable answers, exactly what I'd expect from a competent tech CEO.

Unless it's like super far in, if this counts as heated then I just don't know what you expect.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dominotw on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:57AM (#50468391)
He was so unhinged and angry. Ppl just ignored it at the leather jacket glazing time s
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Lerc on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:09AM (#50468608)
I watched the interview. I think the arguments made sense. People get heated talking about the colour of an object they can both see. I wouldn't want to project reasons for heated behaviour.

For the record I think that less than half of the people who thought the dress was black and gold were being influenced by the Chinese government to take that position.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by HlessClaudesman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:58AM (#50469515)
Yeah call me crazy but I don't see the need to sell the cutting edge chips to China if you're already a trillion dollar company. Sure more money is nice, but not living under the thumb of a global dictatorship is nice too.

If the sale is not about money or share price then maybe it's ideological.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jurgenburgen on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:11AM (#50469727)
20% more revenue is a lot of money and makes Huang wealthier since he owns a large piece of the company.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by okrad on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:41AM (#50470169)
Also got a similar vibe from him during Ezra Klein interview but Ezra was better at keeping it on rails.

https://youtu.be/HjurAWAr_nY

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by MetaverseClub on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:05PM (#50470548)
LMAO Dwarkesh is stupid ass
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by rzz3 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:36PM (#50471045)
He doesn’t seem too heated to me. Maybe it was just the way this awful interviewer took 3 minutes to finish asking the question.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by reenorap on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:52PM (#50471288)
Yeah but Dwarkesh is completely wrong and the fact he couldn't see this made me think differently about him.

Money is like oxygen. If you deny oxygen/money to the Chinese chip market, they can't grow as fast. By supplying China with chips, all the money will go back to the US and not enough money will go to Chinese chip manufacturers to help them advance the way Nvidia can.

This is what Jensen was saying and he is 100% correct here. The chip ban to China will really help them catch up because the money will recirculate since they have no choice but to buy Chinese chips, and in the end it will make them much stronger.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by saberience on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:56PM (#50471348)
Bingo! This guy gets it.

The best way of hampering China technologically has always been about keeping them completely dependent on foreign chip supply chain, e.g. ASML, TSMC, NVDA, ARM, AVGO, INTC, etc.

If you simply ban them from getting any western chips or chip tech you simply light a viciously hot fire underneath them to develop their own TSMC equivalent and their own chip designers, and we are now seeing them catching up rapidly. In fact, they are pretty close to catching up now, basically within one or two years...

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by SR2Z on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:42PM (#50472099)
Supposedly, one of those half-billion-dollar ASML EUV machines has found its way to China somehow.

The best reason to NOT ban exports is that it really doesn't work against a peer state, and China is close enough now to count. Given the significant economic trouble in the PRC (youth unemployment, unwinding the property bubble, overproduction of EVs) the US could definitely have played this better instead of creating a vibrant full-stack domestic AI sector in China.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by lencastre on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:04PM (#50472480)
Still, it’s not like an off the shelf product with an 2 pager quick installation and first steps manual. Training, and maintenance, and repairs, and configuration,… I doubt you can simply ask your friendly neighbourhood LLM
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by MisterTea on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:08PM (#50472530)
How would they obtain one? These kids of industrial machines come in pieces and need to be assembled, commissioned and maintained by OEM personnel. The only thing I can think of is ASML sold a machine to a compromised company who secretly shipped it to China without ASML knowing.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by nightshift1 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:56PM (#50473266)
He is probably referring to this : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/how-china-built-its-manh...

They hired old asml employees.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by chasd00 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:41PM (#50473058)
> vibrant full-stack domestic AI sector in China

This has crashed, check the markets.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by MostlyStable on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:45PM (#50472133)
This would work in a fully capitalist economy where supplying them with chips would remove funding/investment from the local alternatives. This is not China. China has been and will continue to pour billions upon billions of dollars into their native industry because they too believe that having their own chips is important, so they will take all the cutting edge chips they can get and they will continue to develop their own at the exact same rate.

They do not need a ban to light a fire under them. The fire is already lit and burning and nothing the west can do will even slightly dampen it.

You yourself claim they are within a couple of years. If that's the case you think they will stop developing if we sell them chips? That's laughable.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by throwup238 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:18PM (#50471693)
IMO that ignores the decades of investment the Chinese government has made in its semiconductor industry. It’s literally been written into their five year plans at the highest level with tons of government pressure to buy domestic when possible across industries. With the biggest captive consumer market on the planet, there is no universe in which China doesn’t get its own cutting edge chip industry. They have been determined to do it since at least the 90s and have invested hundreds of billions in a concerted effort to pull it off.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by km144 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:20PM (#50471716)
I'm doubtful of this hypothesis. Maybe for a few years, sure. But China has proven time and again that they do not need foreign supply constraints to incentivize the growth of their own competing domestic industry.

The fundamental contradiction of the AI maximalists like Huang is claiming that AI does not need regulated while simultaneously supporting chip exports to China. The supporting claim for the former is that we need to compete on AI with China and move as fast as possible and every day matters, while the latter implies that slowing down their compute is inconsequential.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by lukan on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:25PM (#50471828)
One can have good argumenta against a specific law (personally I am very much pro free trade), but as long as the law exist, breaking it comes with consequences.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by adolph on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:27PM (#50471862)
Yeah, Jensen sees the whole hw/sw ecosystem as a package. It isn't just chip n+1 on process n-1.

Keeping adversaries X-behind discourages adversaries from developing a new ecosystem since X-behind is better than building new. If an adversary with tremendous resources must recreate the ecosystem, it will be adopted by US+global companies since it will be lower margin.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ycombinatrix on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:37PM (#50472018)
Your argument is that it's actually good to break the law?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by isthatafact on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:27PM (#50472839)
Some people argue that it is indeed a moral responsibility to break an unjust law.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by vouwfietsman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:41PM (#50472078)
I'm not sure if this is true or false, but as an observation: this is the exact opposite reasoning people use to criticize isolationism and market protection.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by roosterIllusi0n on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:47PM (#50472176)
You are essentially arguing that CEOs can violate US laws if it makes them personally richer. That is litterally the crime.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by linkregister on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:49PM (#50472214)
If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers. Currently Chinese AI companies are constrained on compute. This is why they go to such great lengths to use Singaporean straw purchasers of NVIDIA cards. Merely having strong market incentives to succeed is not enough. Sustained, time-consuming R&D and technology sharing is necessary to catch up to competitors.

If this principle were true, then autarchies like North Korea would be the most advantaged since they never have to worry about international competition in their domestic market.

Your confidence is not backed by any data or observation, it's just an unfounded inference.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by isthatafact on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:22PM (#50472753)
> "If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers."

I do not know full details, but China did exactly that. There were articles about limiting Nvidia chip imports more than a year ago. It really highlighted the absurdity of the export ban.

To my non-expert knowledge, the reasoning behind the export ban has never been explained beyond a vague assertion that China would do some sort of evil with AI if they have bigger GPUs than some arbitrary number of transistors, and also some silliness where paying a 15% tax made some of the GPUs safe to export. It has been pretty great for Huawei.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by re-thc on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:25PM (#50472792)
> If this was the case, the Chinese government would have placed import restrictions on US chip manufacturers.

There are. A lot of Nvidia chips are still stuck in Hong Kong.

What the government does is not always what corporations follow.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Yokolos on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:30PM (#50472891)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by numpad0 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:24PM (#50473660)
[delayed]
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by samuelknight on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:39PM (#50473019)
You say this, but there is already massive scarcity in the domestic market for any 16GB+ GPU. We can't get enough and it's bottle-necking scale out. Even if Nvidia diverted their entire supply to China there would still be a global shortage and an economic case for Chinese companies to build chips.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kspacewalk2 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:32PM (#50473806)
The Chinese chip market is exactly like any other market in any other country, except it's run by the largest and arguably most successful autocratic organization in the world, one which views reducing reliance on external suppliers who can turn the taps on and off at will/whim, to be of existential importance. I mean, aside from them being autocratic despots and control freaks, I can't even blame them. Your main adversary's president (and we all know how high-quality they always are) can wake up any day and decide you don't get to buy a critical part of the AI tech stack, good luck with all your future endeavours!

Yeah, no. No one in Beijing will let Nvidia or the White House have that kind of power in the long run because the free market knows best and golly gee where will we get the money and whatnot. They will buy whatever they can to bridge the gap to a time when they own their own tap.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bijowo1676 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:45PM (#50472136)
but how do you explain China refusing to buy nvidia chips ???
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by softwaredoug on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:16AM (#50467554)
Also that its intertwined with asking the corrupt administration to relax export regulations
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by theturtletalks on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:17AM (#50467591)
There's speculation that Trump knew about the Chinese spy and Nvidia donated $25M to the White House Ballroom in October 2025.

Even if this is just a coincidence, Jensen himself came out and said he donated to the ballroom, but kept the amount hidden. In internal documents, Jensen and Nvidia said to keep the amount hidden and it only came out due to disclosure documents from the government.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by rob74 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:42AM (#50468095)
These "donations" are just par for the course (to use an expression from the current president's favorite sport)...
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by theturtletalks on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:52AM (#50468282)
I’m aware, Apple and other companies donated too. What I found odd was the lengths Jensen and Nvidia went to hide the amount. Other companies came out and said how much they donated.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by smallmancontrov on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:00AM (#50468451)
Ok Mr. Both Sides, show me the donations to Biden's gilded ballroom.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by rob74 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:12AM (#50468683)
I should have made it clearer that I was only both-sidesing it when it comes to the donors, not to the recipient...
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by pbhjpbhj on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:43AM (#50468110)
So directly colluding with Russia hasn't taken Trump down, but maybe allowing prohibited exports to China in exchange for money will?

The audit on the main contractor for that "ballroom" must be wild. I guess that auditor is going to make a pretty penny.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by theturtletalks on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:47AM (#50468178)
Where did I say this will bring Trump down? Maybe Trump gave the go ahead as long as he gets his cut?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by pbhjpbhj on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:58AM (#50468417)
You didn't say that, I was speculating in response to your comment.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by mrkstu on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:31AM (#50469037)
Trump has several protections- #1 is that as chief executive he gets to decide who our friends and enemies are to begin with…
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by KerrAvon on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:49AM (#50469362)
No, he doesn't. Congress has abdicated this power up to now during Trump 2 because the GOP are total lickspittle sycophants. The Democrats will be spineless cowards -- at least the older generation -- but they won't be total pushovers on this front.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by hax0ron3 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:57PM (#50472343)
As far as I know there is just no evidence of direct Trump collusion with Russia that would be strong enough to get Trump in any legal trouble.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by LeBit on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:44AM (#50468126)
Oh! That explains why Trump was so sympathetic to Jensen : "He is suffering. Poor man. He is such a nice guy. And his family… but he is suffering greatly."

Corrupt from top to bottom.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ImPostingOnHN on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:01PM (#50470477)
he's also probably empathetic towards men who have publicly been caught cheating on their wives, for obvious reasons

birds of a feather, and all that

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by red-iron-pine on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:03AM (#50468507)
$25M to sell billions of GPUs to China

cost of doing business. kiss the ring, get the blessing, make fat stacks -- illegally.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ihumanable on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:26AM (#50468956)
Trump went on 60 Minutes and said as much

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think that the risk is not nearly as real as it-- as they talk. And I think the risk can be managed. And it's managed, you know who? By who? The DOJ. We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said, "Get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss good night."

ROSS DOUTHAT: Who was this person?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you--

ROSS DOUTHAT: Or this company?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can't tell you. But we said-- "Do you like the color orange because get rid --" said, "Go home right now. See your wife and children. Give 'em a kiss good night, and--"

ROSS DOUTHAT: If--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"that's the story because--"

ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"because tomorrow morning--"

ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --"you're goin' to jail."

ROSS DOUTHAT: If the-- if they--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Let me tell you--

ROSS DOUTHAT: --wanted to make a deal--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person--

ROSS DOUTHAT: --to put that (UNINTEL)--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --this person totally changed everything. Totally. "Yes, sir. Yes, sir--"

ROSS DOUTHAT: "Yes, sir"?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay--

ROSS DOUTHAT: Was it a leader of a major AI company?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. Yeah.

ROSS DOUTHAT: Okay.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: One of the big ones. And--

ROSS DOUTHAT: If the Democrats--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --and-- and I don't think--

ROSS DOUTHAT: --said, "We wanna put th-- we wanna--"

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't--

ROSS DOUTHAT: --"codify this into law--"

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --I don't think it was--

ROSS DOUTHAT: --would you work with them--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --done maliciously. But it coulda been malicious, but--

---

This is what losing the Rule of Law looks like by the way. The sitting president is on TV saying that he found out someone rich and powerful is suspected of wrong doing serious enough to get a call from the president threatening him with prison, but that that's the punishment. Once that rich and powerful person bent the knee, said "Yes sir" with the right tone of voice, all was forgiven.

Equal Justice under Law means that we shouldn't punish people we don't like with harsher sentences it also means that wealth and power shouldn't be sufficient to skirt the law.

We often speak of a two-tiered justice system, but I've never seen the president go on TV and tell America in no uncertain terms, it exists, I'm a part of it, and it went very well, he said "Yes sir" just the right way and so you don't need to worry about it.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by vconnor on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:11PM (#50471573)
This conversation is completely unhinged and unintelligible.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by dwoldrich on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:06PM (#50472504)
Thank you for the transcript, I can hear it in my head with all the inflections and combativeness. Douthat reads as "Doubt That" to me, chef's kiss to whomever is writing the script for this simulation, haha.

You're just NOW noticing that we have lost the rule of law?? The constitution has been continuously violated for over 100 years, we are clearly a post-constitutional republic? I guess? I think we entered full clown world in the 2000's where the currency, government and war systems started glitching out.

What I am noticing is that the high trust society we inherited has finally eroded to the point that we no longer tell ourselves that we have rules and laws that are equally (or sanely) applied.

Which is a good, scales dropping from eyes, innocence ending sort of thing. Makes me hopeful for change, in a way.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by 1317 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @03:00PM (#50473325)
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by spuz on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:19AM (#50467629)
The image is not a problem. That image has existed for months already. The problem is that Huang lost the tenuous protection that Trump and Lutnick agreed to give him. Investors don't like the idea that their company might suddenly be under investigation for export violations.

https://www.axios.com/2026/11/11/trump-lutnick-nvidia-china-...

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

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by mikepurvis on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:34AM (#50467927)
And not that Nvidia is absolved of responsibility but it does make it a little easier if it's the new leadership in the hot seat for those things being like "yeah we did some naughty stuff but it was the last guy and we're working on hard on getting it all cleaned up."
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by rob74 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:40AM (#50468064)
I can think of several more urgent topics for congressional hearings than that honestly...
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by throwaw12 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:53AM (#50468308)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china

As a business, why shouldn't they advocate for export to a relatively huge market? It is an expansion for them and from a business perspective completely expected.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jkukul on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:55AM (#50468356)
They should and there’s nothing wrong with only advocating. The problem is that it wasn’t just advocating but (possibly) knowingly subverting the export controls
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Dr_Birdbrain on Thursday November 12, 2026 @09:56AM (#50468377)
The advocacy is not the problem. The problem is that, once the ban was in place, they skirted the ban.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by parineum on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:25AM (#50468930)
Which is not what the comment being replied to said at all.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by onlyrealcuzzo on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:12PM (#50470660)
Didn't everyone already know that China was buying Nvidia GPUs?

Is the problem that Nvidia was not making it as hard as it should have?

Realistically, how much does that even matter?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by treefry on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:22PM (#50470804)
Now legislators demonstrated how much that matters. I don't have the knowledge to evaluate the national security concerns. But from the outcome, it's a matter they'll firmly push as a long term strategy, even at the cost of one of the world's most visionary CEOs.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by jappgar on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:28PM (#50470907)
They and their shareholders are about to find out how much it matters.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Levitz on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:02PM (#50472439)
Because the government, empowered by the people, have decided it matters, as a matter of national security.

There's is no argument to be had about this specifically. You can argue whether this is true or not, but that's not relevant to this subject. If Nvidia still decides to ignore the government, it'd be not only completely, absolutely fair, to nationalize the corporation, but the country itself has a duty to its citizens to do such thing.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kphorn on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:02AM (#50468497)
Turns out there are laws and regulations that restrict one’s ability to lobby for foreign interests as both a public and private individual. Read about NJ Senator Bob Menendez which is a particularly egregious example.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by NetMageSCW on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:21AM (#50469886)
That feels like it should be unconstitutional.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by stasomatic on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:59AM (#50469529)
Let's export rockets, F-35s, Typhoons, Rafales', Gripens, jet turbines.

China should have infiltrated ASML, not much they can do without them until they get the blueprints. Unlikely they aren't doing it already.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by throwaw12 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:26AM (#50469944)
> rockets, F-35s, Typhoons, Rafales', Gripens, jet turbines

these are actual weapons, does anyone use GPUs to kill humans?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by AnimalMuppet on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:29AM (#50470005)
They can be part of the "kill chain", yes.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by stasomatic on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:39AM (#50470146)
There was the kerfuffle with Dario Amodei and Pete Hegseth, who declared Anthropic a supply chain risk to the US. IMO, yes. Killer robots don't run on one 5090 :)

There is more spelunking to that situation, but that's a different thread.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by serf on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:02PM (#50471443)
Yep.[0]

US congresspersons and international media outlets condemned the use of AI warfare against Iran, including the Department of Defense's (DoD) Project Maven—a target tagging system integrating elements of Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anthropic's Claude large language model.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Minab_school_attack

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by samrus on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:01AM (#50469563)
Well its suspicious. If they were onoy advocating then thats free speech, but if they also skirted the ban, then its then kinda admitting to it
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by xboxnolifes on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:49AM (#50470289)
You intentionally cut off the why here.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by indoordin0saur on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:03AM (#50468515)
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised

I doubt it has anything to do with it really. China is a huge market and by not exporting to China they were missing out on tens to hundreds of billions in revenue. Any CEO would have advocated the same.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by cpgxiii on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:55AM (#50469468)
Considering the incredibly high demand for GPUs, they would have sold them regardless. All those sales do is increase demand and push prices up.

Particularly in the current political moment, saying essentially "we were using high demand in a market we can't legally sell in to increase prices for American customers" is not a good look.

(Yes,obviously, not all of this is Nvidia's doing, and demand at this volume through smuggling/front companies would still affect the legitimate market. But being an active participant in it is not a good look.)

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by macspoofing on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:41AM (#50469222)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here.

OK sure .. obviously sleeping with Chinese agent is a security issue .. very bad .. but Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by KerrAvon on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:44AM (#50469285)
there are many sound positions that are illegal, so it's kind of irrelevant
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by macspoofing on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:00AM (#50469548)
Hold on here ..

If Nvidia was skirting the law, then they should held accountable for that.

If Nvidia merely held a position that the particular law is, say, counter-productive and lobbied against it (but followed it) - what's illegal about that?

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by pixelstack on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:06AM (#50469650)
> If Nvidia was skirting the law, then they should held accountable for that.

in corporate america haha

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bigfudge on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:55AM (#50470380)
But had he paid his Trump tax? Perhaps he’s not one of the elect!
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by spiderice on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:08AM (#50469684)
Has anybody argued against your second point? Feels like a straw man.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by ecocentrik on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:00PM (#50471405)
Are we calling her a "Chinese agent" because her business smuggled chips into China or because anyone believes she was a trained intelligence operative? Does being monetarily incentivized to do business with China make her an agent?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kube-system on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:01PM (#50472414)
Reported claims from US and Taiwanese officials is that she was working as an asset for China’s Ministry of State Security and providing them information... not simply doing business for her own company.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by pebbly_bread on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:25PM (#50472803)
There is a lot of different ways that one can be an "asset" it could be as simple as giving information about who in east Asia is buying their legitimately purchased chips so that Chinese firms can try to buy or rent them. That would be very different from if as some have suggested she is a handler for Jensen.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by JumpCrisscross on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:20PM (#50471730)
> Nvidia's position on the export ban was sound. The export ban does not make sense

Jensen had the ear of the President. He could have lobbied this properly.

Doing so by obscuring Nvidia’s Singapore business, failing to apply for an export license to Megaspeed, corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed, all while sleeping with its leader who turned out to be a Chinese spy, and then only coming clean when the Congress flipped…I don’t know how he could have flipped the bird stronger at the American people.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bigyabai on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:24PM (#50471797)
> corruptly quashing a Commerce investigation into Megaspeed

I'm squarely blaming the federal admin for this. Lutnick and Rubio both knew about this way ahead of time, and their negligence is what ended up screwing the American people over. Removing Jensen doesn't prevent this corruption, it just shuffles the blame around.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by JumpCrisscross on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:11PM (#50472581)
> I'm squarely blaming the federal admin for this

Everyone is. It's increasingly clear the administration helped Nvidia break the law [1].

But this is how corruption works. The mobster pays off the mayor to let him break the law. That doesn't mean they aren't both breaking the law.

> t just shuffles the blame around. Huang became the fall guy for corruption at a ludicrous scale

Fall guy implies innocence and the end of the line for blame. Neither looks likely with this case. Jensen wasn't innocent. And there is is bipartisan fury starting with Lutnick.

> while Donald Trump ponders installing Tim Cook (?)

I think he got this idea from a joke Kara Swisher made. In the end, Trump would love nothing more than for a media circus around Jensen's succession to distract from the above.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-megaspeed...

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Levitz on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:58PM (#50472369)
>The export ban does not make sense. In fact, it is counterproductive because it closes a huge market to Nvidia and makes China less reliant on US Tech - forcing them to accelerate development of homegrown GPU business.

Could you tell China this? Because they seem to not agree at all, given what we are seeing

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kodoman on Thursday November 12, 2026 @10:48AM (#50469360)
Maybe GPU's will get cheaper then, that would be nice.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by epistasis on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:01AM (#50469558)
Especially on the Trump admin having knowledge for an entire year, and not acting on that information in any significant way.

It's not just NVIDIA that's extremely weak on China, the entire Executive branch is both weak and incompetent on what they claim is a chief concern, and Congress has been completely absent on the oversight role that it should be performing according to the US Constitution.

The incompetence and/or corruption is inexcusable. Teapot Dumb Scandal.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by mcoliver on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:36AM (#50470089)
Guessing Trump was talking about Jensen on 60 minutes this weekend when he said th DOJ called someone leading a major AI company and said "get ready to go to jail" 24:18 mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2aC8lAOQbg&t=1458s

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by aimanbenbaha on Thursday November 12, 2026 @11:58AM (#50470425)
The thing is China itself has no incentive to have their companies skirt the export ban. The whole saga is just completely ironic and incredibly unorganic. The alleged "spy" and her firm Megaspeed was doing export circumventing mechanisms to China not because the CCP was allegedly pushing her to do so, in fact it was a counter-reaction to how restrictive the Chinese customs became to importing Nvidia while the corresponding customers are hungry for that compute that is piling up in the ports. China is doing a zero-sum policy where every American chip that gets passed to their tech companies is one less domestic/chinese, which equates less money for R&D and catch up. So something very strange going on here, along with the timing, in time where Anthropic is preparing for an IPO and briefly after the midterms where the median voter rejected AI wholesale. I suspect this might have been a long game to turn the man down that is standing for open-source and the freedom to build AI. Heck epstein was having a ring of elites diddling minors and nothing scandalous came out of it.

All the regulators that kickstarted this dumb export controls in 2022, which in-turn made the american AI-stack weaker vs China, while also using doomer-fud about safety must feel glorious right now.

Sad day for developers.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by iririririr on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:03PM (#50470493)
as always, any slither of facts skewing from the narrative gets downvotes before a single comment pointing out where it's wrong never change hn
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by Levitz on Thursday November 12, 2026 @02:24PM (#50472782)
I'm just exhausted, and I mean exhausted as in, I do not have it in me anymore, to presume interpretations like these are made in good faith, since for months we have been dealing with a barrage of comments that somehow always seem to justify, and often even praise, whatever, and I mean absolutely everything that China does.

This combines with the fact that it requires actual effort not to think China spreads propaganda regarding AI at this point, I'd rather err on the safe side.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by mandeepj on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:17PM (#50470732)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent is the real issue here.

I said the same thing a few days ago and got heavily downvoted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50417959

> Endless congressional hearings on that topic starting in Jan. Ha! Who's going to wait until Jan? There's already a congressional hearing on Nov/18 https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/news/press-releases/chairme...

I may sound arrogant, but I am not. Many people are a bit slow to catch on to these incidents or can't see beyond one layer, like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50418215

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by timmytokyo on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:37PM (#50471065)
The cult of the Genius Tech CEO is strong on HN.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by zerohm on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:12PM (#50471592)
Agreed. "Huang was right to advocate for them, China has no incentive to skirt the import ban, sad day for developers," are not takes I thought I would read today.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by elictronic on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:27PM (#50471855)
Bots are cheap and easy to spin up. Looking forward to a real government that doesn’t just lick billionaire taint.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by lewdwig on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:24PM (#50470831)
Honestly I doubt Huang seriously believed he could ride this out. He didn’t only jeopardise his own marriage, he jeopardised his company’s core IP, national security and possibly the entire global economy. That’s a tricky mistake to forgive.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by porphyra on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:30PM (#50470940)
The Chinese government working hard to ban NVIDIA GPUs from the country [1][2][3].

How does it make sense that Jensen is compromised while advocating for exporting GPUs to China, which is something that primarily benefits NVIDIA (and arguably the US) while being against the Chinese interests? If he were compromised he would be like "well actually maybe I shouldn't export chips to China after all and give their domestic semiconductor industry a chance".

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/china/nvidia-chips-pile-up-hon...

[2] https://ng.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/nvidia-ai-ch...

[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-17/china-age...

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by numpad0 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:37PM (#50471066)
[delayed]
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by guerrilla on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:37PM (#50471067)
Long-term plans vs. short-term plans?
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by kortilla on Thursday November 12, 2026 @12:50PM (#50471275)
China doesn’t want regular businesses to have them illegally.

That’s not the same as China not wanting them legitimately.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by whatshisface on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:05PM (#50471488)
This is dwarfed in scope of the compromise of NVIDIA by its shareholders, a shadowy group who some analysis believe have an interest in the sale of GPUs anywhere, a set of locations that is thought to include China.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by m_herrlich on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:28PM (#50471877)
> Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised

As a public company its job is to sell as much stuff as possible to as many people as possible, they had every incentive, arguably a duty to advocate for exports to China. The incentive is there regardless of outside meddling.

Skirting the sanctions intentionally would be bad.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by UncleOxidant on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:32PM (#50471935)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent

I don't really buy that. China was already like Nvidia's #2 or #3 market. It didn't take a Chinese agent to convince him that he wanted to sell to China.

Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by roosterIllusi0n on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:44PM (#50472130)
To me, the first "girlfriend" looks more like a chinese handler. Jensen used his control of nvidia to forced nvidia customers to buy more hardware today that they did not need or they would be cut off from future orders. That is how Jensen was able to increase nvidia production so he could increase the number of cards he could smuggle to china. I don't understand how jense is not in custody yet. He is a massive flight risk. The only winners were jensen's bank account and chinese businesses that wanted nvidia gpus. US businesses and consumers paid billions more for hardware because of Jensen's crimes. We also need to investigate every CEO that partipated, because they likely are criminally culpable for their participation.
Re:NVIDIA Announces CEO Transition by bijowo1676 on Thursday November 12, 2026 @01:46PM (#50472149)
> The image of Nvidia advocating for exports of GPUs to china while compromised by an allegedly Chinese agent

but china refused to buy nvidia chips

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-12/china-urg...