For something like this, at this level, involving these geopolitical players, you can guarantee that anyone from a 3 letter agency talking to the New York Times is doing so with a specific goal in mind.

Exactly. I mean look at how the Bush administration manufactured consent for the invasion of Iraq via the false WMD claims. These agencies consistently have agendas and narratives they selectively reveal to the press and that shouldn’t be a secret to anyone.

Well at that time it wasn't clear that WMD were non-existent (or they just weren't able to found them).

Iraq gov did everything to make it look like there are: prevented any inspections, blatantly lied to UN etc.

This is akin to "where there's smoke there's fire" (on the level of gossip and hearsay and rumors) except of course for the fact that a war was based on this information, many people died and a country fell into ruin as a result...

There was procedure to make it not gossip -- UN mandated inspections. Iraq blatantly prevented them, and intentionally made it look like they are stockpiling WMDs. Good play on their part to trick US and UK.

Look up "UN Security Council Resolution 678 and Resolution 1441".

It was pretty clear, to both the government with access to the data, and also to a lot of average citizens. It was kind of obvious it was a pretext for a misguided retaliation for 9/11, a wounded Bush admin lashing out, trying to look strong.

The Iraq government prevented inspections in defiance of multiple UN resolutions for many years, during several admins, not just Bush admin. Note it was UN rules, not US. It just no country besides US wanted to enforce the UN resolutions.

Look at leaks at Apple. Some people are holding onto hot information and want to blab. It doesn’t have to be some master plan.

Apple leaks are usually not related to privileged knowledge of national security concerns, for one. Nobody blabs about the next iPhone with the intent of canning executives.

Apple is not a three-letter government agency.

Based on the information so far, it is irrational to say we can guarantee this.

On top of the national security implications, there are credible reports of both export control violations AND political interference with a Commerce Dept investigation into these violations.

If there is anyone talking with a specific goal, it can be as simple as calling out the political interference or trying to warn the public that the administration isn't taking the export ban seriously.

Not all "specific goals" are nefarious or 12-dimensional chess. A lot of people talk to reporters, including at the NYT, because they're genuinely frustrated at not being able to do their jobs.

Aren’t there two “why now?”s here? One is: “Why did someone tip the NYT off?” And the other is: “Why did the US government confirm the spy allegations?”

I don’t think we know that either is even true in the sense that there wasn’t any prior tipping that just didn’t get the follow up. If someone forced me to guess, then: a) there likely where tips before. But b) the Trump government didn’t want that story out there and c) the feeling towards NVIDIA was strictly positive (~the one company earning honest money)

Both b) and c) changed recently. There is much more public opposition to the AI buildout today than even half a year ago and the midterms dealt a significant blow to Silicon Valley’s influence in Washington

But the affair wasn’t particularly private, given the social media posts about their appearances together, was it?

To me, it feels like NYT has a number of armchair moralists and prigs, Paul Graham wrote an essay precisely about this at some point.

https://paulgraham.com/woke.html

Or maybe the NYT learned about the CEO of a critically important company having an affair with a suspected spy, and did what any responsible journalist is obliged to do: Publish it.

Do you really want to die on the hill that having multiple affairs is not a problem? And that a CEO of that standing shouldn't be thinking with his brain instead of other body parts when a Chinese woman approaches him, even more so when she used to be a state media figure and then suddenly became CEO of a billion dollar AI company?

> people in government like to talk, even those who work in three-letter agencies, for a mix of personal and professional reasons.

People in 3 letter agencies don’t usually risk a lifetime of prison to exchange gossip on an affair.

Once the press has enough information that government employees know a story is coming, they can decide whether and how they want to talk about it.

So the above ambiguity about whether the timing resulted from OSINT and journalism running its course or a leak still stands.

No. Information that is public can still be classified. It's strange. Years ago, I had a clearance, and I know people got in trouble for saying in public things that were in the press. A newspaper clipping could contain information that would get me in trouble for having in an unsecured location.

Unless it's authorised

There are tons of examples of just that happening. The most prominent one might be Aldrich Ames, but there's a lot more.

LEOs at all levels have been getting sentenced left and right lately for using government spying systems to stalk people. Your confidence in the integrity and rationality of people given access to power and information is baffling to me.

Jensen's conspicuously close relationship and public sightings with Alice Huang was already on the radar of an observant Hindenburg Research-esque short firm in May:

NVIDIA (NVDA): The China Problem

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

It uses careful language to avoid implying/defaming something that couldn't be supported by publicly verifiable info but clearly found their relationship questionable to say the least.

Any investigative journalist worth their salt would have latched into that possibly salacious hint and started digging. If anything it's surprising this had been quasi-public for months given the trillions at stake from either side of the trade.

It certainly didn't need a CIA leak or House of Cards style knife in the back to doom Jensen. Embarrassing in retrospect how poorly they concealed it.

I just doesn't get having sex with a Chinese woman laundering chips to China makes him leaking info to China. Those are some serious allegations. I agree that Alice Huang has a relationship with Jansen and Alice is likely secretly getting B300s into China, but the China spy part? And how come sleeping with a spy (assuming she is a spy) unknowingly means he need to be kicked out of the very company he built and grow for 33 years, if some congressman did the same thing with a real spy backed by strong evidences still keep his seat for a few years more. That is just unfair and obviously a political move.

Sleeping with him means having access to his stuff when he is asleep.

That's not a crime for him though.

Yes it is. If you go to court and claim you were tricked by a spy into earning billions of dollars for yourself by overcharging all US business and consumer customers, you are going to jail.

The affair claims and spies don't actually matter. Jensen had nvidia smuggling chips to china. All that matters now is who knew or should have known. It is pretty crazy that the CFO took over when its impossible for a CFO to not know 20% of revenue is coming from smuggling gpus to china.

I don't think ends until the entire c-suite and board are all in jail. If jensen really has 60 direct reports, then we need to get 60 jail cells ready.

People need to stop pretending that the richest and best paid people in these companies have some kind of deniability, they do not.

Isn’t the CFO on record as having strong doubts about the deal making going on, with Huang castigating her publicly for impeding them?

> tricked by a spy into earning billions of dollars for yourself by overcharging all US business and consumer customers

Is that the case ?

bring back the guillotine!

> I don't think ends until the entire c-suite and board are all in jail.

Have you seen corporate crimes in the US? No way an entire c suite goes to prison. One person, maybe. Two or three tops.

> People need to stop pretending that the richest and best paid people in these companies have some kind of deniability, they do not.

They have money and status. How did Elon escape that bs when he said he’d take Tesla private with “funding secured”? If you or I committed such blatant market manipulation, we’d have serious consequences. It’s different for the mega wealthy (which is the primary problem).

> It’s different for the mega wealthy (which is the primary problem).

It's a feature of reality. That's why all this chatter about taking billionaires down a peg or two is ultimately fruitless. All you're doing is aiding someone else's power play -- who will then have the excess privilege and power that rankles the masses. But there is nothing to be done, it has always been that way, and always will. Those who think communism or any other governmental structure actually solves this problem, is deluded; it just transfers the power somewhere else. Putin is richer than Bill Gates.

So? Every henchman of our 100 person software shop has their laptop encrypted, do you think Huang carries NVIDIA trade secrets on a note in his wallet?

Perhaps you are simply not very imaginative, but there are multiple ways to turn sexual access into something more...

Spying being the operative word, it's very easy e.g. to plant listening devices, or drugs, or threaten with blackmail...

If you put on the leather authentication jacket it logs you into master control

Jensen’s travel and meeting schedule. Who called him, and how was his mood after the call? Which government officials does he trust?

Being around him in an intimate way is gonna leak lots of stuff that’s useful for others.

I dunno if you’ve ever looked at your laptop in a hotel room with a partner around, but it’s pretty leaky.

And you might say that he’s a smart guy, he would be careful, he’s too canny to leak stuff. But then remember that he’s having an affair with a major customer and another with a direct report. He has already thrown caution to the wind.

Having sex with each other doesn't mean they actually sleep together, or that he carries around all the trade secrets with him to be snooped on, or that she is given unfettered access to his home, office, etc.

The affair or affiars are likely not real. Just a cover for his smuggling activities. People need to come to terms with jensen being a chinese spy.

The entire country of taiwan is at risk due to jensen. He sold out taiwan and the US to china.

It might not be that. Nvidia donated $25M to Trump’s ballroom and $1M to his inauguration fund.

The administration could be complicit in treason, if substantiated by evidence in a court.

Literally anyone could be complicit in treason, if substantiated by evidence in a court.

I don't think it's been alleged that has leaking info to China. But making decisions for the benefit of a single customer acting as a Chinese cutout to circumvent US export rules risks legal or reputational damage for Nvidia. And overall means he could be making other decisions not in the interest of Nvidia shareholders under her influence, consciously or unconsciously.

Plus, as others have pointed out, the Nvidia board seems to have been preparing to back him up and ride out the story after his first carefully written apology/statement. But that changed after news of the second affair broke which means he may not have been candid with them and made the breach of trust unsalvageable.

Unfair or fair doesn't really enter into it, it's not his company anymore, he only owns ≈4% of it. Nvidia board/shareholders would have wanted to keep him running things if at all possible given his track record.

Evidently some straw broke the camel's back, but we don't know for certain whatever it's something that's been known publicly so far. It's high profile news because of Nvidia's size and prominence in the AI industry but he's far from the only founder to be pushed out of the company they founded because of a personal scandal.

The political argument doesn't really make sense to me considering Trump bent over backwards to defend him, right up until minutes before he resigned. And the admin seemingly avoided intervening for months after it became known to U.S. intelligence, even adding him back to the China trip after he was originally left off the roster.

I mean, did you hear Trump’s statement on 60 Minutes, where he said he called one of the leaders of the big AI companies, and told him he was going to jail? Given the current situation, who else could this apply to?

Things were pretty hostile with Dario there for a minute

Trump going to give him a pardon if he starts to get tangled up with leaking info to China.

Leaking 2 days after election results implies that Democrats will aim to imprison Jensen Huang and Donald Trump. Trump may have influenced DOJ to “look the other way”. The fact that NVIDIA donated heavily to Republicans while Anthropic donated heavily to Democrats is interesting. I see this coming up in the next 6-months in Congressional Hearings and Impeachment efforts.

It seems like Congressional hearings are going to be a de facto denial of service attack on tech executives. Can't do much else if you are testifying every day.

That is one way to force an industry-wide AI pause.

> how come sleeping with a spy (assuming she is a spy) unknowingly means he need to be kicked out of the very company he built

The board backed him after "sleeping with a spy" came out.

The board did not back him when, days later, "sleeping with a staff member who reports to him" came out.

And a lessn for future founders: never give up control of your company.

Zuckerberg & Musk were more visionary on this front and they can never be fired from the companies they created.

Sure, if you're the kind of guy who sleeps with your subordinates and Chinese spies.

> Sure, if you're the kind of guy who sleeps with your subordinates and Chinese spies.

So future founders who plan to take companies public

Jensen lost that kind of control over nvidia within a year of founding it.

Probably didn't disclose second one so that created a lack of trust or board knows much more.

PS. Not to mention that "sleeping with a customer" is also (beyond her being a honey spook or not ...) against NVIDIA's internal code (for whatever that might be worth ...)

She is a "honey pot" or sometimes you will see "honey trap." "Honey spook" is not a thing

it's going to trouble you when you learn all words are made up

Elon gots multiple babies with his reports.

Nobody should be confused about whether Elon is a mentally unstable man-baby at this point, with his prolific tweets and public behavior.

Well.. then why is jensen getting the boot?

You dont think under 3 years of sleeping around the world in different hotels, she did not get to his unlocked laptop?

All this while he was in shower thinking how great life is, and what a stud he looks on a leather jacket?...She must have had all confidential designs for the next 10 years of NVIDIA roadmap including the confidential financial partnerships and circular deals...

While currently living in Beijing, they dont do statues there, but she might get her own photo in the entrance hall of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

I actually don't really think he forgot to press Win+L or that he doesn't have it on an idle timer. I'd be really really shocked if his personal security is that weak.