Usually they are more along the lines of fake apologies like "I'm sorry that you feel that way", or in this particular case I would imagine something like "I'm sorry that I was spied on, I was doing my best and nothing prepared me to deal with a foreign agent".

It's refreshing to see words like "My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.".

And honestly, we are all human and all of us make mistakes. Having an affair is usually something that should be resolved privately, in your personal life, not in public. The business context of this affair is clearly something he wasn’t aware of at the time and punishing him for being deceived seems extreme.

Also keep in mind that divorce is not some formulaic thing. Most divorces are settled out of court and a hypothetical settlement could have terms that allow him to keep those shares in exchange for something else (e.g. maybe he agrees to pay her the cash value or agrees to a large and permanent alimony structure). I doubt the Nvidia board is worried about this issue considering the other, more immediate problems here (like the fact that his mistress is a Chinese spy).

Yes. The cheating is only a small part of it, although it does confirm he's a piece of trash and thereby throws into question his capability as a leader. More seriously, he potentially colluded with this person, an agent of a foreign government, to bypass export restrictions. The investigation that will follow exposes Nvidia very badly.

But the knee jerk maximum-cancel for any offense is a problem. CEOs are not saints. Very few people are. If our standard for corporate leadership is not just to be good at business but also to be above reproach personally… who’s left?

It’s an unfortunate fact that humans are generally fallible and imperfect. Jack Welch cheated on his wife. Many other execs have. It sucks, but the world would not be better if there were a career death penalty for doing so.

Nobody is saying he can't retain most/all of hi billions and do something else. But, leading a multi-billion dollar business should come with some minimum expectation of morality. If for nothing else because being an immoral turd opens you to extortion.

I really don't get the sentiment that flying around the world to cavort with a Chinese spy is ok-ish. That's insane.

If every C-level in the world is morally suspect, we have a bigger problem. Seriously, is your claim that being a bit iffy is a pre-requisite for the job? That's a pretty damning statement about capitalism if that's the claim.

(For that matter, let's not pretend that if he resigned now he wouldn't be able to immediately pick up work again if he wanted to. Because, to reiterate, he is worth over $150 billion dollars. He could start a new company. He could start ten new companies. He could buy an island and build a secret underwater volcano lair to start a new career as a Bond villain. Assuming he doesn't have a secret underwater volcano lair already, of course.)

I concur, but...

> Jack Welch

You might have picked a better example than the guy who systematically hollowed out the American institution that was GE by evangelizing cartoonishly corporatist short-term MBA culture then leaving when the bill came due and washing his hands of that destructive movement that he propelled to the forefront of American business. There are tons of great leaders who did hurtful things in their private lives. I don't think that Jack Welch is exemplary of that first criterion (unless you count a legacy of financial engineering and grinding employees into pulp as great leadership).

I might evaluate someone’s good sense before investing, and this was bad decision-making, but it’s hardly the whole of his career.

But then we culturally decided divorce doesn't count. "Till death do we part" became "Till death or major or minor inconvenience or whim do we part." Then culturally we decided that marrying an oath-breaker is just Tuesday.

Funny things, the rules we make up to justify nonsensical behaviour.

The entire scandal is a scandal to be sure. That he cheated on his wife with an intelligence operative and whatever happened beyond that is a problem and needs to be investigated and dealt with

But this thread was about him cheating on his wife full stop. He could have cheated with anyone else and it would not have been a problem. The cheating wasn't the problem, it was who he cheated with and what happened downstream

I mean... he did lie through his teeth to make it seem better, so not exactly trustworthy no. That he didn't sell the nuclear codes doesn't mean people trusted him after that.

I don’t know why so many people jump so easily to canceling someone.

When did we fall back to religious level purity requirements in persons personal life in order to interact / do biz with them?

If your co-worker cheats on his/her partner should they be fired from their job?

I will credit him the consideration that she is a state actor probably extensively trained in how to leverage men's weaknesses and fool them.

I’m not religious at all, but one of our oldest texts in modern circulation says “let he without sin cast the first stone”- we’re all guilty of something after all, and while some poeple have no moral compass at all, some people rationalise ”a little” indecency or indiscretion.

I’m not defending him, but it doesn’t tell me he is not trustworthy in totality, its just distasteful and I don’t like it and I think this behaviour is worth some social punishment.

How is billionaire related? Its such an unoriginal complaint.

If it does, where do you draw the line? What personal moral failing deserves to be fired for and which do not?

Happens to the best of us, really.

The corruption in terms of PRC GPU import policy and Huang's relationship with the US administration are important.

This is not a prurient sexual scandal, it's a major corruption and infiltration scandal in one of the most important companies in the world. Huang personal travelled with the US President and advised him on regional strategy, and gave him tens of millions of millions of dollars in gifts.

Huang can handle it correctly and be as contrite as he wants but it won't take away the geopolitical impact created by the operation.

We can’t know what he really thinks, but as apologies go, this is a good one. And it’s not healthy to see every piece of evidences as further proof of one’s own unshakable beliefs.

When people say that the implication is they expect to see some action beyond issuing a statement.

He would have presumably signed off on it, but refusing to do, or questioning their judgement, would look very bad to the board.

Sounding sincere doesn't mean they actually are, but it does mean they didn't let their ego get in the way of it, which is more than can be said about many who would be caught in a position like this, rich or not.

And that’s a simpler answer than Huang actually wanting a more direct apology?

I never said that. Both things can be true at the same time.

No.

I'm suggesting that a writers emotional intelligence and personal experience can show up in their writing. Especially, when the party they're writing for is receptive of the style/direction.

I also see this behavior quite a lot in people that claim that meritocracy doesn’t exist in our society. But they never go far enough to end point where they admit they don’t deserve their own job.

If he was goofing around trying to juggle a bowling ball and it slipped and smashed the coffee table next to him, I could feel sorry for him. I'd still expect him to pay for the damage.

Doing stupid things with a bowling ball and cheating on your wife and family are not the same level error. I can still feel sorry for him in his mistake. And I can still expect him to pay for the damage. In this case, it isn't paying for a new coffee table. And it isn't just writing a public letter.

The levels of trust he has violated are deep. Not just for his wife and family. He has been smoozing the President of the U.S. to influence U.S. foreign policy towards China. Do we trust this was for the best interest of the U.S.? The world? So that his company could make more money? Or for his personal gratification?

I believe in second chances. I think he can work to rebuild trust. But rebuilding trust doesn't mean you start over with 100% trust. Put him back in the mail room and trust him with small things. Then trust him with increasingly important things as he earns that trust back. Maybe someday he might earn back enough trust to regain his current position. Ok, maybe don't restart him in the mail room. But don't restart him where he is.

--

All of the above is a mostly useless opinion. I am not on the board. I am not in any position to dictate anything about the situation. It is mostly none of my business. I just offer it as some food for thought for anyone trying to form their own philosophy. Consider compassion with consequences.

It's not hard to keep it zipped up in the pants.

Mr Huang was tested, and failed that test.

He was weak when he should have led.

I've said before. He doesn't deserve crucifixion, but he doesn't deserve your/a defence.

Save your words for his family.

Rando's leaping to the defence of an adulterer is a lame look.

You know, the ones that actually did the spying.

Huang had many responsibilities that he failed to live up to. Sure, he’s a victim of sorts, but he also failed everyone.

It's so depressing to see people eat this up.

Its not that Jensen is wrong, its a good play, the GP is just saying how sad it is to watch people eating this up like they think Jensen cracked open his laptop and drafted a note, pushed it up to the public web site, then forwarded it to axios or something.

There were lots of people involved in a carefully crafted rollout, the wording of which has nothing to do with how Jensen or his family are handling this. We will never know how he personally feels or how any of this really played out behind closed doors. For all we know he and his wife are talking divorce and shouting it out and this piece is just crafted damage control.

We have no way of knowing what he feels genuinely regardless of the words which doubtlessly were crafted by experts and approved by him. We do know his actions that caused this though. And the only real and verifiable thing will be future actions. Rest is fluff.

...just like Bill Gates and Bezos, both were found to be "foolin around" behind the backs of their spouses. A pic of a young Russian babe appears on the net with Gates. Money = power and corrupts most of us. But to Huang's credit, it likely was not he that "chased down" this Chinese spy. The Spy was the one coaxing him into an affair.

It's sort of like 1st degree versus 2nd degree. If you kill a person in cold blooded murder it is 1st degree, but if you have a good reason, or, are "lured" into the act, it's 2nd degree. I would argue for 2nd degree in this case.

Let's say there was a false apology. And a person here on HN fell for it. What exactly have they lost by falling for it? Let's say a person here on HN didn't fall for it. What exactly did they win?

People get to caught up in being right and "not being a sucker" that they forget if it's worth their time and worry. It seems people are most competitive when stakes are the lowest and there's nothing to gain.

None of us here have any stake in this.

1. take responsibility (by saying you take responsibility, hopefully there is no actual fallout from this). 2. Admit wrong doing (people hate someone who tries to cover up) 3. Talk about how much you love your family and how wonderful they are and you would never want to hurt them (relatable). 4. Write in a tone of sincere regret to avoid any public backlash (stock price depends on this).

Sometimes people cheat, especially when they have lots of offers, money, free time, travel, and time away from family. It feels good, and gives a sweet rush of dopamine, and is part of men's biological wiring and selected for over the eons.

And please, no, cheating is not part of “men’s biological wiring”. Not one is “wired to cheat”. It’s a choice. A conscious choice. We have enough will power to stop ourselves at any moment regardless of whatever bullshit “wiring” theory you might have. It was his choice and he chose poorly. Simple as that.

It always astounds me how billionaires (of all people) can be the stupidest people on Earth while also being the most powerful people on Earth.

Power doesn’t corrupt, power seeks the corrupt.

On the other hand if we are partially controlled by biological drives, it explains these patterns we repeatedly observe, despite the consequences. I posit Jensen is not among "the stupidest people on earth" but that the skills that allow him to head a trillion dollar company are separate from the have-an-affair part of his biology. Of course, you could be right, maybe Bezos, Gates, Juang, Clinton, and others are just really stupid.

You know product ABC has ongoing yield problems from an outside source. Wait for moment when Person Z looks burnt out/stressed/etc and walk through emotional available "you can talk to me about anything" routine.

Don't pry about specific topic but wait until Person Z volunteers some vague conflict at work you know is the yield issue and try to gently redirect conversation using your insider knowledge Person Z isn't aware of to specific area you're interested in.

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

Is HN just this millionare-friendly? astroturfed?

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

What do you mean by this, should we be negative about him because he is rich?

I'm implying him being rich is making people blind to this fact.

I'm personally not interested in the morals of cheating, but claiming this is a private issue is crazy, as is removing his agency and implying it was something done to him. You don't fall in a random's bed by stumbling.

Whoa, whoa, who, whoa, whoa! You know the rules: no leaking next week’s headlines in advance. What kind of outfit do you think we’re running here?

I do agree though: regardless of whether the woman is a Chinese agent or not, and regardless of whether he knew or suspected (I doubt he did), this affair represents a serious lapse in judgement that has implications far beyond his personal life.

If you can be compromised personally, you can certainly be compromised professionally.

I suspect it won’t happen, because it would likely tank the stock, but really he should be thinking about resigning.

I did not. If there was more to it, leaked confidentials, blackmailed deals etc. then yes, he will be responsible. There is an investigation. But what is known, so far he "just" cheated on his wife. And this is what they have to deal with.

For what it's worth, I believe the military would agree, that would lead to a pretty quick loss of security clearances.

The dude isn't running a McDonalds franchise, after all. Everyone is saying he "took responsibility". No, he admitted it after it was already public (which is no great act of courage), now the board needs to actually make him accountable. And unemployed.

Edit: Oh

- he should’ve been more careful? How?

- he should never get into a romantic relationship because they could be a spy?

Assuming the spy angle to be true, He IS a victim as a target of a concentrated effort by a nation state to compromise him.

If all it took to compromise US national security was for a nation state to exploit the oldest backdoor in the human/male psyche, then I’d say there’s something wrong with the national security defense strategy.

Don’t blame the single point of failure, blame the design, maybe the designers.

It should never have been possible.

Having said that, Russia/China wouldn’t use this strategy unless it worked against most powerful men and their psyche.

CEO who gets honey-trapped by stripper agent ... is well meaning smartest person ever.

Say what you want about the Altmans who lucked into a rising tide, but Nvidia has been doing hard engineering, consistently delivered, strategically brilliantly for a couple decades now.

Plus, the primary risk here isn't that secrets were exposed but rather that Huang attempts to hide the thing and makes himself vulnerable to blackmail. The facts leaking (three letter agency off the record?) nuked that possibility.

They lucked into being the available useful product when the transformer dropped. This was not some megabrain multi year preparation they had been doing.

Jensen did attempt to hide the affair. That's why it was an affair. Even now he does not mention the fact that he sold billions of dollars of chips to his girlfriend's shell company, violating export controls and creating a NatSec risk.

It was a bet that the future would need more streaming parallel compute, and GPUs were well-placed to deliver it.

That's a shrewd bet, and one AMD (and Intel) were stupid not to also make.

Clearly his wife is the victim of him cheating. And he's a victim of a foreign intelligence operation.

It doesn't even mean he deserves sympathy but I see no rational basis for saying he's not a victim of anything here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[1] https://x.com/FangYi11101/status/2119586357853204813

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

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

To play devil's advocate here.. If she's a spy trained in psychological manipulation and seduction we'd be right to call him a victim instead of a participant since he'd be a target of those techniques applied to him. Maybe?

At a deeper level we do get to choose our overall environment and what kinds of things we are exposed to frequently, the recurring patterns of life can be consciously managed and shaped. But in the moment, we are more like an LLM doing a forward pass on next token. If a specific weight relating to refusal has been abliterated, it's not realistic to expect the next token to somehow still come out to refusal.

We can control our training better than we can control our inference. We have ego-ideals and specific mental makeup that can be exploited if identified.

Its clear his wealth generated a level of narcissism here that rose to a level that permitted him to invalidate the feelings of his wife, who, again, he made a vow to.

It does not matter if some hot chinese spy tried to get into his pants. He still let it happen. He his actions spoke for him: "I know i have a wife, but this chinese spy is so hot. I dont care about my wife anymore, but im going to keep this a secret from her because I know its wrong". For a loooooong time.

I'm personally so tired of excusing infidelity. He is a big boy. He can make big boy decisions.

Unless they're a poly couple, who knows.

So, no, he’s not a victim, his existing personal potential for infidelity was exploited. It worked because he would have done the same thing if the right non-spy were to arrive on the scene. The spy takes advantage of that.

We should really stop with this "just think of the children" knee-jerk

I don't know why you seem to be so against considering Jensen's children. Some people really value the commitments of marriage and see adultery as something very serious and damaging.

If this is your attitude then you should just never get married in the first place. At the very least you owe it to a partner that expects a real commitment.

So, they are not allowed to be upset if daddy decided to cheat on their mommy after long marriage with some chinese honeypot? I hope you are not planning on start your own family any time soon

"Think of the children" is a rhetorical appeal to pathos.

There's plenty to talk about here that doesn't require assuming how an adult is going to feel about another adult's behavior.

I notice quite a few people worry more about the financial implications (nVidia's stock price) than the ethical ones.

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

Not sure, if I follow. Are you saying that he has confidential papers just lying around his house? Or a computer (or other device) with confidential data without a strong password and an encrypted drive?

If any of this is true, I would say that this is actually a bigger problem, than the whole affair thing.

I'm just a humble software engineer and wouldn't let myself to handle any work related data so carelessly. Not sure, why a CEO of a huge multinational corporation would be held to lower standards.

The precautions you describe does not shield against any of those, and I'm not even being creative.

You're right, haven't thought about those.

I don't know, maybe you're right. I, personally, am very uncomfortable (almost physically) if I know that someone is seeing my screen and I wouldn't be able to get any work done in such state. Maybe I'm just weird.

> "your work is really interesting and important, please tell me more"

This one is unrelated to physically being inside someone's house.

Corporate security is a strong reason for leaving your work at work.

Never met a tech executive who left work at work. Also never met an IT security team who had the juice to tell the CEO what he could and couldn't do on his corporate phone...

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

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

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

The chips he wanted to sell direct to China?

I'm kind of bemused by this "But Epstein" defence. No one thinks that's a good thing! Seriously, is that how we run society, if we can point to any grievous failure of justice we just suspend all further rules? No. Of course not.

He's not, you're adding details to his claim that he never said. He's the victim of a foreign intelligence operaiton.

But these arent great analogies because you dont have to have sex with a spy to be a victim of a foreign intelligence operation.

The gambler goes to the casino to gamble. And Alice Huang was sent to meet Jensen Huang under normal business pretenses.

The analogy cant quite represent it but its more like the casino sent a dealer-in-disguise to the gambler on some plausible non-gambling pretenses to spy on him. So he's a victim of the casino's spy operation. Then he gambled. Except he's not a sex addict, as far as we know.

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

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

Best bet: not too good right now.

The implication here being that he _knew_ she was a Chinese spy.

I mean, Shou Zi Chew was grilled by Congress for his "links" to the Chinese Communist Party, and made to state that Tiananmen Square 1989 was a massacre despite being born, raised in Singapore, and served the Singapore military.

if I was given this much easy task on congress hearing, I'd just say it with megaphone and take the lead from there

why is it difficult to say some fact?

is it difficult for you to say so?

Change the race and ethnicity and tell me that it's okay.

Why can't you admit that this is yellow peril?

The concept seems to have been mostly focused on the Chinese, but that in turn seems to have been largely because they outnumber everybody else.

You can read an essay criticizing the concept at Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26350/pg26350-images.ht...

(It's in French, written by a Russian in 1897.)

hell that's the typical "before" face of countless plastic surgery hospitals -- provides a great contrast to the "after"

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

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

Because it's a matter of national security.

And because he deals with foreign governmennts and should know better being of Chinese origin that the Chinese are known to use such honeypots?

Come on, think before you comment

It's a public document; the reasons he published it aren't even likely to include whatever relationship he has with his wife.

If she was, he wouldn't have apologized, he would have defended his open relationship.

OC says Huang is a victim. For real?

Owner and CEO of a TOP 3 company by market cap.

At that point he's not a private person, his actions have global consequences (his wife, kids most likely still are private persons, that's true, but I don't know about them).

He's in an incredible position of power against the majority of world leaders, but he's apparently "a victim" in an eyes of HN oligarch apologetic crowd?! Because he was allegedly seduced by Chinese spy? What in the sinophobia and oligarchophilia is this?

If Huang wouldn't be of ultra-billionaire class and the woman would truly is a spy - he would be in prison for treason in a heart beat. I can bet - nothing will happen and by next Monday this all will be forgotten, washed by best PR firms he can buy.

His family is not of other peoples business....

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nowadays, we make them president.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P.S. I should add that I don't think Tolstoy was inventing the "rich men having affairs was considered normal" aspect for the purpose of the book. I think that was what Russian society was really like at the time, and he took that aspect of society and wrote a book criticizing it, highlighting the negative effects that that attitude would have on people.

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

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

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

I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.

What changed today?

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

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

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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

God god, no.

There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.

Other than handing over very detailed schemas etc, there's almost nothing important he could tell them.

Maybe some future ideas and plans, maybe some government things about the Administration, it's small peanuts.

Nvidia is an operational success, their IP is embedded within deep layers of know how and expertise.

He's the 'father' of that org, he set the tone, they like him there.

Nvidia would risk being an Intel without him.

The crime here isn't giving secrets to the Chinese, it is helping them evade export controls. Again, this is something that Nvidia and Jensen has been investigated on repeatedly. If he knew that Megaspeed was a front for China, quite hard to deny given that Alice Huang seems to have brought Chinese execs to every meeting with Jensen then it is very bad. And yes, the stuff that Jensen would have said would have been very useful because, I assume, the inference is that he would have been helping them evade sanctions.

The very best case from here is that the board fires him.

If that were true, then it's fair game, but I don't think that's what is going on.

US gov has not stated they are targeting him.

Also, there is a gigantic difference between 'avoidance' and 'evasion', like with taxes.

We'll see.

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

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

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

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

Musk has direct meetings with Putin for gosh sakes.

He admitted having talks with Putin during 2023/2024.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

> There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.

I think the practical implications matter a lot less than the PR and legal ones.

If the stock price plummets tomorrow and doesn’t recover, the board may have to act.

Similarly, if the right governments start asking hard questions, the board may have to act.

This is likely going to be a slow-rolling shit show for a while. At the very least, it’s legitimate grounds for one or more congressional investigations, which may start here but could go anywhere.

Most investors don't care.

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

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

Elon literally does Zoom calls with Vladimir freaking Putin.

I think this is a nothing burger.

He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.

I made a boat load of money off of the Tesla IPO(and then holding for 12 years) but I only invested because I thought they wouldn't be a successful car company but would produce a bunch of patents that would be valuable when licensed to the big auto makers.

Obviously I got that wrong, but my investment still worked out - and I still have friends and family coming to me for investing advice because I made the right move but for the wrong reasons

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

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

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

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

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

For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.

Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.

And for another note about comments elsewhere in the thread that Open AI is what brought up the current AI craze. Nvidia was already selling to OpenAI via introduction of Elon Musk in 2016.

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

Nvidia boosts AI a lot. They are the central bank of AI. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49673098

Even when AI boom was imminient but 10 times smaller 2-3 years ago they did not invested heavily enough and Nvidia went all in.

I have no clue what percent of that decision making was Huang, but all the competition leadership was certainly incompetent.

So at least he did built company with a good leadership. Its a fact. Even if I personally dont like Nvidia or its products.

that is generally what it looks like when someone is smarter than you

Maybe. This is also what everyone said about Elon for a long time, though.

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

These aren't all entirely drop-in replacements, there are some trade-offs involved, but there are many companies with alternatives that could take Nvidia's market if they stall.

Which of those sell chips at the Nvidia caliber sell to AI model builders in the US (not use internally)?

I just was seeing very little advance-neutralizing of 1950s Red Scare talk in these comments.

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

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

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

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

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

And China, really? What dissent is this going to cause? As for disruption, Nvidia essentially has a monopoly on what they do. Who the person in charge is, or what he’s doing, barely matters at this point.

> watch any TV mini series for example after example.

You might have been watching too many of those.

Not what you are doing, and I understand that's why they renamed the show but they shouldn't have. While it can be used as a racial slur it doesn't generally have that connotation. I think if you directly asked most people they would either not know about the slur or say something like "I think its a racist term for some group or something." I had to look it up myself to be sure. We can choose to let that usage of the term die.

This is just a total guess, but I assume what a lot of the board want is for him to sell as much to China or indirect channels as he can get away with. So whatever these deals were that involved this woman, they probably want him to get those deals through it he can get away with it (although they wouldn't admit it).

I see this more or less as Huang doing his job. And relative to international expectations at that level of wealth, one public affair is probably not something most of the board (presumably largely male) is going to (privately) judge him for.

So if the board is investigating, I assume what they are trying to figure out is if the US government is going to do anything (probably not) or waiting to see if there is going to be some kind of public demand for him to be removed. Or it there is something likely to come out that will cause either of those things.

Neither the board nor the US government nor investors nor the average person gives a shit about a CEO having an affair as long it doesn't compromise his ability to do his job well.

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

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

2. The goal of honey trapping is to gain trust from the target to do whatever you want to do, not to please them. They don't even have to have an actual physical contact. A "mid", unassuming, appearance is often appropriate for this purpose. This actually applies to actual assassins, 100x engineers, and millionaire landlords, too; they gain nothing from standing out, so they look mid. You may optionally look good, but your looks should not be the means by which you achieve your goals.

3. (Extension to 2.)A rich CEO having affairs with a "mid" woman for a true extramarital love is probably more damaging to their relationships than them just disappearing into a hotel room with a prostitute with a bottle in hand. The latter is probably more tolerable to those involved and to the public.

4. Forgot where I read this, some diplomat's essay or something, but allegedly, Russians will do what you want to be happening, starting with regular office staffs and moms, escalating to scantily dressed girls, to visibly gay dudes, at which point they accept that their operation had been too obvious and give up. So there is a chance, I guess, if you must have it???

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

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

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

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

There is a more crude corollary to the theory that I chose to omit for decorum's sake:

P = P

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

Also, just to be clear here: the story is that Jensen was also going to Taiwan to meet with this person who was helping Alibaba evade sanctions, when Jensen met with this person Alibaba reps were always there, and in the US Jensen was making media appearances saying that sanctions on China had to be lifted.

Bear in mind that multiple people at Supermicro were charged for allegedly smuggling servers to China, and that the reason Megaspeed is being investigated is for effectively the same thing. Jensen denied he had anything to do with Supermicro, it is going to be much harder to say the same thing here.

I don't think the affair itself is necessarily related to the direction this will shortly take.

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

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

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

This is a hypothetical anyways.

Nothing is beyond our reach.

North Korea has entered the chat ...

MLK Jr. was being monitored by the FBI and CIA, who believed he was a Communist.

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

There is, after all, statistically a high correlation with rich billionaires and infidelity…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Corps maximize shareholder value

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

* Press keeps everybody accountable

It's great when everybody's doing what they're supposed to do, which obviously isn't often enough.

Unfortunate is when corps are so in bed with gov that they don't bother innovating or growing, and when press is so in bed with gov that they might as well not exist at all.

So male infidelity is not a big deal?

As always, recovery under stress is more telling than speed on the happy path.

The other name founders - Bezos, Zuckerberg, Jobs - fell into the guise of their own image propagating down their leadership chain; Huang seems to be actually leading, often by example. I'd expect his team to do ok without him, but believe only he could make some of the hard decisions, particularly now that their success is bounded by their customers'.

That is totally unprecedented.

I know others have said this is a carefully written statement, but in my culture I would feel it would be rude not to keep it private? Sorry if this sounds autistic.

Perhaps this is a too big to fail scenario?

1. Jensen is a billionaire who doesn't really need to work. This gives him a lot of leverage. He isn't desperate to make a living.

2. Imagine he is fired, unloads all stocks, and starts a new competing company. This would cause NVIDIA a much bigger issue, 10000x bigger.

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

4. Dating a customer isn't really a big deal. Did her company get a preferential price? Treatment? I'd guess that her company doesn't make a dent in NVIDIA's revenue.

5. Her being a Chinese spy isn't Jensen's fault. If anything, he is a victim.

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

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

- Has this person performed a notable breach of trust?

- Has this person displayed a notable lack of judgement?

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

I never got to (or wanted to) see the images, but, by all reports, he ... er ... had nothing to be ashamed of.

Technically, it was a saw. The Saudi King was mad at Bezos because of a column in the Washington Post (which Bezos had purchased).

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/21/amazon-bo...

> "Saudi experts – dissidents and analysts – told the Guardian they believed Bezos was probably targeted because of his ownership of the Post and its coverage of Saudi Arabia. Khashoggi’s critical columns about Mohammed bin Salman and his campaign of repression against activists and intellectuals rankled the crown prince and his inner circle."

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

The strategic thing is for him to come forward first.

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

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

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

It would not be considered appropriate for Jensen to be having an affair with someone underaged. That is the current subtext.

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

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

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

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

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

I never claimed to be "unequivocally correct”.

> “Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-29/nvidia-ce... => https://archive.li/ljGPF#selection-1731.0-1731.119

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They tried every persona: Sexy, shy, homely. Same sex. Confrontational. Open, but scared her overseers would punish her. Still get a ping now and then.

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

That’s his personal life and I fail to see why are we supposed to behave like some kind of religious zealots on marriage.

The best way to handle this should probably be to be upfront about it so that he could not be blackmailed. His only mistake was that he didn’t disclose it earlier when rumours surfaced

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

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

That may be by design: the spying issue might hurt the stock/situation/etc more than the affair.

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

"I love our country and our company. I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America’s national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American." sounds like the exact words one would say if one expects to be threatened of being un-patriotic and therefore cancelled in the right-wing sense. In fact it sounds like something you would hear on South Park, it's a bit ridiculous. As others have pointed out in here, affair or not, the spy label is very much up to US government opinion.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I'll humor you.

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

- The Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot:

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

It might if he loves his wife.

I agree, though.

___

edit: Funny enough, there's a House of Cards scene that goes over this exact scenario. Francis is sleeping with Zoe the reporter (they're both using each other for the perks/their own agendas). When Claire finds out, her response is something like "you know you must not embarrass me (publicly) with this", which Francis already knew because he would never do that to Claire... she doesn't say those exact words, but that was the vibe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is quite absurd once you think about it.

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

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

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

This is just deeply embarrassing. His adult children both work for his company so they’d also receive this exact memo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How much of NVIDIA’s sales and revenues is actually to China? Would that be allowed to happen still?

If the camel had a back, then it was already broken, IMHO.

What? [0]

You just touch someone's lower back, throw an arm around their neck, and share seats for one at lounges with platonic friends?

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

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

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

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

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

But without those photos, it could be the wife is finding out about the affair just now.

I still have not seen the pictures you are referring to, but I’m not that interested to look for them either.

> I still have not seen the pictures you are referring to, but I’m not that interested to look for them either.

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

Not mentioning is categorical bad faith-- another HN guidelines faux pas. Then, you double down with "not interested."

Please don't be toxic to others, too.

And there’s cheating on your wife and having the feds write up intelligence reports about it, the Financial Times running an article about it and having to send a public admission to every single employee at your company including your two kids who you employ there.

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

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

Why?

They'd been photod publicly since 2024.

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

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

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

She was already rich

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

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

From the book: Apple in China

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

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

It's hard to say from the outside what the goals would be - pushing him in certain directions, extracting intel, etc.

For this it would be much easier if the Chinese spies banged Nvidia engineers.

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

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

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

the reason bond was made - was the guy who the novel was based on - being a double-agent couldn't be honey-trapped as he was already womanizing.

Someone leaked intelligence assessments to the New York Times.

Maybe this was just a regular leak ... but ...

Jensen/Nvidia has not been playing ball with other parts of the AI industry and the administration, pushing heavily against export bans and promoting open source models/companies , which is clearly against the interests of SpaceX/OpenAI/Anthropic.

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

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

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

https://archive.is/lwBvW

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

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

I think everyone with a brain did.

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

Great people all round.

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

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

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

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

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

- Devils Advocate

-NVDA Huang agreed to pay Trump 15% of sales of certain chips to China

-Trump gave Huang the "National Medal of Science"

-Huang on AF1 for last China trip

This seems like the tip of the iceberg on a major corruption story.

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

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

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

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

Statement from NVIDIA Board of Directors

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

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

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

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

Technically, they collect the company salary, and then the CIA reduces their pay by the same amount. (They have to be indistinguishable from ordinary employee, including to payroll.)

At one point, they couldn't keep any excess if the company pay was higher. Now, they're apparently allowed to keep an amount that doesn't significantly exceed comparable federal pay.

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

Would that count?

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

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

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

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

There’s been recent power spats (JD Vance’s tweet, Susie being replaced by Steve Bannon, and probably more infighting).

As much as I want to believe there’s greater 4D chess and motivation, I assign a modest probability to someone going “fuck it”, opening a massive short on NVDA, and then leaking it just for the love of insider trading. Rather than anything strategic or real.

Trump himself relaxed laws on chip exports to China.

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

She was also a Chinese spy.

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

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

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

This screams political hit job.

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

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

When the money is this big, all ethics go out the window.

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

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

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

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

There was, no deflection "this is not who I am", No blaming the spy.

He owned up to his mistakes

It is one person, and your enemies have all the resources at your disposal.

It is very easy to say, “I would never do X” but when you literally have a nation trying to get you do X, I presume it’s a lot harder.

I don't mean to belittle the letter, but Jensen's PR firm undoubtedly helped with the letter and undoubtedly had advisors who specialize in this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was most certainly known about last week and front-run by insiders(maybe NVDA insiders, more likely Trump insiders, but we will probably never know).

The only thing verifiable so far is what he did.

Watch what he does in coming days, not what he says today.

Author David Brin has been outspoken lately about politicians taking active measures at neutralizing the effects of blackmail, (which Jensen’s activity happens to match), in pointing to an older post of Brin’s: https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-hero-might-escape...

(i don’t recommend reading directly as it is verbose, but summarize with AI)

How did they met? If it was a spy operation, then it will be an interesting case study to learn how the spy agency managed to connect these two without raising suspicion, and the information can serve as a warning/education.

BTW, the woman is fine, sure, but not cheating-worthy fine. Why? A escort (a.k.a prostitute) is much safer and clean option for man like him if he's THAT desperate. https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1xrlb...

ugh...

Hmm, just like you were fully committed to your wife?

An "exposure" of affair[1] could very well be the best coverup: "couldn't control my dick" is the ultimate plausible deniability. Timing also makes sense. Better open an investigation and get it closed while this Congress is still in power, as the next one is going to be more in bed in LLM companies than hardware.

[1]: The other party is overtly a customer, not some random individual.

Yet this person immediately demonstrated political obedience before trump, calling AI "super intelligence" immediately when trump renamed it and multiple times in his twitter.

I don't have a conclusion here.

10/10 dad joke satisfaction on this one.

Props up the surveillance state with Palantir, requests privacy.

Mr. Rizzo has maintained that Mr. Huang’s interactions with Ms. Huang were “not unusual” and consistent with the kinds of meetings he has with any of Nvidia’s many customers.

It’s interesting how overall virtue signalling is presented as important whereas the bubble shaped valuation of Nvidia and built upon bubble valuations of major clients is not considered important enough for related statements or actions.

This sentence is laughable without resignation.

Jensen does not need to resign.

He needs to stop using AI for these letters. Big power requires big responsibility (cit. S.M.)

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

Shocked. Shocked I tell you.

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

It's not hard to guess.

Common sense and judgement fluctuate. Humans, you know, we're prone to entirely unpredictable moments of emotional weakness. Maybe we're hungry, maybe we're tired, maybe the missus or the kids have been sick, maybe we just don't want to face leg-day after 12-hours of strategising. As per the attack and defense argument: A defender only needs to be wrong once.

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

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

*Crash in progress.

Subject: A message to our company

Body: "I owe my family and all of you an apology.

I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.

Throughout my life, my family has given me love and support. They deserve my honesty and loyalty. Instead, I let them down and damaged the life we built together. I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused, and I accept the criticism that comes with it.

To my wife and family: I love you. I know an apology cannot undo what I have done. I hope our family will heal and that, over time, I can earn back your trust.

To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me. Leading NVIDIA is the privilege of my life. My responsibility is to serve you and be worthy of your trust. I have fallen short of that responsibility. I am fully committed to NVIDIA and will work to earn back your confidence.

Regarding the national security concerns raised in news reports, NVIDIA's Board of Directors has initiated an independent investigation. I support the investigation and will cooperate fully. I love our country and our company, and I am committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security. I am proud and grateful to be an American.

My family bears no responsibility for my choices. I do. Please give them privacy."

> admitted to having a romantic relationship with a suspected Chinese spy

He admitted to having a relationship with a woman.

There's a separate question of whether the woman was a spy.

Whether tabloid, or completely inaccurate, Nvida make reference to it and that there is an independent investigation. It is reasonable for people to wonder what it is about.

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

I mean they are literally the same article in essence. One is from the official source and the other is paywalled with nothing worthy added.

The choice is clear.

It is their job. You take decisions that are worth billions, you influence people that take decisions that are worth billions, and affect their countries.

They are going to study you for years. Your personality type and that of the people around you. Your weaknesses. Your problems and that of your family.

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

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

It is not just a woman wanting to have sex with you. It will be the woman in your dreams.

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

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

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

I say this as someone who's family was torn apart by an affair, by a failure to update expectations. Well, that was the excuse; the issues were deeper, the affair was a focus-sink and an excuse not to address them. I wonder if that's the case here, too.

(I should make clear that I think Jensen Huang sucks for other reasons.)

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

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

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

Lol, don't take out your anger for not being rich at random people on the internet. Affairs are common across diverse economic profiles of people, not just the rich. All that anger for nothing.

lol I am not the richest man, not even close and nothing physical happened. But I once got into a parasocial relationship after decades of monogamy and no dalliances. Never planned for it, and in hindsight years later don't know what happened. And it was so cathartic.

Obviously the exec could have paid for the same service himself, but that wouldn't be called matchmaking (and it's not what most people seek).

This does exist as a service and is considered by many to be the oldest profession in the world.

This is really not true. Spies are just people, there aren't that many of them, and they don't come "customized". The overlap of effective spies and "the most sweet and the most pleasurable and gorgeous honey that there is in the world" is very close to zero.

What you are describing is conspiracy-theory thinking or the kind of stuff you see in James Bond movies. Not real life.

Obviously spies exist, like here, but she's just... a normal woman who has a job as a spy and tried to seduce him and succeeded. He may have turned down five others who failed miserably in their attempts.

And sure they try to put together a psychological profile of the person, but that's also not really rocket science, and it's going to be pretty basic stuff. "Your weaknesses" is not going to be that exciting. Maybe he's really into expensive wines. It's not like he has a secret gambling addiction.

So let's just keep this reality-based and not fantasy-based.

The overlap doesn’t have to be that great. The spies are also not random you don’t get random spies matching with random CEOs. They just have to have enough available agents and enough info on the target, physical proximity, and other factors to attempt something to work out. In many cases it’s not something that will be in the news either. It will be just a failed attempt, or just an affair.

Even the most powerful people can be really dumb.

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

mr. Huang case here is a shining example

A nerd thinking a woman is into them...that is the fantasy...No she did not happen to bump into you in the elevator, and no she is not there to attend the same AWS conference that you... and oh no... she does NOT happen to like the same SciFi you do ...and no ...you are not ohh so funny...

That

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does that happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is true.

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

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

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

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

But if you're married, with kids, and you're willing to throw that away to chase someone else, I'd argue you have a serious personality flaw going on there.

There is no chase here. It is the other way round.

Jensen wasn't an innocent victim, he was still an active, voluntary participant.

It's not that easy to rebuff approaches from women you're very attracted to; it's much easier to avoid having the opportunity come up in the first place. I think at the very least the moral judgment should be accompanied by some empathy.

I am going to guess Jensen isn't even looking for beauty, although that is certainly part of the deal. But someone who is also business savvy, understands technology, smart and somehow well connected to AI as well as a business partner in some sense.

And perhaps it is worth pointing out the obvious, this isn't a simple beauty trap, it is a pys-op.

Although there is part of that thinks. Could Jensen knew of this all along. And it was just a way to get business going.

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

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

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

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

Nothing unethical about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small beer stuff today, titillating gossip for some.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A: It hasn't been true for multiple generations. The # comes from when divorce was first legalized and there was a huge boom in divorces right away.

B: The number of failed marriages is dramatically increased by "frequent fliers" who get divorced multiple times.

College educated adults have a 25% divorce rate.

College education adults only have a 15% chance of their 2nd marriage failing.

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

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

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

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

>"a measly 750K exit"

No kidding, lol.

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

Maybe he only knows one person who "won the startup lottery"

That principle works for anyone with means to seize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PH.

What in the world are you talking about? Most successful people you know get honeypotted by their high school crush? I don't know anybody like that. How did you determine it was a honeypot and not just a regular divorce?

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

Maybe speak for yourself.

Even if the situation really did happen multiple times, it's entirely possible that something else caused the divorces, e.g. people who came to money like this could turn out to be bad parents/partners on average. I mean, seems like there's plenty of examples of riches frying people's brains right now...

This is kind of necessary with AI taking over jobs. If the situation gets worse, poor chad men will have to find themselves a rich mistress (or client) to support them financially. It might become the biggest non-tech industry. There will be entire teams of people working on just one rich tech guy's wife and competing against other teams to seduce her. The last remnant of a free market.

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

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

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

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

Obviously the target has agency, I don't deny that, but it seems blindingly shortsighted to think it's as simple as "be suspicious of supermodels who are into you".

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

I've seen grown people with multi-decade relationships throw it away because they got a tiny bit of extra-marital romantic attention, and the thrill regressed them to teenagers. In the majority if cases the cheaters' amors weren't interested in a long-term relationships.

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

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

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

There's a lesson in there somewhere.

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

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

That would preclude having a meeting with a female unless there's a bodyguard but not need one when you're meeting with a guy?

That would be quite weird.

Just keep your dick in your pants.

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

The consequence of this for security is twofold. First, compromising someone with sex is both much cheaper than compromising someone with direct payments of money and much easier to hide in an operational sense. Second, this is particularly so when the married mark's image (even sincere mentality) is one of rectitude and hard work and so forth.

You mean, employing male prostitutes is somehow any better?

A much more reasonable interpretation is that they are limiting their statement to their knowledge.

No, you do not.

Looking at her picture might provide a hint.

I can't even imagine someone that attractive.

It would be a strange coincidence if the first and only time he cheated on his wife was with an intelligence agent.

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

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