alt Hacker NewsPeople arguing the technical and business merits of what Jensen brought to the company aren't getting how serious these allegations against him are.
The US Government is using NVIDIA chips for all sort of stuff across all classification levels. Subsequently, Jensen has deep relationships within the government that warrants additional scrutiny.
Him authorizing his company to sell massive amounts of chips to a restricted country is massively illegal, but companies work around that and have since forever. Doesn't make it less illegal, but that's only a small part of the problem.
The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
It's really about fairness. Us technical salespeople take training that tells us all of the ways that deals with restricted countries happen and how we will immediately get fired ten ways to Sunday if we forego that to close quota. Also, normies with clearances tell their partners stuff they shouldn't. Stuff they think isn't really sensitive since it seems so minute. This isn't bad until said partner spills at the wrong place and wrong time. That's how normies get sent to prison for treason. Loose lips sink ships and all that. [^0]
Getting fired -- WHICH HE ABSOLUTELY SHOULD BE -- is the least of his problems.
[^0] Examples:
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/article/retired-us-army-officer.... Army officer leaks secrets through dating website to sound cool; gets six years
- https://www.foxnews.com/us/pentagon-leaker-jack-teixeira-rec.... Leaked secrets about Ukraine war through Discord to sound cool; gets 15 years
- https://www.westernjournal.com/ex-cia-officer-accused-leakin.... CIA officer leaks stuff to journalist girlfriend; gets 10 years
Replies
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Why? If he's that important then our own intelligence community ought to be doing stuff to fight espionage - doing counterintelligence, generally just making sure he's ok and providing support to him, etc. This is not some random guy. Did we just forget to do that?
If we're not doing that, then are foreign countries just after all of our important people? Forget sexpionage - what about hacking their computers? Do we have zero ability to combat any of this, whereas other countries can do whatever they want?
The relationship has been to a degree known to even the public for years, it's extremely unlikely that intelligence services didn't know about it until now and that they'd permit it if they'd consider it a possibility that Jensen could leak any important IP
Yes. A lot of folks on here were initially thinking the issue with the Chinese spy was a sort of “oh funny how silly” type issue. For someone in his position with Nvidia a strategically important company for the US that’s a grave error of judgment. Add then yesterday revelations of additional indiscretions and this suddenly a growing pattern of incredibly poor judgement.
It appears almost certain now that he’s finished. The lack of any succession planning (which also is too looks like more poor judgment) appears to be the only thing now slowing down his removal by the board.
But this is not the domain of the board, is it? Whether he put the national security at risk is up to US Government to decide. The moral side of the question is for the people involved to decide. For the board to decide is the company will be better off w/o him.
On the contrary, the allegations are tabloid level nonsense. Jensen does not even posses any "sensitive info". He is just a ceo for a company that designs chips, something China has no trouble doings. What China lacks is the manufacturing knowhow of the most advanced lithography machines which will also allow them to manufacture the most advanced chips locally. Huang however does not have a single clue about that chip manufacturing.
The amount of times the word “allegation” and “suspicion” and the way this soap opera is flowing around screams that its all smokescreen. We don’t even know if this women was a spy… even that is an “allegation”.
The facts are very scarce and yet this has been blown out of proportion.
Maybe I am wrong :-) time will tell.
Nah.
if you fire him, he can go work for China. Or he’ll go work for Elon. I just have this feeling you aren’t explicit with your implicit motive.
> The real problem is that nobody knows how much sensitive info Jensen gave this woman or how far that info spread.
Non-American here. Isn’t it your goverment’s/CIA’s job to detect Chinese agents and conduct counter-intelligence. Individuals (CEO or not) can’t do that. I heard that they already knew for a long time (as they must have). Then this becomes a hit job with political/business motivations rather than a serious national security issue as promoted to the public. Why don’t you all talk that obvious angle instead? 50s Red Scare rhetorics or a 70s James Bond narrative is politically more appealing I guess.
But we live in 2020s. We live under constant surveillance today. All national secrets are in digital environment (not on a microfilm in a CEOs leather jacket). Also Chinese spies, who require a visa to enter US, can be easily tracked the moment they get in touch with any VIP.
And for the sexual/marriage life of individuals, suddenly everyone goes back to 50s standards. (Note: This is extra interesting because I heard there is a “sex cult” attracting high profile AI engineers in SV. And everyone seems ok with it. But that’s probably another honeypot operation.)
They guy has been running Nvidia for over 30 years and has billions of dollars - what would make him want to sell out to China? What possibly could they offer him? You actually think she was like, "if you tell me secrets then I'll sleep with you"
A lot of people with ulterior motives want to throw him under the bus, don't buy into those narratives so easily. Use some common sense first.
What's so magical about selling to the USG that it should create some sort of obligation on the part of a civilian CEO?
Remember, Huang isn't an army officer, or someone in intelligence working at the Pentagon, or a CIA officer.
Surely he gets to do what he likes. You are not at war with China. Treason is not relevant here, nor are graphics cards some sort of ultra-secret domain. What NVIDIA does is easy, it's just that the package is not so easy to reproduce, what with it having many aspects, from software to chips and fast interconnect.
One thing is the China question. Another thing is the question of open source AI.
The latter is a question of how centralized modern AI-based computing is. And to me that is almost a fight between good and evil.
A marriage between an Anthropic/OpenAI duopoly and the national security establishment is a marriage made in hell.
The claim that he sold massive amounts of chips to a restricted country as being "massively illegal" is absolutely false.
NVIDIA is licensed by the United States government to sell GPUs to China, and they do so at a rate well under their licensed quantity.
Read up on 91 CFR 1684 which directly contradicts your claims.
Your most important argument is categorically false and completely unresearched.
Your subsequent claims also have no basis: you cite a bunch of cases in which people leaked sensitive information as equivalent to the Jensen case, where the affair was with the CEO of a customer they were legally selling product to, and where we have no evidence that any leaks occurred.