Yeah, I was disappointed too. I think there's an increasingly large part of HN that mostly just wants to get (or confirm) a simple 'black hat' / 'white hat' morality tale and then move on. Really understanding nuance is hard and when all the hats are varying shades of gray, it's a lot more work for an unsatisfying outcome.

And this mess around export controls on GPUs is an especially confusing and conflicted situation with layers on layers. Since posting that I've been reading and cross-reference papers written over the past year by foreign policy and trade analysts and gained a lot more detail and insight on the dynamics. The one thing in my post above I now know was incomplete is the part about NV banning Megaspeed (MS). It's true they did but there was an exception (the "Affiliates Rule") enacted by a one-year waiver on 9/30/25 which expired on 11/1/26. But the U.S. extended it for two more months three days ago. That waiver permitted NV to keep selling to Megaspeed affiliates. That exception was not a mistake. So NV blocked MS but the rules allowed them to legally keep selling to MS affiliates - and they did (and probably still are). With the full knowledge and approval of the US Govt.

That seemed crazy to me but it got clearer once I understood how the US government is split on this issue. The Commerce Dept, White House trade policy desks and external advisors are aligned on one side and State, Treasury and Defense Depts on the other. The forcing function for why the leaks of ~6 month-old intel about Jensen happened now, is the H200 waiver extension and the Trump–Xi summit in Shenzhen on November 18 where the U.S. and China will negotiate whether to extend that waiver after January.

The Commerce Dept side wants to include extending the waiver as possibly 'negotiable', if China is willing to give enough value for it (like rare earth metals and major trade concessions, limiting oil purchases from Iran, etc). The State/Defense side wants it 'non-negotiable' for any price. NVidia's interests are obviously aligned with the Commerce Dept/trade policy desk faction and Jensen's personal relationship with, and ability to potentially sway, Trump was a wildcard variable. The leaks have taken Jensen off the board before the negotiation. I actually hate how much this sounds like a 'crazy uncle' conspiracy theory but serious policy and trade analysts all agree this is the basic dynamic that's been unfolding over the last year. Just ask your favorite LLM to give you a list of links on this and look for yourself. It's really complicated but my takeaway is no one related to this mess looks remotely good. The perverse thing is I'm still pretty sure NVidia fully complied with every rule and reg. Yet thousands of GPUs were diverted because the regs were designed to be swiss cheese-like and then got waivered on top of that. NVidia made billions but that was intended to happen and explicitly made legal.

[Edit to add: ... and WSJ just posted 3 mins ago that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is "Fighting for His Job Due to Blame for NVidia Fallout", so looks like the leaks not only took Jensen off the board but now the leakers are trying take down Lutnick too. No way the B200 waiver extension happens now. Marco Rubio's gotta be dancing on his desk. God, this really should be a movie someday. ]