Incredibly sad and demoralizing to see the rationalizations and excuses people are making for this behavior in the comments here (or for the likely lack of professional consequences). But I guess these are the times in which we live.
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.
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".
Yes, in many places, absolutely. Bad decisions in your personal live suggest bad decisions in your professional life.
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?
But that's ironically a non issue now that's it's front page press...lol.
It's a bit like celebrities who release embarassing photos themselves, to bypass hackers leaking them. (To be clear, I don't think the photos should be out either way, your private matters should stay private, celebrity or not, and it's horrid to have it dragged out in public. But I do admire the ballsiness in just releasing it themselves. And in this post-modern era, perversely some people seem to benefit from the exposure)
Nowadays, we make them president.
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.
Only juvenile and unimportant people are focused on sex and cheating here. The problem is who he was influenced by and who he went on to influence, whether this relationship was romantic or not. This is a problem of judgement and damage control now.
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.
My opinion is that - particularly with the wisdom of hindsight - it is right to say this is a serious lapse in judgement of Jensen. Especially given the potential security/strategic implications.
However to then make the jump to this saying something about his qualities of leadership is a big leap. His leadership record is exceptional: decades of foresight, strategic risk-taking, and execution. It seems wrong to allow one episode to outweigh three decades of evidence.
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.
> It’s the well-documented bias in which people systematically overestimate how morally they would behave compared with others—especially in high-pressure or ambiguous situations—while underestimating the situational forces that actually shape behavior.
I'm sure we're all paragons of moral virtue here but the reality is that unless you've been personally targeted by a nation state and successfully resisted, then you're really just fantasizing. Yeah bro, I'm sure you would have effortlessly resisted the Chinese sex trap, right after you benched 1000, got that hole in one and beat Hamilton at qualifying. You're just that good.
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.
Because power is an ability to do what one wants, and a lot of people want sex.
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...
Now whether it was directly admitted to is a different thing, versus a nudge nudge wink wink thing....cue British aristocracy.
We might all have our personal views on whether it's right or wrong. Or whether it's sinful, etc. But that's orthogonal to reality.
I mean... seriously, look at literature, look at music... Heck, read the Bible? It's been a feature of all of recorded human history, that people will stray. We are human as they say...
> I mean... seriously, look at literature, look at music... Heck, read the Bible?
You already know what we all think about whether it's right or wrong, you've answered it yourself. I hold that, for most of human history and indeed all of modern history, it is deeply frowned upon.