When Cambridge Analytica happened, no one kicked Mark out of Facebook/Meta.
Not making excuses for Jensen, at his status and power level, this stuff goes with the territory. But I cant help but see a double standard here.
When Cambridge Analytica happened, no one kicked Mark out of Facebook/Meta.
Not making excuses for Jensen, at his status and power level, this stuff goes with the territory. But I cant help but see a double standard here.
Jensen messed up by splitting the power between all board members equally, and not getting a bunch of his family on a board.
The lesson is that if you do the right, non-authoritarian thing, you get punished
The comparison was drawn because when you are such a position of power, your actions have such a monumental sway. Thousands, millions of people’s of lives are impacted, for better or for worse. In Jensen’s case, that’s up to the court of public opinion.
However the thinking is that when you are in that position, a just and fair society would probably want to keep just and fair and morally tact people in those positions.
IMHO I don’t care what way you want to spin it, when you have that level of influence over one of the major drivers of the AI boom, you have INCREDIBLE power compared to what most people think of when you say “private citizen”.
My buddies and I were just talking about how Jensen is probably one of the MOST liked amongst all the leading big tech CEO/Owners. I feel like the amount of grace this thread is giving him is proof of that.
I don’t understand how that’s comparable to the perception of Musk.
Are you sure you are not over reacting?
These tech CEOs hold a lot of influence and power. Thus they hold a lot of responsibility and must be held accountable. Point blank.
How did they get that tax money? Why do you think that should give anyone an ownership stake?
Do you think buying a McDonald’s hamburger should grant you partial control of McDonald’s?
The man is smart enough to know he was playing with fire, and he got burned. The literal definition of FAFO.
The thing he did that was actually wrong was that the NVIDIA executive he was in a sexual relationship with was herself married. That is actually wrong, that’s not “playing with fire”, that’s simply wrong.
And just to be clear in practice, stocks are not priced based on their voting rights but rather expectations of their future cash flows (dividends) or simply how much the stock is expected to go up or down by. A lot of modern financial activity is nonsense.
If you really want to actually understand what a company is you should go look up when corporations became a thing and why. It had to do with various legal protections to stimulate economic activity and tax revenues.
All of these modern notions and principles that you’re invoking or basing your arguments on about ownership are most likely just contrived nonsense. These aren’t necessarily eternal principles of anything.
Is it my view that Meta has engaged in a sustained course of unlawful conduct that persists despite the judgements the law has already applied, and will persist into the future. As a corporation who is consistently in court, and based in Delaware, it surely seems to me the bar has been passed -- the AG of the state would be well within their rights to revoke their charter. Meta's entire basis of being at this point is to control public discourse. That's direct harm to the state and the public at large.
What happens to their assets afterwards is a job for the courts. Applying existing law is "retroactive authoritarian". Pfft, please. Ignorance of the law is not a defense against it.
What is the actual value add of a “board of directors” except to basically be weak willed PMC/non founder-type people with a lot to lose reputationally and financially who can be cowed and/or blackmailed very easily.
The typical person on the board of a public company would fold to pressure as soon as they saw a NY Times reporter called their phone.
So this just proves my point.
Cheating on your wife and betraying your country is the right, non authoritarian thing? We arent having this discussion for any other reason than those two events happening. Its an insane lens of entitlement to view the situation as if he should indefinitely retain ownership due to ... what? Existing? But never have any of his actions have consequences. That's the promise you make by positioning the board shares in that manner: you promise to have accountability. Finding it a weakness to answer to others for your actions is definitely a popular style of thinking amongst the current group of wanna-be authoritarians in the presidential cabinet, "strange" how your first two examples of CEOs unwaveringly align with that political faction huh?
If you are competing in a neoliberal environment where other companies play by these rules, you are at a disadvantage if you are following some superset of them.
I am not saying that he has done 100% right things, I am just saying that if he set himself up in the same way as his competitors, he would have been fine. Maybe he would have to pay some fine/bribe, similar to what the prior 2 have done for their infractions against the people.
You don't have to agree with leftists but ignoring the premise just lets you talk past the point.
Jensen chose to set up his company in such a way that he had to follow a superset of the rules that his competitors did. My point is that was a competitive advantage; even though it unmade him, that superset was a necessary tradeoff to be the head of a $4T company. We can see this because those other companies have started to be held financially accountable; the same lack of accountability that lets those leaders get away with affairs also lets them “get away with” withholding evidence (and the resulting $243M punitive damages). Unaccountable power (which is what parent is arguing for) is brittle and fragile.
Alphabet is $3.6T, Meta is $1.6T, X+SpaceX+Tesla is $3.6T. All of these companies are doing just as well despite their CEO monopolist setup.
The legal infractions, also known as cost of business, is a part of the calculation, and are usually too small to be meaningful. Meta's last New Mexico lawsuit essentially managed to get flipped into a requirement for producing ID upon registration to the platform in order to "protect the kids", as well as the amount to pay currently being pushed down by pouring money on the lawyers. This is something that was really hard to push on the public before due to privacy concerns, and now yields an even better tool for mapping, control and harvesting of behavioural surplus. Again, cost of business to consolidate power.
If Jensen had had this structure, gotten some lawyers together and thought a little, they would most likely, as all the other big tech corps have, have been able to twist and turn this in a similar way.
you have to be jesting to use this term in the board of directors of one of the most expensive corporations out there
Shareholders don't care that he's having sex outside his marriage.
As a shareholder, I care.
> That only increased shareholder profits.
False, because:
> It is the US govt that should care about this.
The US government does care about NVIDIA breaking some very serious laws, and for that reason it is not good for shareholder profits.
Second, there is no proof that any moral standard is being applied at all. This could (and in my opinion likely) have nothing to do with a moral standard and more to do with extenuating information uncovered in the investigation or a strategic shift to protect against the current admin. There is likely so much happening behind the scenes and so many people have so much money to lose, I think it’s prudent for us to first exhaust all non-moral possibilities (unfortunately).
In my eyes, this all comes down to the perception that someone is able to be compromised by non-monogamy. Jensen came out, apologized to his wife, and (at least publicly) communicated that he broke the expectations and boundaries of their relationship. This clearly communicated that a secret relationship compromises his position. And, should there be more secret relationships they'd continue to be used as leverage.
Musk isn't subject to this leverage because it's pretty clear that his relationships are not built on traditional definitions. Non-monogamy is either a clearly defined boundary in his relationship or simply not something that concerns him as leverage.
The biggest questions are:
1. Did Jensen knowingly compromise national security (criminal implications) 2. What is the fallout / impact in the AI arms race
Elon’s comparable fuck-up was betraying Ukraine with his Starlink intervention. It’s a huge deal. Unlike Nvidia, he has no Board to hold him accountable, it will have to be done by the Congress and states. (Europe will be useless as usual.)
As a result, that hammer will fall much more directly on his companies. It will just take more time to do so.
Zuckerberg, to my knowledge, hasn’t compromised American security in a comparable way to these two.
I had this exact conversation about Jensen with a Silicon Valley executive checks notes on Monday night.
There is a bubble that doesn’t seem to see the wave of contempt across the American political spectrum for these executives.
Or if they do see it they don't care. This bubble is convinced they are untouchable
If this were just the elites being out of touch, that would be one thing. It's more. There are rafts of folks–you can see them on here–who are convinced the only reason Jensen could be facing any wrath right now is because of a hare-brained conspiracy. This is honestly-felt fandom bordering on zeal.
You're saying Musk didn't know Ukraine was using these terminals for war, including air defenses, for the last few years? Despite constantly tweeting about it? And doesn't know that's what they're being used for now? What?
The best evidence for this being more ketamine nonsense is that Musk initially lied about the cut-off having been Trump's decision. Unfortunately, this time his actions may have crossed into treason–when he did this, he gave aid and comfort to an ally of a country America was at war with (Iran).
And considering Trump is aiding Putin who aids Iran, I don’t think Elon will face any consequences regardless of the truth.
I don't. Musk himself conceded and gave the B.S. about ToS violations.
In any case, sure, he can say it actually wasn't him under oath. Burn that pardon.
> considering Trump is aiding Putin who aids Iran
Trump is the President. Musk is a private citizen.
> don’t think Elon will face any consequences regardless of the truth
I had this exact conversation with a Silicon Valley executive about Jensen Huang on Monday. There is a blind spot in Silicon Valley about the fury aimed at tech executives from across the political spectrum.
The fact that a bunch of people are publicly tweeting that this was a mistake shows just how clueless our cadre of SV elites are.
Never said anything close to that.
I think it's horrible. And it's an issue that's gotten multiple Fortune 100 CEOs fired [1]. It's categorically distinct from corruption and compromise of national-security laws.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/12/business/nvidia-jensen-hu...
Certainly feels to me like compromising American security
Actually, problems where the ownership structure causes CEOs to be removed have been happening over the past 10 years or so.
For example: OpenAI's Altman, Musk, and so on.
Therefore, the ownership structure of Musk's new company SpaceX, which allows him to keep the company firmly under his control, is a very smart approach.
I think a large portion of new companies in the future will become like this.
Corporate governance was apparently not a strength of Mr Huang.
the board must know that the risk of Jensen staying on (likely due to whatever hasn't yet been brought to light) is greater than the risk of instability by firing him; whatever is unknown to us must be pretty serious (again, not in terms of more affairs, but other stuff, like selling chips to China or whatever)
Meta's board probably would have fired Zuck over the CA scandal but they were unable to because of the company structure
That's not certain. I tend to agree with you, but it is possible that the concern is for the effect on the employees. Especially the 2nd known affair is a violation of HR rules that are supposed to apply to everyone, and it's hard to argue that when you don't apply them to your CEO. By itself, I'm highly doubtful it would be enough (you can slap him on the wrist or something), but the effect on morale and company culture is a much larger concern. If people lose confidence in the company, they're more likely to jump ship, so you pay them more. And if investors lose confidence over any of this, then that's a much bigger and more expensive problem. There's a moral standard behind these types of things, even if it doesn't directly matter.
What we don't know and what really happened at the emergency board meeting are probably the key here. I'm sure there's plenty more going on that we can't see. More affairs are obviously possible, which is kind of meh until you find out who they were with and what deals they were part of.
It's even possible that Huang made the call -- it's not like he's going to escape public shaming at this point, and depending on his calculations of the repercussions, he could easily have tens of billions of dollars riding on this. He is clearly good at taking actions that maximize the market value of his company -- might this be another such action? Our armchairs aren't the best perspective from which to evaluate that.
Government could hold him accountable, and some of those gears have been turning over the last decade. In response he has spent a lot of money trying to steer elections and gain the influence of the ones in power to try to avoid accountability from that direction as well.
The double standard is that if you play capitalism well enough you are shielded from the consequences that others would face.
What kind of a shill are you exactly? U post a lot about China
Yes Elon and Zuck are abhorrent, but when they have tried to break the law, they have been held accountable in some sense. Not to the extent that they deserve it, but still.
If they become as big a libility to their businesses, even their controling shares won't save them
There’s no actual evidence that Huang broke a national security law. Even if there is, we need the federal prosecutors to say so rather than random commentators on the internet. Even when prosecutors say so in this country we presume people to be innocent until proven by court to be guilty. I have personally looked into the rumors and I don’t believe Huang broke any law.
All the while the controversy is a liability.
shocking illegal behavior? Buying votes in an election with his 1 million per day republican votes lottery.
The list is large and clearly Elon has been much more damaging to the public than Jensen but he has spent much more to be close to politicians so no consequences for him.