Hacker News Reader

Comment by stanfordkid | Hacker News Reader

I find the discussion here to be slightly myopic. It is obvious he did something wrong, it is also obvious that members of the government and other actors likely knew about all of this for several years. You aren't the CEO of a trillion dollar company without being under the eye of many people. The real question people should be asking is "why now?" why is the PR spectacle happening at this moment and who is benefitting from supplying the NYTimes with this compromising information.

Obviously we can only come up with conjecture, but it should at least be discussed that this is not happening out of thin air due solely to his reckless actions but represents some kind of hidden power struggle. It's quite clear to me folks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio very likely knew about these things taking place for quite some time.

View on HN

The story was broken by the New York Times. New York Times journalists Tripp Mickle and Ana Swanson got a tip from from "a tech industry contact"[1] in August. They worked sources and investigated until they were ready to break the story in October.

Based on the photos that have been popping up, the tech industry contact could have been any one of the comparatively large number of people in position to observe what was going on.

  [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/10/podcasts/the-daily/nvidia-jensen-huang-affair-chinese-spy-trump.html?showTranscript=1

I don't think it's as simple as an intern that saw them holding hands and blurted it out. That's not how you get this level of detailed and nuanced information: "That revelation came after The New York Times broke the story of how U.S. intelligence officers uncovered what they say was a plot by Alice Huang to use their relationship to funnel information to Beijing."

There is almost certainly some level of coordination between said "intelligence officers" and these reporters to make this a public story. They are choosing to comment and provide details on this particular issue, and they are doing so strategically.

Not to agree or disagree with the comment you’re responding to, but there’s two months of investigation between August and October. The initial tip could have come from anyone, the detailed and nuanced information is what comes from the last two months of investigation.

But absolutely, cui bono is a good question to ask.

Two months with nothing then a "breakthrough"? Or with something but asked to hold? All possible. Don't be naive, The NY Times doesn't operate like some student paper writing everything they see exactly when they see it.

Why this conspiracy take? It’s perfectly reasonable for a respectable news org to dot their t’s and cross their i’s with their lawyers before they come out with the story.

It is plausible that they waited to publish it after the elections. But august vs october imo does not matter, this was a thing for much longer anyway, so the "why now" still stands and refers to when the leak initiated rather than when it was published.

Of course it was not as simple as that. Investigative reporters earn their keep. They spoke to a lot of sources, including sources in US intelligence. But that is not unusual for any important story: people in government like to talk, even those who work in three-letter agencies, for a mix of personal and professional reasons.

Your comment above implies that the answer to "Why now?" is: "Because covert powers so decided." There is nothing in the story that disproves that, but also nothing that requires it. The initial tip could have been ordered from above, but it could just as easily have come from any one of dozens if not hundreds of people, motivated by just about anything: grievance, envy, high-mindedness, malice, vanity.

For something like this, at this level, involving these geopolitical players, you can guarantee that anyone from a 3 letter agency talking to the New York Times is doing so with a specific goal in mind.

Exactly. I mean look at how the Bush administration manufactured consent for the invasion of Iraq via the false WMD claims. These agencies consistently have agendas and narratives they selectively reveal to the press and that shouldn’t be a secret to anyone.

Well at that time it wasn't clear that WMD were non-existent (or they just weren't able to found them).

Iraq gov did everything to make it look like there are: prevented any inspections, blatantly lied to UN etc.

This is akin to "where there's smoke there's fire" (on the level of gossip and hearsay and rumors) except of course for the fact that a war was based on this information, many people died and a country fell into ruin as a result...

It was pretty clear, to both the government with access to the data, and also to a lot of average citizens. It was kind of obvious it was a pretext for a misguided retaliation for 9/11, a wounded Bush admin lashing out, trying to look strong.

Look at leaks at Apple. Some people are holding onto hot information and want to blab. It doesn’t have to be some master plan.

Apple leaks are usually not related to privileged knowledge of national security concerns, for one. Nobody blabs about the next iPhone with the intent of canning executives.

Based on the information so far, it is irrational to say we can guarantee this.

On top of the national security implications, there are credible reports of both export control violations AND political interference with a Commerce Dept investigation into these violations.

If there is anyone talking with a specific goal, it can be as simple as calling out the political interference or trying to warn the public that the administration isn't taking the export ban seriously.

Not all "specific goals" are nefarious or 12-dimensional chess. A lot of people talk to reporters, including at the NYT, because they're genuinely frustrated at not being able to do their jobs.

Aren’t there two “why now?”s here? One is: “Why did someone tip the NYT off?” And the other is: “Why did the US government confirm the spy allegations?”

I don’t think we know that either is even true in the sense that there wasn’t any prior tipping that just didn’t get the follow up. If someone forced me to guess, then: a) there likely where tips before. But b) the Trump government didn’t want that story out there and c) the feeling towards NVIDIA was strictly positive (~the one company earning honest money)

Both b) and c) changed recently. There is much more public opposition to the AI buildout today than even half a year ago and the midterms dealt a significant blow to Silicon Valley’s influence in Washington

But the affair wasn’t particularly private, given the social media posts about their appearances together, was it?

To me, it feels like NYT has a number of armchair moralists and prigs, Paul Graham wrote an essay precisely about this at some point. These prigs are enjoying the limelight now. Was it sponsored by CCP and are these prigs just useful fulls? We'll never know.

https://paulgraham.com/woke.html

Or maybe the NYT learned about the CEO of a critically important company having an affair with a suspected spy, and did what any responsible journalist should feel obliged to do: Publish the news to inform the public of a possible risk to domestic security, and investors of a CEO with piss-poor judgement.

Do you really want to die on the hill that having multiple affairs is not a problem? And that a CEO of that standing shouldn't be thinking with his brain instead of other body parts when a Chinese woman approaches him, even more so when she used to be a state media figure and then suddenly became CEO of a billion dollar AI company?

> people in government like to talk, even those who work in three-letter agencies, for a mix of personal and professional reasons.

People in 3 letter agencies don’t usually risk a lifetime of prison to exchange gossip on an affair.

Once the press has enough information that government employees know a story is coming, they can decide whether and how they want to talk about it.

So the above ambiguity about whether the timing resulted from OSINT and journalism running its course or a leak still stands.

Unless it's authorised

There are tons of examples of just that happening. The most prominent one might be Aldrich Ames, but there's a lot more.

Jensen's conspicuously close relationship and public sightings with Alice Huang were already on the radar of an observant Hindenburg Research-esque short seller firm back in May:

NVIDIA (NVDA): The China Problem

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

It uses careful language to avoid implying/defaming anything that couldn't be supported by publicly verifiable info but clearly found their relationship questionable to say the least.

Any investigative journalist worth their salt would have latched onto that possibly salacious hint and started digging. If anything it's surprising this had been quasi-public for months given the trillions at stake from either side of the trade.

It certainly didn't need a strategic CIA leak or House of Cards style knife in the back to doom Jensen. Embarrassing in retrospect how poorly they concealed it.

I just doesn't get having sex with a Chinese woman laundering chips to China makes him leaking info to China. Those are some serious allegations. I agree that Alice Huang has a relationship with Jansen and Alice is likely secretly getting B300s into China, but the China spy part? And how come sleeping with a spy (assuming she is a spy) unknowingly means he need to be kicked out of the very company he built and grow for 33 years, if some congressman did the same thing with a real spy backed by strong evidences still keep his seat for a few years more. That is just unfair and obviously a political move.

Sleeping with him means having access to his stuff when he is asleep.

That's not a crime for him though.

Yes it is. If you go to court and claim you were tricked by a spy into earning billions of dollars for yourself by overcharging all US business and consumer customers, you are going to jail.

The affair claims and spies don't actually matter. Jensen had nvidia smuggling chips to china. All that matters now is who knew or should have known. It is pretty crazy that the CFO took over when its impossible for a CFO to not know 20% of revenue is coming from smuggling gpus to china.

I don't think ends until the entire c-suite and board are all in jail. If jensen really has 60 direct reports, then we need to get 60 jail cells ready.

People need to stop pretending that the richest and best paid people in these companies have some kind of deniability, they do not.

So? Every henchman of our 100 person software shop has their laptop encrypted, do you think Huang carries NVIDIA trade secrets on a note in his wallet?

Perhaps you are simply not very imaginative, but there are multiple ways to turn sexual access into something more...

Spying being the operative word, it's very easy e.g. to plant listening devices, or drugs, or threaten with blackmail...

The affair or affiars are likely not real. Just a cover for his smuggling activities. People need to come to terms with jensen being a chinese spy.

The entire country of taiwan is at risk due to jensen. He sold out taiwan and the US to china.

It might not be that. Nvidia donated $25M to Trump’s ballroom and $1M to his inauguration fund.

The administration could be complicit in treason, if substantiated by evidence in a court.

I don't think it's been alleged that he has been deliberately leaking info to China. But making decisions for the benefit of a single customer acting as a Chinese cutout to circumvent US export rules risks serious legal or reputational damage for Nvidia. And overall means he could be making other decisions not in the interest of Nvidia shareholders while under her influence, consciously or unconsciously.

Nvidia is going to be a political punching bag facing endless subpoenas and hearings because of him. Didn't even have to wait until the new Congress - the lame duck Congress is already getting started so it's not a one sided partisan Republican or Democrat thing either.

Plus, as others have pointed out, the Nvidia board appeared to have been preparing to back him up and ride out the story after his first carefully written apology/statement. But that seemingly changed after news of the second affair broke which means he may not have been candid with them and made the breach of trust unsalvageable. Unfair or fair doesn't really enter into it, it's not his company anymore, he only owns ≈4% of it. Nvidia board/shareholders would have wanted to keep him running things if at all possible given his track record.

Evidently some straw broke the camel's back, but we don't know for certain whatever it's something that's been revealed publicly so far. It's high profile news because of Nvidia's size and prominence in the AI industry but he's far from the only founder to be pushed out of the company they founded because of a personal scandal.

The political argument doesn't really make sense to me considering Trump bent over backwards to defend him, right up until minutes before he resigned. And the admin seemingly avoided intervening for months after it became known to U.S. intelligence, even adding him back to the China trip after he was originally left off the roster.

I mean, did you hear Trump’s statement on 60 Minutes, where he said he called one of the leaders of the big AI companies, and told him he was going to jail? Given the current situation, who else could this apply to?

Things were pretty hostile with Dario there for a minute

Trump going to give him a pardon if he starts to get tangled up with leaking info to China.

Leaking 2 days after election results implies that Democrats will aim to imprison Jensen Huang and Donald Trump. Trump may have influenced DOJ to “look the other way”. The fact that NVIDIA donated heavily to Republicans while Anthropic donated heavily to Democrats is interesting. I see this coming up in the next 6-months in Congressional Hearings and Impeachment efforts.

> how come sleeping with a spy (assuming she is a spy) unknowingly means he need to be kicked out of the very company he built

The board backed him after "sleeping with a spy" came out.

The board did not back him when, days later, "sleeping with a staff member who reports to him" came out.

And a lesson for future founders: never give up control of your company.

Zuckerberg & Musk were more visionary on this front and they can never be fired from the companies they created.

Sure, if you're the kind of guy who sleeps with your subordinates and Chinese spies.

Probably didn't disclose second one so that created a lack of trust or board knows much more.

PS. Not to mention that "sleeping with a customer" is also (beyond her being a honey spook or not ...) against NVIDIA's internal code (for whatever that might be worth ...)

She is a "honey pot" or sometimes you will see "honey trap." "Honey spook" is not a thing

https://www.thoughtco.com/exocentric-compound-words-1690583

You dont think under 3 years of sleeping around the world in different hotels, she did not get to his unlocked laptop?

All this while he was in shower thinking how great life is, and what a stud he looks on a leather jacket?...She must have had all confidential designs for the next 10 years of NVIDIA roadmap including the confidential financial partnerships and circular deals...

While currently living in Beijing, they dont do statues there, but she might get her own photo in the entrance hall of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

> The real question people should be asking is "why now?"

> That's not how you get this level of detailed and nuanced information... There is almost certainly some level of coordination between said "intelligence officers" and these reporters to make this a public story

are you wearing a tinfoil hat right now slash are you familiar with "no true scotsman" fallacy?

I never disputed that it was investigated by the press. I’m disputing that the relationship is simplistic, lacking tit-for-tat. Even the most “experienced journalists” are basically seen as useful idiots when it comes to the world of power. It doesn’t make one a tinfoil hat to acknowledge this.

> Even the most “experienced journalists” are basically seen as useful idiots when it comes to the world of power. It doesn’t make one a tinfoil hat to acknowledge this.

:buddyareyouserious:

The NYT has been infamous for pushing false narratives from government sources for decades. Iraqi WMDs is the famous example, but they've also credulously run plenty during the current wars.

Detailed and nuanced knowledge about swerving the export controls has been available for months. Including short sellers finding Huangs relationship with that "spy" problematic. Reporting suggests Rubio found Nvidia's behaviour problematic, but he couldn't do anything about it.

So you had an "anti" nVidia cohort massing.

I think borrowing costs making build-out unprofitable on paper broke the magic-spell A.I. held over investors.

Now people are willing to listen to the anti-nVidia cohort. Maybe that enabled some schemes, maybe it was just a dam of sentiment collapsing.

This is a Chinese government operation to impede US progress on AI while they catch up.

Its likely the Chinese were using spies to get secrets, blackmail, etc. but it seems less like one grand conspiracy than an opportunistic power grab once the sharks smelled blood in the water, or a confluence of many smaller conspiracies.

Or they just felt their asset was expended and why not get one last bit of value in the process of throwing it away? Though I suppose that could fall into either category, depending how you wanted to look at it.

Impede US progress by smuggling GPUs into China? Isn't the more likely answer that they are business people trying to make money?

> smuggling GPUs into China

the Chinese stopped the leaking faucet in favor of local hardware, these kind of embargo never works anywany, we've seen this with nuclear weapons, how naive would we be to think any different

smartest way would be going for the addiction route and nip the local hardware production, which is harder than it sounds

Possibly. (I wish my) money is on investors high up in the tree earning money off of nvidia and other tech stonks collapsing. It could be both even, what do I know.

China is ousting their own spy? the opposite.

Its an actor that wants to stop the US sending chips to China -- it seems that all this was going on with the knowlegde of high ranking US officials. Now that the story is out, they cant pretend anymore that they dont see it

Also, in August 2025(!), Gamers Nexus released a 3.5h hour long documentation about the NVIDIA GPU black market in China[1]. It's worth a watch.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H3xQaf7BFI

This has been surfaced a lot in the recent discussions and I gave it a go yesterday. This one is so so so good. Not only the black market which I think is totally OK for NVIDIA to do, but the damn guy who soldered more RAM to a 4090. That was worth every second of my time.

Yeah, that was quite impressive!

Perhaps someone decided to leak it to the media now because it became clear that the US government was unwilling to take it seriously, despite the persistent warnings.

Or perhaps it's just the sheer accumulation of chance. The longer it's happening as an open secret that no one wants to talk about, the more likely that someone who thinks it's wrong will find out and speak out.

Yes - the probability of it getting surfaced over time increases. No grand conspiracy is needed.

I'm sure someone has made a lot of money off of it, however.

perhaps... or perhaps not.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/just-coincidence-ro-khan...

(suspiciously timed trades by people close to the fire)

This could likely be the "transition of power" playing out in the US. Jensen presented possibly the easiest target due to his indiscretion and lack of deep connections with the powers to be.

Others like Altman, Ellison et al better fall in line with the new power brokers or some compelling reason for their departure will surface as well.

It looks to be a tough next year for the tech industry (AI in particular) and possibly for your stock options, stocks and 401Ks as well.

I wouldn't be totally shocked if the Chinese themselves gave him up in a long game to start a dialog with the incoming powers. They don't lose much if nVidia gets tangled up and flounders around, they get more time to catch up.

If the Chinese supplied the information, they were likely trying to crash the US markets and economy that are heavily dependent on AI for growth. Nvidia is central to the AI/data center boom. A selloff would be disastrous right now.

I’m sorry but I cannot take this level of conspiratorial thinking seriously.

Jensen lacks connections with the powers that be? He has a close relationship with the Trump administration. Reports are coming out that the administration (via the commerce secretary) knew what was happening and were trying to shield Jensen.

> I wouldn't be totally shocked if the Chinese themselves gave him up in a long game to start a dialog with the incoming powers

So the Chinese government was going to give up the guy who was pro-open weight models and who was likely giving China access to restricted hardware? And he was a sacrificial offering to the blue wave that I guess China new was going to happen but took everyone else even the US by surprise?

It is correct that Jensen appears to not be as closely related to some of the powers that be, consider his position in contrast to others like Elon Musk and being into the Epstein ingroup. In other words, had he shared a more closer connection with some people, he’d have retained his position.

> And he was a sacrificial offering to the blue wave that I guess China new was going to happen but took everyone else even the US by surprise?

A backlash against the "Trump flavor of republican politics" has been brewing for a long time and Trump clearly cares fuck all about it, he even threw oil on the fire by offering a bride to everyone voting republican to keep him and his party at the steering wheel (how crazy is that, for a US president to try bribing the country in order to keep his autocratic style of politics alive and kicking for a while longer, dragging the country even further down with him in the process).

Despite his love-hate relationship with the press, Trump knew that sentiments against him have been building up for a long time now. He's clearly incapable of serious (inter)national politics without making many enemies, left and right.

Trump knew that a crazy nuclear option like this silly bribe would be needed to stem the bleeding from the backlash, even if it was a hail mary that it was going to work (and thankfully it didn't).

Anyone who didn't see this coming was being quite naive.

This is just being obtuse to politics. Musk has children with 50 women and has manipulated US politics on a massive scale. Trump is convicted rapist. The whole WH is taking bribes left and right in exchange for favors. There is a reason Jensen is seemingly the only billionaire or political elite facing any real consequences while his actions are i would say among the least offensive.

Might it be as simple as who made the most money now with shorting Nvidia stock before they step out of a position of power/access to this level of insider info for timing purposes with the change of power with recent election results? I.e. they see the tide is changing, so play this card now while they can still make money...

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/just-coincidence-ro-khan...

You lined statements up but didn't draw a conclusion. Why do you think it happened and what about Marco Rubio? Did he leak it? Is he compromised?

The thing is the spy scandal might not have done anything to Jensen. He submitted an apology and the board was looking into what happened. It wasn't until the second affair came out that the board met to discuss firing him and it was the board that decided it. Jensen resigned which means they fired him. So if the government coordinated leaks on his private life to oust him, they had this intel on him. That means they were watching him and to me that implies something worse than just a power struggle. I am inclined to believe a simpler theory that it came out through investigation and he's apparently scandal prone and if he hadn't had affairs with employees might still be the CEO.

He is of national security interest. They knew.

maybe, but I thought the sources on the NYT article about the second affair were all employees of Nvidia.

The current administration loves Nvidia and Huang. Huang has close ties to the administration, so they chose to ignore the warnings because they didn't want to kill their golden goose. Data centers are very unpopular, but people don't blame Nvidia for them.

It was really just the spy scandal that did him in. Huang was also having an affair with two Nvidia employees, but at least Kimberly Powell was common knowledge at Nvidia. No one cares if the guy cheats, but sleeping with a Chinese spy will destroy trust in the company.

alleged spy

The administration isnt a monolith. Jensen's biographer is in the NYT today saying it was Rubio behind the memo and possibly the leaks because he's a rabid china hawk and for maximum export restrictions.

> He submitted an apology and the board was looking into what happened. It wasn't until the second affair came out that the board met to discuss firing him and it was the board that decided it. Jensen resigned which means they fired him.

Not really because you could also say “He submitted an apology and the board was looking into what happened. It wasnt until they started the investigation that he was forced to resign.”

> The real question people should be asking is "why now?"

It would always be a "why now" situation. No matter when it was disclosed. You can always find how a release like this is correlated with something, eventhough they might just be coincidences.

Moreover, the report by Culper Research apparently discussed these issues back in May.

I know it takes time for stories to pick up steam, but it's 6 months. Why did no one care until now?

Yes the 40 page report has a lot of detail, about chip smuggling, shell companies, and Jensen's relationship with Alice Huang. Six months ago.

Makes the timing of this past week's news (post-midterm) very suspect.

Also, several people high up in the current administration (Lutnick, Trump) knew about this and either did nothing or may have actually blocked progress.

Link: https://culperresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Culper...

To me the timing supports the recent narrative that AI needs to be reigned in.

After all, if the top CEO at AI company can't be trusted, what does it say about all the other AI companies? etc.

There's allegedly disagreement about the trade war within the administration, and this certainly forces a certain direction that creates leverage commensurate with e.g. rare earths in negotiations. If you read recent news carefully there's a thread related to those only a week ago.

Wow, thanks for the link. Crazy that most of this story was known back in May!

- Nvidia was making billions from China even though they claimed they weren't.

- That was done mostly through Alice Huang's Megaspeed company, which claimed to be a non-Chinese company.

- Alice Huang is a Chinese national.

- Megaspeed jump from a $30 million company in 2023 to a $3 billion company in 2024 thanks to a cash infusion from an unnamed source.

- Jensen and Alice were "very close"; Nvidia employees joking that Alice is "actually still our boss."

The main alarming piece that was missing then was the recent leak that Alice Huang is not just a Chinese national, but that she works for or with Chinese intelligence. It's a scandal even without that bit, but that expands it from industrial shell games to a major national security issue.

> the recent leak that Alice Huang is not just a Chinese national, but that she works for or with Chinese intelligence

This was not a 'leak'; it was an allegation made by the NYT which they claimed was based on unnamed sources within USA intelligence agencies. With no evidence provided.

Is discussion of this report mentioned online anywhere (Reddit, this place)? If there is then it would lend more credibility to the claim that this a case of news cycle fashion / capriciousness.

Though the allegations appear founded. I wouldn’t exclude some kind of political power play.

If you’ve read anything on McCarthyism, there’s an history of denouncing foreign ties and sexual immorality for personal gain.

Most likely it's because he pushed back against antropics proposal for GPUs to block inference for unsigned and unregistered models.

Anthropic did what?!

it's satire from The Daily Mao (parody account)

While it is currently satire I wouldn't be surprised at all if LLM model loading eventually evolves into needing some kind of conceptual signature verification and commercial GPUs eventually refusing to load LLM models without said signature verification.

This would in effect be a perverse implementation of something akin to regulatory capture, advancing the agendas of a select number of massive AI companies, at the expense of everyone else.

Some of those AI companies have been screaming doom and gloom in what seems to be an attempt to encourage regulatory capture ("AI is scary, not just anyone should be trusted with that kind of power, but you can trust us, despite our repeated and ongoing fuckups!").

Sam Altman said what

there's motivation from CIA/state in making an example re: protecting america re:

"According to Director Wray, the level of the CCP criminality is so widespread and voluminous that “the FBI is opening a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours and of the nearly 5,000 active FBI counterintelligence cases currently underway across the country, almost half are related to China.”"

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8760...

via https://www.google.com/search?q=ccp+in+the+united+states

Agreed, the focus on Jensen Huang's affairs, even with this Chinese "spy" are just a side show.

The more serious side of this is that NVidia, and specifically (but hardly only) Jensen have been knowingly supplying Megaspeed (and probably many more) Chinese proxy companies with GPUs, presumably well aware that the final customer was China in one form or another, which would be a felony if proved.

The US Commerce dept, and FBI, had been investigating Megaspeed until for unknown reasons (follow the money!) the Justice dept. told the Commerce dept. to stop the investigation. Trump appears friendly with Jensen, and effectively (but not legally) commands the DOJ, so it would not be surprising to find that he is the one who stopped this investigation. Trump had previously arranged for NVidia trade with China as long as the US government got a 15-25% cut, so to him this is all about money not AI or national security strategy.

The timing of this now coming out may be related to the midterms and change in balance of power, and an interesting question is who behind pushing this into the news? One possibility would seem to be the FBI, upset that this investigation had been shut down, realizing that that with the dems controlling the house and senate that Trump would have less ability to control it. The whole "having affair with Chinese spy" angle seems well designed to get media coverage. It's interesting who is behind resurfacing Jensen's multiple affairs with Nvidia staff - did the same party that pushed the Spy/Megaspeed story to this, or is this from people inside NVidia perhaps happy to pile on? Jensen does seem to have run Nvidia as his oen personal fiefdom, installing three family members there in high paid jobs, as well as his employee affairs, and presumably had his enemies there as a result. Jensen's rapid resignation perhaps reflects him realizing that his protection is gone and this is not just a media story that may blow over.

It seems that it's not only Jensen Huang that needs to be (and will be) investigated here, but also NVidia, and the Commerce department, and whoever ordered the investigation shut down.

One interesting practical aspect to this is does NVidia keep supplying GPUs to these Chinese proxy companies in Singapore and elsewhere, or does this now actually get shut down? It's crazy that there are US companies starving for NVidia GPUs while NVidia was preferentially selling them to companies like Megaspeed instead. If this changed, would it end the US GPU shortage?

It may be a power play for the top spot of what's essentially going to be the most valuable company in the AI future

But equally it could be as simple as very elaborate market manipulation (intentional stock tanking) so they can all 'buy low' and make trillions when it goes back up

Certain groups may need that right now given some recent political events... you know to get some money for the next big political event that's due in a couple of years...

> The real question people should be asking is "why now?“

What is special about now than 6 months or an year ago?

Maybe they released it at the end of october to have maximum impact on the midterms from people who can put 2 and 2 together. The scandal can lead to Trump being impeached if it's blown out of proportion.

Or maybe it was in time for Anthropic's IPO and the message is to regulate AI so that only US actors can profit. It's clear that Huang made enemies for being pro open weight models.

Dunno, just speculating.

Democrats have gained power and are about to engage in a protracted colonoscopy whilst asking questions that amount to "Are you a commie?". For a refresher, review the TikTok CEO's hearing.

That was a republican (Tom Cotton) questioning the TikTok CEO.

The most proximate events are the midterm elections and the Anthropic IPO. Maybe start there?

Well 6 months ago there was Iran war. Before than tarrifs and trade wars. Somewhere before that was Deepseek event. In the middle we had export controls on Fable.

You'll always find _something_ significant happening

Check anyone taking large short positions on NVDA.

Follow the shorts…

Exactly what I said! Always follow the money.

"but represents some kind of hidden power struggle."

I think it's likely not.

The thing that is getting him fired is the relations with his staff, not the spy stuff, for which there aren't really specific allegations.

The 'spy' story brought the scrutiny, the scandal is different than the story.

There is likely no 'spy' but just a woman trying to hustle GPUs. These things don't come with 'hard evidence'. So she had 'discussions' with the government? Ok, what was said? Was it even relevant? 'Enough to start a background investigation' is not damning either.

People here have a bad intuition for media whims and narratives. A story can sit in the wide open until there's enough momentum behind it. That draw scrutiny, and if there are more 'juicy things' (infidelity), that gives the story legs.

There are hugely relevant material things going on about 'Epstein' but we only hear about it when the narrative winds blow around it and break the issue through into a contemporary wave.

This is 'media focus lens' as much as anything.

The AI market was crashing already, some big players missed the boat and called in a big favor.

My understanding of the conspiracy theory is that the fingers point towards Anthropic:

- Anthropic is strongly at odds with NVIDIA over their stance on open models, as Jensen is very pro-open-models [0]

- Anthropic could benefit from tanking the NVIDIA stock to have more free capital to invest in their own upcoming IPO

- the NYTimes reporters that broke this story are known to have previously published articles on Anthropic

- the timing after the midterm elections is such that the Republicans (especially Trump himself, who likes Jensen quite a lot) are sufficiently weakened that they cannot protect Jensen or NVIDIA

- Dario has previously had personal anger issues surrounding Jensen and NVIDIA [1]

- it seems plausible that AI (Claude) could have been used to do the extensive research and "dig up dirt" on NVIDIA

But again, this is merely a conspiracy theory. I don't have the evidence to conclusively accuse Anthropic of anything. All I can do is point out a series of coincidences.

[0] https://images.nvidia.com/pdf/Open-Weights-and-American-AI-L...

[1] https://fortune.com/2025/08/01/dario-amodei-outrageous-lie-j...

There are a lot of questions around this resignation, and they're hard to untangle. It'd be something just to figure out what exactly he's supposed to have done wrong. Did he really (on purpose or "inadvertently") pass banned chips to China? All this story's going to leave us with is suspicion and no certainty...

Marco Rubio has always had disdain for Trump, but appeased him to stay in office. He absolutely knew about this because word is coming out that on multiple occasions he and other representatives brought the suspicion about the GPU smuggling to Trump and Lutnick, but they did nothing.

Now that the midterms are over and Republicans don't have a majority, everyone is scrambling to spill the beans on everything to distance themselves from Trump in an attempt to save their careers in politics.

> The real question people should be asking is "why now?" why is the PR spectacle happening at this moment and who is benefitting from supplying the NYTimes with this compromising information.

I would view this as a vague and fairly useless question. Yes, the admin knew about it an year ago, and still nothing happened, and there is no reason to think this would've been out in full force if the NYT article didn't come out. One could ask the same question "why now?" if NYT article came out in March instead of November. The answer might be fairly mundane -- once a 'newsworthy' front page article comes out, everyone wants to run with whatever headline that gets them the most clicks and 'mindshare'. A fancy version of Nightcrawler so to speak.

If past performance is an indication of any competence -- 9/11 prediction, catching Bin Laden, WTC bomber, or even catching the LBNL hacker -- it is quite clear many of these govt agencies are mediocre at best, but they are experts in hiding their incompetence behind the veil of importance such as national security, and furthermore, there are masses of flag-worshipers that cheer them on. In most elite corporate setups, they would be classified as professional bullshit artists by most employees and promoted quickly ;)

Deepseek moment #2. Say goodbye to any future DGX Spark / GB10 successors.

Jensen was on a sovereignty / local crusade for the better part of a year at least:

https://youtu.be/JW5s9Md4U2U

Nvidia will potentially become the new IBM and if it plays out like that let's hope Apple + AMD will (be able to) pick up the ball...

So yeah who is profiting indeed:

https://youtu.be/EowC_gXjpVA

first comment on this hn -> says "obvious" 3 times for things that are obviously not obvious.

bonus: "it's quite clear" for something that is really not clear,"represents some kind of hidden power struggle" and "It's quite clear" for something clearly not clear.

HN=reddit 2.0

Yeah it’s so brutal. I liked HN because folks would consider nuance and think beyond the surface level you get from Reddit.

More bots + people maybe? Dedicated forum sites might be the way to go.

I feel it's very bizarre to call out Rubio in particular, it makes me feel like this comment is astroturfed

Not at all. Rubio specifically oversaw the writing of a state department memo about Huang back at the end of March of this year.

So he's known and this has been working through the State department one way or another for at least a litle over seven months.

Spooks love to talk as much as they like to listen.

Maybe he will end up being Qian Xuesen 2.0

It's Sam Altman. It's always Sam Altman.

But how are we going to even discuss this, in the absence of verifiable information, without degenerating into wild speculation and conspiracy theories?

Maybe the Trump administration is cleaning house in preparation for the coming Congressional investigations, and trying to pin the blame for their treasonous dereliction regarding the chip export controls on Huang?

Perhaps the republicans simply kept this in their back pocket until the democrats took power to pin the blame on them for any resulting turmoil?

Or perhaps it was all inevitable, and those in the know do what they always do when they have a chance to make money?

I mean... we know that Jensen Huang had at least two affairs with subordinates in addition to the spy. There are almost certainly more to the point that at least one of them is so jilted they would be willing to tank the global economy just to get back at him.

It became safer and less likely to be swept under the rug to be a whistleblower about corruption in the last week.

cui bono.

U.S. economy would be the worst affected if the AI bubble pops, yet still they decided to bring down Jensen for some reason. Considering absolutely nothing happened to the children-raping Billionaires, what did Jensen really do and why now seems to be the paramount question.

>"why now?" why is the PR spectacle happening at this moment and who is benefitting from supplying the NYTimes with this compromising information.

Best theory I heard is fairly simple: Howard Lutnick acted as a shield towards this stuff to keep the money flowing. Midterms was a huge blow to republican power, and that shield will fall very quick as an entire cobweb of corruption will be discovered. I won't say "cleaned out", but we're going to have a lot f light shed on how deep this web goes.

As for why now: you can say some people want to get ahead of this before the new congress comes in. I think it was just pure happenstance. Someone who wasn't easily bribed was in the right (wrong?) place at the right/wrong time and the word spread like wildfire because this is pretty much every soap opera staple happening IRL. People love drama, so the spread is the least surprising part.

Whether you think the spark was coincidental or coordinated will only be revealed with history. but decades of crime scene investigations will reveal to you how utterly sloppy supposed masterminds can be in becoming discovered. Mere seconds of care away from getting away with it all.

A guess is that china burned its own asset. Why would china burn its own asset? With her being known compromisined, usefulness expired, they burn her and potentially damage the NVIDIA relationship with TSMC. The thing to keep in mind about china is they make long plays, not short ones. If they do intend to make landfall on Taiwan in ~4 years, this seems on track, sow distrust now, reep it's rewards later. You might say, that's a crazy longshot for a long player to make. And you be right, but it's at the cost and risk of basically nothing. Perhaps this will be the first in a series of events that will sour or slow the relationship the US has with Taiwan.

> It's quite clear to me folks like Secretary of State Marco Rubio very likely knew about these things taking place for quite some time.

Trump directly knew too, despite recent denials. He is talking about it here:

https://youtu.be/m2aC8lAOQbg?si=rqqSliGdLF4_Q663&t=1460

@24:20

He doesn't mention Jensen Huang by name, but he is definitely talking about him (only person who fits), and also basically admitting they used it as blackmail (comply or go to jail). Between his narcissism and his dementia Trump couldn't stop himself from talking about something he shouldn't have ever brought up in an interview.

The Trump administration was using this as leverage over Jensen for almost a year!

The important question is who then decided to eventually burn Jensen and lose that leverage, and why?

Oh it’s this season’s Watergate-level scandal on the Trump show.

Merely a blip on the outrage scale

Maybe the interest just aligned between Trump admin seeking a quick win as always and the rest of the government seeking to derisk NVIDIA? Neither of them seemed to like the fact that NVIDIA is one of arteries of the entire AI hype.

Seems pretty obvious: Whatever he did wrong was only recently discovered. “Exposing” his personal life that was never much of a secret to get him out of there is easy cover to avoid having to let the world know what he did wrong.

But while it is obvious he did something wrong, the question remains of what that is. Of course we’ll never find out. This will soon blow over and nobody will ever think of him again.

In general I agree that we're getting about 10% of the story in public, but I don't think this take makes any sense. If he did something nefarious and you didn't want to prosecute him, it'd be quite trivial to tell him privately that it was time to 'step down and spend more time with the family.'

That runs the risk of his open secret personal life coming up later when whatever has gone on has had time to settle, bringing him back into the spotlight at a time when it can be easier to then discover the 90%.

Getting that out of the way now means nobody will give him another thought again and thus won’t go digging for the story down the road when possible leads start to get recorded. It’s not like it really makes any difference to him which story gets told anyway.

Congress is changing hands soon and there are multiple angles to investigate using its oversight power. I guarantee that you’ll be hearing about this story well into next year.

It might be useful to bring forward the memory of Mark Hurd, CEO of Hewlett Packard.

In spite of his success, he was forced to resign due to a $20k expense in his pursuit of Jodie Fisher.

https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/mark-h...

My link above also mentions Boeing CEO Harry Stonecipher, forced out for similar reasons.

It is never wise to be intimate with coworkers, a distressing theme for corporate governance.

Well, I know quite a few people who got intimate with their coworkers, then married them and had kids.

You never said whether or not they regretted it. Getting ousted from a job isn't necessarily unwise.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com