mrandish

Got it. As I mentioned, owning shares isn't "control" (absent a separate agreement), so they have no control to force anything, they can just choose to dump their shares, depressing the share price while losing money themselves.

> hyperscalers will just get drastic haircuts.

I think everyone may get drastic haircuts (though I'm still hoping for a 'soft unwind' type slow-mo crash, I don't think the odds are good). Hyperscalers are what probably breaks first and worst because more of their money is from creditors vs investors, combined with, more of their creditors are financial speculators / banks who have no vested interest in propping up the AI market (like an NV, FL do). They are only loyal to their cash.

In addition to the possibility of a pre-nup, which another poster already mentioned, you're not accounting for the high-probability Jensen's relationship with his wife has a very different dynamic than most might assume.

Jensen is a hard charging, uber-entrepreneuer. They've been married over 40 years and met each other as lab partners in electrical engineering. He was 17. She was 19. They've been best friends for longer than most people making assumptions about all this have been alive. Jensen is obviously super-smart. His wife is quite possibly even smarter than he is and very probably his intellectual equal. She hasn't gone out and spent 18 hrs a day for decades building a high-risk tech startup but she's been a key part, if not the key, to him being able to be who he is, and being who he's needed to be, every day since before NVidia's founding.

She knows every one of his flaws, weaknesses and gaping ego needs far better than he does (and he for her). Yet, she's also clearly one of the most independent, self-sufficient, least needy people most of us will ever meet. Jensen's gone between 12 and 18 hours a day (when he's home at all), non-stop for decades - aside from infrequent vacations, during which Jensen is still on the phone, laptop or simply thinking about NVidia almost every waking moment.

She is someone so independent, all of that is not something she "puts up with reluctantly." That can't last for over 40 years. It's much more likely she prefers it that way. She has always had her own long-term friendships, activities and entire life, completely separate from his and him. I'm not saying saying I think they have some kind of open or poly sexual relationship. Just that they are each intellectually, socially and emotionally independent of each other - and always have been. Although it probably is kind of 'poly' in the sense that Jensen is married to his life at NVidia and she's married to her life outside of Jensen/NVidia. Yet they're both married and committed to each other too.

On top of that NVidia is the world's most valuable company and together they are a multi-billionaire (pre-nup or not). When the scale starts anywhere near a 'B', it's completely alien to the rest of us. For the last decade, Jensen and his wife have both been 'post-economic' in a way that even I (a lowly multi-deca-millionaire pauper) cannot conceive.

How can I assume all this about two people I don't even know? I was a serial tech entrepreneur, which is how I got into BigCo - I sold my startup to them. And I've been basically describing my relationship with my wife. While we share some friends equally, it's only a few and almost all the friends we each spend social time with are separate. While I know all my wife's friends and she knows all mine, we're rarely with our friends socially together. Most of her, my and our friends are married couples, and most of them seem to go damn near everywhere like they're linked at the hip. This strikes both my wife and I as strange. And we seem to be equally strange to our friends. They're always asking me where my wife is when I show up alone (like I nearly always do) and her friends ask her where I am when she shows up alone (like she nearly always does). Note: these aren't 'couple-centric' gatherings or events, there are lots of single individuals around too.

I don't happen to want to sleep around with other people. My wife feels the same. If she really wanted to, I wouldn't stop her. Shit, she's the best friend I've ever had. I can't really parse where I end and she begins and I know the same is true for her. Our relationship is far beyond the primitive ego dynamics of: "This high-value other person forgoing all others is a testament to their commitment to me and a signal of my value (and props up my own needy ego)." We don't do things separately because we don't love doing things together or don't love each other. We do a lot together. But when we met, we were already each complete, independent people, with vibrant, complete intellectual, emotional and social lives (both inner and outer). Unlike the line in that love story, she didn't "Complete me" and I didn't "Complete her." We were both already complete before we met.

I think the relationship my wife and I have is probably similar to Jensen's and his wife's in many ways because I know four other couples who share a very similar dynamic in their long-term stable marriages (three of the four are the product of high-intensity, high-achievement, all-consuming careers). Where Jensen and his wife may differ from my wife and I is that, of the five samples I have (mine + four others), One is completely 'open' and mine is 'open if you want' but neither of us 'wants'. The other three samples are similar but the implementation is slightly different and more like this: "If you really want to have a side-thing that will make you happy, then do it - I truly don't mind and I want you to be happy. Just be circumspect and classy enough not to do it in front of our friends or kids."

Since that's 3 out of 5 samples, I'll guess that Jensen's relationship may be similar to that too. And that's why this is, sadly, a problem both of them have to deal with - and that's why I'm pretty sure Jensen's regret and apology are incredibly sincere toward his wife. Not for "violating the sanctity of their vows" but for negligently creating a problem they both now have to stage manage the optics of. It's also why I'm virtually certain divorce is the farthest thing from Jensen's wife's mind. They are true equal partners in a deeper, more committed way than most can imagine.

[To be clear: I think there's also around a one-third chance their relationship is such that she's had her own side-things too and is just disappointed he didn't manage one of his 'side-things' as well as she manages hers.]

My wife is actually the uber-honey pot but I'm confident I'm still the ultimate winner because, even though I'm the one who is far more 'high-profile' and has the 'serial tech startup entrepreneur sells to BigCo' cred, a large percent of the people I work with who meet my wife, later tell me "Shit. Your wife is not only beautiful, she's way smarter than you." :-)

Thanks! I generally only do mega-posts like that when I happen to have some unusual perspective from my unique journey - and I realized a lot of people were default mapping the Jensen situation to a 'normal' person and business context.

> I wonder what the criteria are as a private (if publicly-traded) enterpise to merit the security training treatment.

We had a large and growing operation in China which included development, not just sales. Even before Trump 1, there were signs our operations there were being targeted by Chinese intelligence, so we already were in contact with US intelligence. I wasn't in that loop in detail, just aware it was happening and considered a serious problem (most employees never even heard about it). We did later wind down most development in China. While there were several reasons, that was a key, though unpublicized, one

AFAICT, my briefing wasn't 'mandatory' from the govt. It was coordinated through our IT dept but was definitely considered high-priority from a company perspective. I hadn't heard about the mtg request initially, probably because my admin team was doing the usual schedule filtering and prioritization. But I got a direct call from the IT VP on my cell in the evening to bring it to my attention so I could get it prioritized to happen before I went to China.

The company isn't FAANG / Mag 7 but definitely in the next tier down. You've almost certainly used more than one of the products and several of the technologies. With user bases in the tens of millions, we were definitely a top tier target and I had a C-level title even though I never had (or would want) access to root keys or anything like that.

In big public companies there's a group of a few dozen execs who have special stock trading restrictions above employees, managers and even directors and I was in that group, so I was used to getting some special extra security precautions. Stuff like IT coming to my house to install a special hardware VPN gateway (back before they were more commonplace). And those precautions were just insider trading and general IP concerns. So the call about the FBI mtg wasn't totally out of the blue.

> American technical economy as a valuable asset to the state

My sense is it was really from that kind of mindset. They consider securing American technological and economic leadership a crucial mission. In general, I think the public under-appreciates just are large a priority the 'economic mission' is for intelligence agencies of all countries - and the US was probably late to scaling that game behind the Russians, Chinese and even some European allies.

While it's fun to hear about the cool 'state secret' and 'spy vs spy' stuff like stealing weapons system designs, a lot of intelligence is pretty boring stuff about economic competitiveness and advantage in non-defense related industries like finance, consumer packaged goods, heavy machinery etc.

One of the things I've wondered about is WHY the "Jensen's sleeping with a probable Chinese intelligence asset" was leaked. Apparently US intelligence learned she was an intel asset (from our own counter-spying). When that happens, it would be communicated via private back-channel to Jensen and/or NVidia's senior IT security exec. The fact it was later leaked to the media, is... curious. It's probable that Jensen had already gotten the message and cut her off. Did the Chinese leak it once they realized their asset's access was burned as a way to damage Jensen? Did someone in the White House or Senate intel committee leak it for political reasons? Intel agency professionals generally don't like when their "work product" is leaked - especially for cheap political reasons, but the people they ultimately have to give it to seem to enjoy it. Games within games. :-)

> Wait... with hyper-scalers, we are talking about Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, are we not?

No, by Hyperscalers (HS) I was referring to the pure-play companies doing the massive build outs of mega-scale data center farms for FAANG and frontier labs (FL). FL / FAANG own some of their own mega-scale data centers but they don't want their business to become too invested in real-estate and GPU depreciation. While it might lower costs to invest BIG capital in vertical integration (owning the whole value chain), the margins in that part of chain are too low to support FAANG stock prices.

So they are using a mix. Some of their own but mostly leveraging OPM (other people's money) through Hyperscalers for pure-play AI. FAANG view data centers necessary for their own core product needs (like AWS or Google Search / Gemini) in a different financial bucket than pure play AI scaling. The fact they are able to resell their excess DC capacity for pure AI to OAI/Ant so profitably right now is an opportunistic windfall, not a long-term plan. In fact, it's actually off-plan in a sense because their financial plan was not to invest tons of capital to sell AI compute on "margin-plus". It's just that the "margin-plus" margin is incredibly frothy right now. Their strategists don't think that will still be true in five+ years.

That's why their long-term mode is leaning to doing a mix and largely relying of external Hyperscalers for non-core AI capacity. Their strategy is generally, "Own our own AI compute for minimal baseline needs for our branded products (we sell to the final end-user)." Then they want to use Hyperscalers for non-core and excess capacity because HS are borrowing billions on debt markets using FAANG contracts to secure those loans. I explain why and how we can be in both 'rapid growth' and 'increasing bubble danger' at the same time in more detail in my sister comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50430395.

> Your logic is backwards.

I think we're essentially saying nearly the same thing and agree it eventually leads to a similar outcome. The difference is in part saying it in different ways and in part addressing the flow and feed backs at different points. Ultimately there are three key players in an ecosystem flow that supplies end-user demand:

[NVidia (NV)] <-> [HyperScalers (HS)] <-> [Frontier Labs (FL)]

TSMC is upstream of NV but they're diversified enough to be sheltered, and end user demand is the ultimate gating factor. Most people agree that in the long-term (10+ yr) AI compute services will be a very big viable business. What you and I understand which some don't, is that the Bubble Burst scenario doesn't require growth in AI demand to ever drop. A big crash can be triggered just by the growth rate in cash flow from AI end-user demand tapering from super-linear down to strongly linear.

Much like 2008, the lenders supplying the build-out got too speculative. The fact that 10 years from now all today's AI investments and loans will look like incredibly cheap, outstanding investments doesn't matter if over the growth rate tapers from super-linear to just linear growth for 6 months anytime over the next 12 to 48 months. That's enough to trigger the Bubble Burst spiral due to leveraged and circular investments. The risk is entirely near-term timing and relative over-valuation, not absolute value in the long-run. I think some are assuming we're saying growth or value will decrease in absolute terms. I'm certainly not. I think the growth rate in actual cash flow from AI end-user demand will not only NEVER go negative, it will continue to increase every month for the next decade - and there will still be a big crash - simply because too many speculators made leveraged financial bets which require near-term growth rates to remain consistently super-linear.

> Frontier labs are losing money and are most likely to go bankrupt and be absorded by bigger companies.

Anything's possible but I don't see how that's likely. It really depends on who is left 'holding the bag' on committed contracts and callable loans. While all the Frontier Labs have essentially taken what nets to equity-secured loans from NV, AFAICT it's not collateralized in a way that allows NV (or HS) to force FLs into bankruptcy. Creditors with capital were willing to take FL equity for cash, making them investors, not creditors. After their IPOs, that will change. FL sales will continue to steadily grow but not at rates required to make their equity worth what investors thought it would be worth in the time frame they expected/needed.

> Hyperscalers ... already control the frontier labs.

Through what legal or financial mechanisms is this control? If end-user demand continues to grow super-linearly, FLs will need more compute from HS than they get. In that case, HS will continue to have pricing power due to scarcity increasing. If future end-user demand growth rates taper from super-linear to just strong linear, FLs will need less compute than they've projected and HS pricing power will erode. This is the feed back point most likely to trigger the Burst Spiral (more specifically, watch things like the spot market for 12 month future contracts for B300 computer/hours).

Hyperscalers ... are ultimately profitable

Unlike FLs, HS are collateralized to their bankers, their GPU and their power suppliers in ways which CAN force bankruptcy. If the growth rate in demand tapers, even a little, prices will fall. HS have bought, and committed to buy, more GPUs, power and real estate sooner than they are going to need it from bankers who can force them into bankruptcy. The HS have secured their loans by pledging their GPUs, committed power contracts and real estate/physical plants as collateral.

When cash flow is high and the growth rate of cash flow keeps increasing, lenders will loan $2 to $5 for every dollar of 'sellable asset' the loan is secured by. The HS are already extending their GPU depreciation time frames to SIX years which inflates the forward book value of their GPUs - so they can borrow more at cheaper rates. When the growth rate of cash flow starts to taper from super-linear to just very good, lenders start to demand more collateral per dollar (or capital costs go up). Both are already happening. NV and FL will be damaged but HS are most likely to get screwed because NV and FL have investors (who just lose lots of money) but HS have cash creditors who can force bankruptcy and will panic when they realize they're holding billions in loans secured by evaporating collateral value - much like "Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO)" contracts triggered the 2008 financial collapse. The irony is those tens-of-thousands of residential houses backing the 2008 CDOs were still livable homes and almost all are worth more today than they were at the peak of the bubble. No one thinks the mountains of GPUs (and future GPU deliveries) HS overpaid for will be worth more than ~50% in 3 years.

> they're about timing.

Yes. And valuation. I think the leading frontier labs will be fine in the long-run and NVidia will be fine. Some of their investors who bought at too high of a valuation, expecting to flip it in too short a time frame will lose a chunk of their money when they have to sell for less.

The hyper-scalers in the middle are the most vulnerable. They borrowed billions at increasingly high rates to lock up GPU and power capacity. They are 'ground zero' of a lot of the 'circular money' deals. Big banks who financed hyper-scalers initially, expecting they could package that debt up and sell it on to diversify, are already struggling to find buyers for the debt, causing its value to drop, which then forces the banks to cover with more collateral, and that's how the snowball starts down the mountain.

I'm confident it occurred to Jensen almost immediately that she might be a spy - so I think he banged her but also never leaked any info or left her alone with his unlocked phone or laptop. While he may not have known for sure if she was a Chinese spy, he did know she was a board director and, until recently, the COO of a major Nvidia customer anxious to gain favorable business terms and glean insight on Nvidia GPU allocations for their data centers (and before that she was a journalist(!)).

Jensen isn't dumb, and in his position, nearly everyone he meets wants something from him; whether info, insight or a favor. Many of them dutifully report back to someone, whether an employer, government or just their social media friends, their impressions of which way Nvidia might be leaning, when the next product allocations might be released, etc. So it's unlikely Jensen ever fully trusted her, because it's been well over a decade since he could fully trust anyone not in his immediate family or an old friend. It's hard to appreciate just how much daily life is different for someone like Jensen but I once got a peek. For several years I was a skip level below the CEO of a high-profile F500 valley tech company. I've been part of the core team on the jet with the CEO during an Asia trip packed with keynotes, key customer/govt mtgs, media and analyst interviews. Everyone wants something from the CEO (including every employee on his team). And Jensen is CEO of the most valuable company on earth, so all that's on steroids. He's learned to be guarded to some extent with everyone outside his immediate family and old friends.

And I had a first-hand experience which makes me think Jensen suspected her almost immediately. Over a decade ago, back when I had a C-level title at a well-known F500 valley company. We had operations in China then and before going there the first time, I got a mandatory in-person briefing from actual FBI MiBs all about the incredibly subtle long-games that intelligence agencies run on foreign execs, not just in China but in other countries too. They had concrete case studies of real execs like me getting played (and not just by honeypots). It was very persuasive. On my trips to China I took all the common sense precautions they recommended but, sadly, I never detected Mata Hari making a play for me. :-) Probably not quite a big enough fish to warrant my own heat-seeking hottie.

BUT... a few years later, I did a fair number of high-profile keynote speeches at major business conferences. Unlike pure tech conferences, these often had audiences of a couple thousand people, big 50 foot screens, etc. The company started sending me to these because, unlike our CEO, I was unusually good at public speaking, despite actually being an introvert off-stage. After one such conference for C-level execs of public corps held in a major European capital, I ended up hanging out overnight before meetings elsewhere in Europe the next day. That evening there was an off-site banquet dinner and magic show. I went since I had no plans and dig magic. It was open seating and I grabbed seat at a table for 8 filling with random attendees, a VP from Unilever, a C-something from Airbus, etc. When I finished chatting with the Airbus guy about the A300, I turned to see the open seat next to me now had a rather tall and attractive early 30s blonde. She introduced herself as the marketing director for a St. Petersburg tech company, raved about how much she loved my keynote and proceeded to ask a lot of pretty insightful questions about it (note: this was before the Ukraine war).

Over dinner she continued to inquire about my work, background, etc and was overall quite charming. I didn't mind as I'm partial to blondes anyway and if someone who looks like Margot Robbie's sister has interesting questions about my area of expertise, who am I to complain? As dinner progressed to the show, she grew increasingly friendly, asking a long question just as we adjourned to the hotel buses, so ended up taking the seat next to mine. Back in the hotel lobby she asked if I wanted to grab a drink in the bar but I was already starting to think this level of attention was a bit much. Sure, I was 'stage famous' that day due to being the center of attention at the conference for an hour but... yeah, women as good looking as her aren't exactly common at 2,000 euro business conferences and the ones who are there tend to get a fair amount of unwanted attention, so they've learned how to project a professional demeanor that keeps things focused on business. I understand this dynamic from my wife - who's a tech executive with an MBA (at another valley company), a decade younger than me and also a quite attractive blonde. So, I very politely told my new Russian friend I had an early flight and was going upstairs to call my wife back in the US before my daughter left for school.

When I told my wife this amusing story, including my suspicion that my lovely new friend may have been a Russian honeypot on a random troll for relationships with C-level execs in global tech companies making widely used tech products - either for access, info or blackmail leverage - my wife dutifully disagreed insisting that I'm "totally hot enough to still 'pull'." I replied "Please never stop believing that... but when I first introduced you to my friends they all agreed you were 'way out of my league', so I'm under no illusions." :-)

Sadly, I'll never know the truth about my Soviet Sweetie (the nickname my wife kidded me with for weeks after). I'm sure she wasn't a high-end call girl, since you can't get into that conference without company creds and 2K euro. Bottom line, if I immediately suspected that maybe her interest wasn't purely in slammin' the sheets with my hot self", that thought surely occurred to Jensen because he's certainly had much more extensive counter-intelligence briefings and has had a far bigger target on his back every single day. Even if she wasn't a Chinese government spy, he knew part of her interest in their relationship was power, access and business advantage for her company. But Jensen bleeds green. I can totally imagine him privately telling a friend, "Bro, hot side-pussy's one thing, but business is business." Like many of Jensen's transactions lately, I'm pretty sure he got a lot more than he gave. :-)

I said in my sister post:

> it's unlikely Jensen ever fully trusted her. Not because he thought she might be a spy (although I'm pretty sure the thought probably crossed his mind)

I'll expand on why I think that. Over a decade ago, back when I had a C-level title at a well-known F500 valley company, I did a fair number of high-profile keynote speeches at major business conferences. Unlike pure tech conferences, these often had audiences of a couple thousand people, big 50 foot screens, etc. The company started sending me to these because, unlike our CEO, I was unusually good at public speaking, despite actually being an introvert off-stage.

After one such conference for C-level execs of public corps held in a European capital, I ended up hanging out overnight before meetings elsewhere in Europe the next day. That evening there was an off-site banquet dinner and magic show. I went since I had no plans and dig magic. It was open seating and I grabbed seat at a table for 8 filling with random attendees, a VP from Unilever, a C-something from Airbus, etc. When I finished chatting with the Airbus guy about the A300, I turned to see the open seat next to me now had a rather tall and attractive early 30s blonde. She introduced herself as the marketing director for a St. Petersburg tech company, raved about how much she loved my keynote and proceeded to ask a lot of pretty insightful questions about it.

Over dinner she continued to inquire about my work, background, etc and was overall quite charming. I didn't mind as I'm partial to blondes anyway and if someone who looks like Margot Robbie's sister has interesting questions about my area of expertise, who am I to complain? As dinner progressed to the show, she grew increasingly friendly, asking a long question just as we adjourned to the hotel buses, so ended up taking the seat next to mine. Back in the hotel lobby she asked if I wanted to grab a drink in the bar but I was already starting to think this level of attention was a bit much. Sure, I was 'stage famous' that day due to being the center of attention at the conference for an hour but... yeah, women as good looking as her aren't exactly common at 2,000 euro business conferences and the ones who are there tend to get a fair amount of unwanted attention, so they've learned how to project a professional demeanor that keeps things focused on business.

I understand this dynamic from my wife - who's a decade younger than me, has an MBA, is a tech executive, blonde and also quite attractive. So, I very politely told my new Russian friend I had an early flight and was going upstairs to call my wife back in the US before my daughter left for school.

When I told my wife this amusing story, including my suspicion that my lovely new friend may have been a Russian honeypot trolling for relationships with C-level execs in companies making widely used tech products - either for access, info or blackmail leverage - my wife dutifully disagreed insisting that I'm "totally hot enough to still 'pull'" but I said "Yeah, please never stop believing that... but when I first introduced you to my friends they all agreed that you're 'way out of my league'". :-)

So - I'll never know about my Soviet Sweetie (the nickname my wife kidded me with for weeks after). I'm sure she wasn't a high-end call girl, since you can't get into that conference without company creds and 2K euro. Bottom line, if I thought "maybe her interest isn't purely in slammin' the sheets with my 'hot bod'", that thought probably occurred to Jensen too because he's got a far bigger target on his back every single day.

> What happens if the law firm uncovers some spying?

First, IMHO, that's extremely unlikely for several different reasons. Practically, there's probably very little evidence to prove she did or didn't spy beyond checking Jensen's personal devices and accts for unauthorized access and sweeping for bugs. I highly doubt those will show anything because this kind of intelligence gathering isn't about 'sneak and peek' to access emails and files. Alice had much higher value in other ways: access, influence and background context. They wouldn't want to risk 'burning' her access by being caught or even raising suspicion, plus there's no indication Alice Huang was a trained spy (aka NOC field agent).

But more significant to me is it's unlikely Jensen ever fully trusted her. Not because he thought she might be a spy (although I'm pretty sure the thought probably crossed his mind), but because she was a board director and, until recently, the COO of a major NVidia customer anxious to gain favorable business terms and glean insight on NVidia GPU allocations for their data centers (and before that she was a journalist). Jensen isn't dumb and in his position, virtually everyone he meets wants something from him; whether info, insight or a favor. It's hard to appreciate just how much daily life is different if you're Jensen. For several years I was a skip level below the CEO of a high-profile F500 valley tech company. I've been on the core team on the jet with the CEO during an Asia trip packed with keynotes, key customer/govt mtgs, media and analyst interviews. Everyone wants something from the CEO (including every employee on his team). And Jensen is CEO of the most valuable company on earth, so all that's on steroids. He's learned to be guarded to some extent with everyone outside his immediate family and old friends.

> Does it have a good ending?

Well, it's obviously personally embarrassing and created a lot of family issues for Jensen. But it's very likely everything will be fine for Jensen professionally. Love him or hate him, there's no denying Jensen is a remarkably effective CEO, guiding NVidia from a startup to the biggest company ever over decades and through multiple near-death events. With that track record, he's banked a lot of forgiveness for personal lapses or minor transgressions. From the board perspective, these are the potential causes of action:

1. If Jensen was spied on, he's the victim not the wrongdoer.

2. He might have violated his non-disclosure agreement.

3. He might have 'failed to follow company IT policy regarding securing proprietary information.'

4. As a corporate officer and director he has a duty to act in the best interests of the shareholders.

5. He might have 'violated HR policy regarding inappropriate relationships.' In most companies those policies are almost entirely focused on employee-to-employee relationships and just the existence of a relationship can be a violation. When it comes to consensual relationships with an outside partner, vendor, customer or even competitor - if the policy addresses it at all - a relationship existing usually isn't a violation, absent evidence of actual undue influence or bias.

In short, this investigation probably ends with the board filing a reprimand or 'note of concern' for exercising poor judgement and Jensen promising to never let it happen again.

> But is this common?

Not especially common but there are a lot of companies and executives in the world, so it's not uncommon. The board has a fiduciary duty to the shareholders so to some extent this 'investigation' is pro forma as part of that.

Yep. Now that they've bootstrapped their businesses on 'Free IP', they're happy to pull up the ladder to stop new competition from having the same advantage. While they don't like paying IP lawsuit settlements of a few billion here and there, AI leaders can raise gobs of capital now and the silver-lining is those settlements are setting a high barrier to entry.

Assuming super-linear growth will continue based on the first 3 years of a new technology? Almost every physical, computational and economic system in history, from Dennard scaling in silicon to transonic aviation speed looked super-linear until it hit the inflection point in its eventual S-curve.

A Copernican/Lindy baseline suggests the growth rate in LLM intelligence will peak in around another 2-4 years and I'm leaning on the low side because while the growth of LLM intelligence per dollar and per month are still growing in absolute terms, the growth rate of both seems to already be falling as power-law constraints in compute and data bottlenecks take hold.

> That's why we should simply normalize breaking the law.

Sure, and that's what anyone into retro gaming or preservation has to do. The problem is that "law" is a legal monopoly on the use of force. So far, the retro preservation community has managed to preserve most of electronic gaming and computing's history up through around ~2010. But only because the technology didn't yet exist to make most 'legacy' digital IPs worth exploiting. There are signs the tacit truce that's existed between retro preservation and rights holders is crumbling.

Interest in retro is booming and Nintendo, EA, Sony and others are increasingly releasing new 'remasters' of retro IP. The same AI tech making decomps/recomps faster and easier for enthusiasts is also shifting the economics of retro monetization for IP rights holders. We can no longer rely on them "looking the other way" and tacitly allowing retro preservation. Rapacious media corporations are determined to squeeze every dollar from the expanded IP rights they paid a lot of political donations to purchase (California senator Nancy Pelosi is retiring a multi-hundred-millionaire). The DMCA and other provisions they bought into law are incredibly expansive. In the past, they had little reason to use them against retro gaming. Now they do.

> there's a straight highway ahead

Which many credible, AI researchers believe is already starting up an increasingly steep scaling wall of diminishing returns that eventually ends at a brick wall.

> Isn't more creativity literally supposed to be the point of copyright?

Yes. The original idea of copyright was to encourage more original creation AND later modification by granting exclusivity for a limited time in exchange for making it non-exclusive forever after.

The Copyright Act of 1790 set the duration at 14 years, with a 14 year extension if the author was still living after the first 14. It's been extended 4 times and is now 70 years after the death of the author or 95 years after publication / 120 years after creation. I agree it's now a cruel mockery of the original intent.

I have no hope this is fixable in any major way because it's now a fully bi-partisan issue. For decades now, RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobbyists have demonstrated absolute, long-term control of both major party's IP-related votes (despite what any politician claims while campaigning). There are only a handful of politicians for whom this is a hill they're willing to shed political capital on. And, in an honest moment, they'll admit the congressional process is stage managed such that regardless which party is in power at the moment (or even a super-majority), meaningfully restricting copyright closer to its original intent will always lose by at least one vote as long as the two-party duopoly controls the U.S government.

Given that sad, disgusting reality, my post was trying to suggest a way to claw back the smallest, most limited win for non-commercial retro preservation that might: A.) Have the slightest chance of actually happening, and B.) Actually be the slightest bit better than the shit sandwich we have now. The ironic part of making any constructive suggestion to improve things even 1%, isn't that even THAT will almost certainly be killed by the RIAA/MPAA/SPA lobby anyway, it's that those who agree with me will bury it under objections it doesn't do enough (or doesn't abolish all IP rights).

I don't have all the answers. IP rights are complete shit show. My point was that instead of trying to "fix it all" or "chuck it all" (which I don't think political reality will allow anytime soon), maybe we can start by slicing off a few less contentious, smaller wins (like non-commercial, out-of-print >20 years, code only).

Every sentence you wrote was a question. Do you have a solution to suggest to any of your questions? Or even an idea on how come up with or evaluate proposed solutions to any of them?

> the characters? does an abandoned ET game open up the franchise to public domain?

I'm confused. I specifically called those examples out and suggested one way they could maybe be carved out to avoid being shut down by that exact concern. Even if my suggested 'way to carve' is dumb, my point was that lack of granularity, prevents carving out anything at all. Do you agree more granularity of some kind in copyright would help?

> I wish the circumstances around abandonware games weren’t so tenuous, there’s so much great stuff out there and reverse engineering with AI unlocks all sorts of cool possibilities.

Indeed. NFS:U2 came out in late Nov 2004, goes double platinum, sells 11M copies and EA shut down online multiplayer in Aug 2006. Reasonable debate can be had about time frames but games out of print over 20 years should be an easy call. The problem isn't just copyright duration, it's also lack of granularity. We need a middle-ground like 'Expanded Fair Use' which kicks in after 20 years and enables non-commercial sharing of the actual code, without also looping in rights to long-lived franchise characters (Mario, Sonic, Zelda) or an entire 'cinematic universe'. It's the 'all-or-nothing' that lets publishers effectively block everything by arguing "But then anyone will be able to make all-new Need For Speed or Final Fantasy games."

As for "all sorts of cool possibilities", just look at what the retro modding community has already done with HD texture packs, expansions and fan translations.

I remember when building a cool desktop PC was a fun hobby.

> At the risk of being the LMGTFY guy

That was actually great. While a Google search is free and easy, that cost real tokens which aren't free (especially for those who don't have a work-paid sub).

> The main thing getting Kalshi all the attention from the states is their sports gambling markets.

There are 3 separate reasons WHY states are so strongly opposing Kalshi's sports gambling: 1) Kalshi is doing it in a way that avoids state taxation, licensing and regulation, 2) the online sports gambling companies spending billions on TV commercials don't want untaxed, unregulated competition, 3) The major sports leagues are concerned it will undermine the integrity of the 'product'.

Of course, there's no material difference in actual harm to the public between Kalshi sports betting and Online Sportsbook Apps, they both enable gambling addicts, cheating, etc. The hardball reaction is about ensuring Kalshi sends tax, licensing and lobbying money to each state government. The sportsbooks have spent billions ramming gambling legalization through and don't want Kalshi getting a 'free ride' on the bus they paid for.

Even the sports league's opposition isn't as pure as it appears. While they don't want players, coaches or referees to undermine game outcomes, they also sell exclusive access to real-time on-field data feeds to sportsbooks for hundreds of millions of dollars. The TV feeds we watch at home are ~8 to 15 seconds delayed. Getting the real-time outcome data from every pass, kick and run in 800ms vs ~8s on TV is worth hundreds of millions to online sports apps because it lets them front-run real-time bets. When people at home make real-time prop bets on the next play, many times the company already knows the outcome. Something to remember next you hit "Bet" on a real-time prop and get a spinner saying "odds updating" and then "bet expired". It might be because your bet was going to win, while if you'd taken the other side, it would have accepted the bet and taken your money. Yeah, that's against the law in a casino but not in an online sports app. Right now, those apps being "Regulated", mostly means they're paying taxes, licensing fees and following "Know Your Customer" policies to minimize money laundering and minors gambling. Actual fairness of the bets doesn't enter into it any more than carny midway games. Consumer bettor's job is to consistently lose, while only winning a little back often enough to bias selective memory and keep them interested. Anyone who actually wins too often on bets that are too big, quickly gets their acct capped to $1 bets.

> One usually can't structure around criminal law.

I don't see how that applies in this context which is pretty simple. The transaction with Don Jr. was a board advisory role in exchange for equity. Broadly, bribery is "paying to influence the actions or decisions of a public official." Don Jr. isn't an official. He signed a contract to provide board advisory services. The contract wouldn't say anything about anything else. I've been a board advisor and signed a similar contract (if not the same one, they're quite pro forma).

Absent a secret recording establishing payment for influence, there's nothing to prove bribery. Do I think making him an advisor was done in the hope it would influence his father to promote and sign favorable legislation? Yep. Do I think there's any chance evidence exists to prosecute that? Nope.

A Democrat controlled congressional committee can certainly issue subpoenas, have a public hearing and ask Don Jr and/or the company CEO a bunch of leading questions - and all the answers will deny any quid pro quo or wrongdoing. Personally, I think the companies probably knew giving Don Jr. a bunch of money wasn't a very reliable way to ensure Trump's cooperation. It's quite clear that Trump demands loyalty from all but gives none in return. I think their main bet was that hiring Don Jr. would cause potential investors and business partners to infer the company had lower regulatory risk, making the net cost of investment capital lower. Dumb, but that stuff actually works to some extent.

> Stocks have effectively degraded into gambling style instruments.

That's an overbroad generalization. They can be degraded into effectively being gambling style instruments if you want, but that's NOT what they fundamentally are. Stock and commodity trading markets drive positive-sum capital formation, whereas prediction markets and sportsbooks are zero-sum synthetic side-bets.

As someone who once printed original stock certificates for the startup I co-founded in my apartment back bedroom after nervously scribbling a $10,000 personal check to open a company bank account, then years later surrendered those same sheets to an investment banker on the eve of our IPO, the distinction between investing in something I own and gambling on something I don't feels rather concrete.

Seasonal bets on regional weather are a way for farm and energy businesses to hedge against volatility from unusual weather.

If you're holding Florida grapefruit futures, hedging against an early freeze is an economic trade on the future value of a real thing.

If their lawyers are at all competent, they structured it so it's not illegal (though it's pretty obviously adjacent to bribery). With both houses of Congress turning blue, I 'predict' they'll dump Don Jr by the end of January to claw back the remaining unvested equity.

Hey, maybe we can get that listed as a bet!

> If I'm a worker at a football team

In the large US professional sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB), it's not uncommon for some of the most long-term losing teams to be the most financially profitable.

In the case of the NFL, the league itself is owned equally by each of the 32 teams. They each get a 1/32nd share of league revenue regardless of win/loss. While many costs like player contracts are capped, other costs (like coach contracts) aren't. Since the majority of income is equally split, one way to max profits is to spend less than other teams where they can.

> there's a whale who is just ~rich

The GP said "Demand proof of income or assets", so a 'whale' for whom $3000 a week is pocket change would still be free to squander it. There are already laws which require individual investors in private startups to show $1M in assets but online sports books and casinos are largely free to prey on gambling addicts.

These companies post little notices like "Addicted to Gambling? Click here for help" but then relentlessly optimize dark patterns in their apps to target and trigger addicts. Search and you'll find lots of documented evidence of shockingly abusive tactics.

While some choose to engage in equity & commodity trading in a way which is like gambling, that's a secondary use of an economic exchange which still fundamentally results in the transfer of an asset tied to something other than itself.

From the days of "My six sheep for your two cows" to modern derivatives, asset trading markets are useful and necessary for economic exchange, price setting and market clearing in a way that self-referential 'poker chips' are not.

> would be like an expensive Bloomberg Terminal or an investment letter that offers valuable and expensive intelligence.

Whether it's Anthropic or not, I think it's inevitable some highly specialized offerings will emerge. I suspect there are already some incredibly sophisticated, hyper-narrow, astronomically expensive models being created for private in-house use.

As an imaginary example, I wouldn't be shocked if some company like Jane Street is secretly investing a billion dollars to create the highly specialized synthetic RLVR data needed to train an AI that gives them an average .08% edge on a certain kind of commodity, equity or asset trade. If so, it's not a leap to imagine another company spending $100M on a model that gives a .008% edge and selling access to 100 high-volume institutional traders for $2M each.

Expanding general purpose LLMs to incorporate increasingly specific use cases has, so far, seemed to be economically viable but I don't see a fundamental reason that must remain true for incredibly narrow yet ultra high-value domains requiring monumental bespoke development, data, etc to profitably exploit.

The strangeness your grandad felt was from seeing products from Enemy Countries parked in his neighbor's driveway, unrelated to Volkswagen or Toyota as companies or the behavior of their founders. I think that's understandable. His generation witnessed and survived fighting the largest World War in human history. A conflict which divided actual civilizations in an existential battle for survival, during which 70M-85M people died - 3 to 4% of all humans on the planet.

That's not an example which counters my point, in fact, it makes the point perfectly. Which is: it isn't appropriate or normal when people hyper-overreact to something as inconsequential as an erratically eccentric Tech Bro's juvenile trolling (or thoughtlessly stupid unplanned gaffe, depending on who you believe) at a level similar to, as you've pointed out, the reaction of a traumatized survivor of the biggest, most consequential and horrible single event in all of human history - people who watched their friends and families die violent, brutal deaths, and in many cases witnessed systematic genocide against their entire race at scales beyond imagining. That's the level at which some people now react to stupid, wrong, offensive words and gestures by fucking morons and trolls on Twitter and TikTok. Thank you. That's actually a much better example of my point.

I think Elon is a complete nutjob but, seriously, these are NOT remotely the same level or scope. Your granddad was a literal, fucking hero - and obviously made of much sterner stuff than (some) people today. Your grandad mentioned seeing Enemy Vehicles around town was "strange." He didn't hold candlelight vigils in front of Volkswagen and Toyota dealers, he didn't harangue VW owners in the supermarket parking lot, or need to social signal about it every, single time those countries, companies or cars were mentioned.

If he had protested and harangued, I'd understand that level of reaction and constant obsession. War zone PTSD is terrible and never goes away. Oh, and tens of millions died in, arguably, the biggest, worst thing... ever? Yeah, I'm okay if Gramps over-reacts a little. I'd thank him for his service, buy him a beer and listen to his stories from "The War." But apparently your granddad didn't think over-reacting, constantly being 'triggered' and making a fuss over THAT would be appropriate - it just felt 'strange'. My dad lied about his age to enlist at 17. The war left him physically and emotionally scarred for life. But he never made a big deal about it either.

I agree. The best case would be if this 5% drop in AI-centric tech isn't a 'dip', but the beginning of a gradual unwinding of the AI bubble. I'd take it as a positive sign if 3 months from now AI-centric stocks had slipped another 5% but other sectors where slightly higher than today.

I'm actually fairly bullish on AI in the long-term. The problem is valuations have been hyper-inflated by too much speculative capital way too fast. I think today it's a bit like the Internet Bubble in 1999. The Dot Com crash needed to happen to reset valuations. But after that painful correction, by 2006 Internet-centric valuations were climbing again, except this time they were supported by actual earnings. I'm hoping AI can avoid a crash and this is the start of a more gradual correction.