alt Hacker NewsI hope people understand that the affairs are not the reason he is being fired - NVIDIA has supposedly been skirting the export ban put in place by the previous administration. This was put in place for national security reasons. Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
From all the reporting I've read, it is hard for me to avoid the conclusion that NVIDIA sold to China despite the export ban. I'd love to be wrong
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It’s not the side chicks, it’s the side chips.
>I'd love to be wrong
wong?
Well, you say that, but the perception is he hasn't got sacked for circular financing, nor for the providing of sanctioned components (supposedly they went to third countries, not China, so legal). But he got sacked for two affairs.
This seems very silly.
In all likelihood he got sacked for all those things, the affairs just were a convenient excuse.
What board would admit two thirds of their revenue is imaginary money. It's much better to sack a CEO for being "unfaithful to his wife".
Pretty sure he was fucking a Chinese spy though... so...
They could not have done any of the export ban skirting without the complicity or outright cooperation of the administration.
Remind me: when did Huang direct NVDA funds to the Trump ballroom fund?
How naive do you have to be to believe that Congress actually cares about that? They don’t care and happily watch their shares rise in price.
If the second affair didn’t come out, this wouldn’t be a discussion.
Do you think he might get the death sentence for treason?
A lot of people in this industry have gotten it into their heads over the last 25 years that if you create enough value, you get to ignore things like "rules", "laws" and "common sense".
Part of me is hopeful after this. Huang did something that was, at the very least, profoundly stupid, and just short of treason at worst. However, I'm also filled with dread, because I know that this means that there will be even more of an effort by founders to make sure they're immune from consequences from boards if they go public. You already see this at Meta and with Zuckerberg.
We need real reforms on corporate governance that make this sort of situation - a board able to control the C-suite - the norm, not the exception.
> Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light
Are they though? As long as they're in the good graces of Trump, is the Justice Department going to do anything about it?
He ALSO slept with a direct report, which would get most of us fired too.
The rumor is
Trump knew about this in late 2025 and decided not to act.
The reasoning is believed to be because of the idea that if China didn't get Nvidia chips, it would just develop it's own chips faster. So holding the belief that China would end up in the same spot no matter what, it would be preferable to get them to pay Nvidia along the way.
Delving a bit deeper into conspiracy
It's also possible that Trump saw it as a silent favor to Jinping, who took the opportunity to return the favor months later by cutting Chinese oil purchases. One hand washes the other and all that.
> national security reasons
We've really run this term into the ground, haven't we? They don't even bother to try to convince us that China wants to hurt us anymore before making our lives shitty for it.
I don't think so.
I think it was the affair with the direct report that did him in.
That's a bigger no-no than selling to spies, especially when the administration knew about it and did nothing.
Elon Musk has an AI bot generating explicit images without consent, regardless of age, yet nobody's firing him.
While Jensen seems like an egomaniac who deserves what happened to him, there's a part of me that feels some China hawks had fingers in his firing, it must not sit well with them than America's most valuable company is not in the hands of the old guard.
There is zero possibility than Jensen Huang faces any serious consequences for this. NVidia is too big and Huang is too wealthy. This administration in particular would never prosecute that. And, even if they did, a pardon is only $1-3 million anyway.
I believe it was the affair with the married subordinate that was the real problem. There's a huge amount of legal exposure for NVidia with that. With the Chinese spy he can portray himself as the victim. As I've said elsewhere, with billionaire corporate security and the support of the US government, It's astounding to me that this happened at all.
Also I'm reminded of this quote [1]:
> If you find two ants in your kitchen, the best estimate of the total number of ants in your kitchen is not two
Except the administration has known about them skirting it since day 1.
So it’s no longer about national security. What changed now compared to 2 years ago to make Trump care? Did Jenson reduce SpaceX’s allocation?
> Whether you agree or disagree with the ban, it exists and Jensen&NVIDIA are in a world of trouble if this comes to light.
...maybe. Or maybe not. Consistency in application of the law is not exactly at an all-time high right now.
Everybody should be against the export ban. It's laughable to claim that it is for "national security", it's blatant protectionism to cover US AI companies for the fact that they operate at monumental losses. Any country in the world should be allowed to buy the hardware they need to run AI, if they need it, and if the roles were reversed the US should also be allowed to buy tech from other countries. Graphic cards aren't nuclear bombs, and AI is a multi-use core technology every nation on earth should have access to. So far, China has made a far better impression in that respect than the US. At least they have published open weight models.
The future will be commoditized local AI anyway, so it doesn't matter in the long run. I just needed to rant a bit about the US hypocrisy in that matter.
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And, there is no spy business. They just want a more compliant CEO. What a *hit show.
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Did your TV tell you that? I hope you realize that there is absolutely no proof of the import ban having been skirted. The FBI has been investigating Alice Huang and Megaspeed since 2024 and all they have is a few GPUs still being unboxed at their Malaysian data center.