Also, as CEO, there’s literally nobody at nVidia who could turn him down and be sure of keeping their job. And, it’s not just a matter of “don’t shit where you eat”. It’s more “only fuck people who can freely say no”.
As for the Chinese, I still think that’s a big deal. At the very least, he did something that could be used to blackmail him. He also didn’t get someone to do a thorough background check on her – he’s rich enough that he could have hired a private security company unaffiliated with nVidia to do it if he wanted to keep things quiet. Plus, it’s hard to believe that he had sex with a spy and didn’t either divulge secrets, or agree to deals that weren’t in the company’s best interests. In addition, it wasn’t just any kind of spy, it was a Chinese spy, and the China is the one company where nVidia isn’t allowed to freely sell its products. It looks very likely that his affair with this spy led to nVidia breaking the law.
I’ve worked places where if you lost your security badge that was seen as a big deal, and if you did it more than once you’d risk getting fired. What he did goes way beyond that in terms of potential damage to the company.
I guess what’s weird to me is that the environment we are in is accepting of so much worse than anything Huang has done. I mean, if you want to talk about affairs, the US president is likely a child rapist. If you want to talk about national security, there are completely self interested actors with undeserved security clearances surrounding Trump. If you want to talk about corruption, Jared Kushner is negotiating with countries while privately making billion-dollar deals.
And what’s Huang done relative to that? Pretty close to nothing. It just seems fundamentally unserious to crucify Huang when worst stuff goes unexamined, like maybe all that’s really happened is he’s crossed the United States and its oligarchs and now he’s being punished.
It reminds me a little bit about how Putin would destroy his oligarchic enemies with corruption investigations. Were they corrupt? Absolutely! Everyone was! But their true crime was getting on Putin’s bad side.
It’s like justice unequally applied is injustice. You can see it international relations. Sure, we might pick up an occassional ethnic cleanser, or sanction an unruly warlord, but the United States and Israel get to do whatever the fuck they want, and now because the ICC is finally seriously investigating the US, they might be disbanded.
A major difference between Trump and Huang is that Trump is the president, for now, his party controls all three branches of the US government, and for now, he still has an iron grip over his party. It’s no surprise that he’s not being investigated under those conditions. In addition, any crimes happened at least a decade ago, and there are lots of other powerful people who don’t want the crimes investigated.
With Jensen Huang, the incident just happened, or maybe was ongoing. So, we’re not relying on faded memories or censored documents. There are photos of him with the woman from a few months(?) ago. Also, it involved nobody else, so it’s not some grand conspiracy that a lot of people are trying to keep quiet. And while he’s the CEO of the company, he doesn’t have any control over the investors in the company, so he couldn’t stop the stock price from plummeting. If it were a private company instead of a public one, he’d probably still be in charge. If it were things that happened a decade ago, he’d probably still be in charge. Finally, he’s a hecto-billionaire because of his nVidia stock, and his stock was plummeting because he was still CEO. The quickest solution to keep his own wealth was to resign. I doubt he’ll be charged with anything because he’s a hecto-billionaire and the AI bubble is propping up the stock market. He’ll probably do an apology tour and be back in charge at nVidia in a few years.
As for the ICC, the US never joined the ICC so it has no jurisdiction over the US. They’re not going to investigate the US because the US isn’t a member. And, when the ICC investigated people that Trump didn’t want investigated (Israelis, not Americans because America isn’t part of the ICC) Trump had US companies cut them off. Since American companies are so tied into the modern world, this meant lots of ICC personnel were effectively isolated from the world. Unless and until the US joins the ICC, the ICC won’t be investigating Americans. But, hopefully the new US congress will allow the ICC to continue its work without being harassed by the Trump admin.
Also, as CEO, there’s literally nobody at nVidia who could turn him down and be sure of keeping their job. And, it’s not just a matter of “don’t shit where you eat”. It’s more “only fuck people who can freely say no”.
As for the Chinese, I still think that’s a big deal. At the very least, he did something that could be used to blackmail him. He also didn’t get someone to do a thorough background check on her – he’s rich enough that he could have hired a private security company unaffiliated with nVidia to do it if he wanted to keep things quiet. Plus, it’s hard to believe that he had sex with a spy and didn’t either divulge secrets, or agree to deals that weren’t in the company’s best interests. In addition, it wasn’t just any kind of spy, it was a Chinese spy, and the China is the one company where nVidia isn’t allowed to freely sell its products. It looks very likely that his affair with this spy led to nVidia breaking the law.
I’ve worked places where if you lost your security badge that was seen as a big deal, and if you did it more than once you’d risk getting fired. What he did goes way beyond that in terms of potential damage to the company.
But, at least these were adults.
I guess what’s weird to me is that the environment we are in is accepting of so much worse than anything Huang has done. I mean, if you want to talk about affairs, the US president is likely a child rapist. If you want to talk about national security, there are completely self interested actors with undeserved security clearances surrounding Trump. If you want to talk about corruption, Jared Kushner is negotiating with countries while privately making billion-dollar deals.
And what’s Huang done relative to that? Pretty close to nothing. It just seems fundamentally unserious to crucify Huang when worst stuff goes unexamined, like maybe all that’s really happened is he’s crossed the United States and its oligarchs and now he’s being punished.
It reminds me a little bit about how Putin would destroy his oligarchic enemies with corruption investigations. Were they corrupt? Absolutely! Everyone was! But their true crime was getting on Putin’s bad side.
It’s like justice unequally applied is injustice. You can see it international relations. Sure, we might pick up an occassional ethnic cleanser, or sanction an unruly warlord, but the United States and Israel get to do whatever the fuck they want, and now because the ICC is finally seriously investigating the US, they might be disbanded.
It’s all a farce.
A major difference between Trump and Huang is that Trump is the president, for now, his party controls all three branches of the US government, and for now, he still has an iron grip over his party. It’s no surprise that he’s not being investigated under those conditions. In addition, any crimes happened at least a decade ago, and there are lots of other powerful people who don’t want the crimes investigated.
With Jensen Huang, the incident just happened, or maybe was ongoing. So, we’re not relying on faded memories or censored documents. There are photos of him with the woman from a few months(?) ago. Also, it involved nobody else, so it’s not some grand conspiracy that a lot of people are trying to keep quiet. And while he’s the CEO of the company, he doesn’t have any control over the investors in the company, so he couldn’t stop the stock price from plummeting. If it were a private company instead of a public one, he’d probably still be in charge. If it were things that happened a decade ago, he’d probably still be in charge. Finally, he’s a hecto-billionaire because of his nVidia stock, and his stock was plummeting because he was still CEO. The quickest solution to keep his own wealth was to resign. I doubt he’ll be charged with anything because he’s a hecto-billionaire and the AI bubble is propping up the stock market. He’ll probably do an apology tour and be back in charge at nVidia in a few years.
As for the ICC, the US never joined the ICC so it has no jurisdiction over the US. They’re not going to investigate the US because the US isn’t a member. And, when the ICC investigated people that Trump didn’t want investigated (Israelis, not Americans because America isn’t part of the ICC) Trump had US companies cut them off. Since American companies are so tied into the modern world, this meant lots of ICC personnel were effectively isolated from the world. Unless and until the US joins the ICC, the ICC won’t be investigating Americans. But, hopefully the new US congress will allow the ICC to continue its work without being harassed by the Trump admin.
All true. Especially