> ...so long as the business is not affected.

This isn't some hypothetical situation. The woman Huang admitted having an affair with was an executive at a data center company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips and is suspected of having smuggled them to China.

She was allegedly recruited by China's Ministry of State Security to not only gather intelligence from Huang but to try to influence him to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. We don't know how "influential" she was but pushing for less stringent export controls on Nvidia's chips is exactly what Huang has been doing.

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somenameforme 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests. US leadership keeps making the same dumb mistake. When you restrict access to some advanced technology to another technologically advanced country, it's not like the other country just cries and beg you to give it back. Nothing is so advanced that it can't be replicated.

So you going from the other country being fully dependent upon you (putting you at an economic/geopolitical edge) to urgently incentivizing them to make their own advances in the restricted industry, which may eventually surpass your own achievements. For instance the Wolf Amendment [1] is the reason China was never allowed on the 'international' ISS. [1] The idea is that they'd just steal all of our tech or something. So it simply led to the Chinese creating their own space station while the ISS continues to deteriorate with no replacement in sight.

Same thing with chips. Come back to this post in ~15 years.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Amendment

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ElProlactin an hour ago | parent [-]

> Less stringent export controls are also what he would and should have been arguing for both as a business executive and, paradoxically, probably even even if he was lobbying for US interests.

You're missing the point, which is that once you've been compromised by a foreign intelligence service, it doesn't matter whether or not what you were lobbying for was logical or "right". What matters is that your relevant actions have been tainted and motivations can no longer be fully trusted, so you lose your credibility.

Nvidia's board is probably going to try to do what it can to look like it's taking this matter seriously without terminating Huang, but that's because there's no succession plan at Nvidia.

Huang's political clout is gone, and he may never get it back.

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somenameforme an hour ago | parent [-]

I'm not missing that at all and I fully agree with you. I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China. Ostensibly it's understandable wanting to get an inside with him, but if his natural path forward aligns with your interest then there's not much to be gained, and a potentially significant amount to lose, because now it will predictably result in knee-jerk reactions.

	▲	ElProlactin 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> I'm just saying his actions don't condemn him in any way... He has lost all credibility. He might remain as CEO of Nvidia, especially because the company doesn't have a succession plan, but this is going to be the end of his political clout for a good long time, perhaps forever. > ...which would also mean it was likely a bad play by China. I don't really think this is the case. China will continue to smuggle chips and work on its own technology regardless. The bottom line is China's MSS successfully compromised one of the world's most powerful executives and the price that will be paid is mostly on the US side. Given that this was disclosed to Trump a while back and he sat on it, don't be surprised if this becomes another big problem for Trump, who is in a horribly vulnerable spot right now after the midterms.

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oooyay 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Do you think that's at competition with what I said? I don't think so. I simply stated that his affair either has the power to be demonstrably important here or not at all. I am responding to threads and threads full of people that seem to mostly care about the fact that he had an affair.

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ElProlactin 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You stated "...so long as the business is not affected."

Let's be clear, again: Huang has admitted an affair with a woman who was an executive at a company that bought billions of dollars of Nvidia chips that may have been smuggled to China, and it turns out she was allegedly a Chinese spy. Her apparent mission: gather intelligence and influence Huang, who has a close relationship with the US president, to lobby for relaxed chip exports to China. Which is what he has been doing.

Huang admitted the affair in an email to company employees, and the Nvidia board of directors has launched an investigation.

By any reasonable definition, the business is clearly affected.

	▲	oooyay an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I don't believe we've established that beyond the fact that the US is kind of moralist and it's important to onlookers. We don't really know whether it's materially affected the business yet.