What they care about is the US leading China on every militarily and economically relevant technology.
The hawks have long chafed at Huang’s position that we need to sell our best chips to China to keep them on the US tech stack. It’s very obviously giving them the ability to catch up.
Energy is the hard part, and US is deeply behind on that.
If I ignore the words, and instead observe behaviour, all of the actions I observe indicate the opposite;potential competitors are treated as very credible threats, even existential ones; and actions indicate that 'maintaining special access to hardware' and 'vying for regulatory capture to shut out competition' are major strategic goals.
(Folks run to blow whistles when they realize they're involved in something they may pay the price for isn't new.
Also, have you seen our IC? The days of the CIA running a competent conspiracy, if they ever existed, are behind us.)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
She could have been his chess partner, and if he'd acted the same way on her behalf it would have been fireable. The sex is immaterial and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't read up on this or is selling something.
The sex is just the icing on top of the poor judgement.
When some dude's sex life quashes an investigation into Megaspeed, yeah, it becomes germane. (There are serious questions around Lutnick, for example [1].)
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2026/11/11/answer-in-front-of-...
I don't get it. Huang doesn't get to decide who chips can't be sold to. Presumably Huang wants to sell chips to everyone whether or not he's fucking them. Nvidia will always say yes to another billion dollars. It's up to the state department to say no.
If Lutnick was sleeping with a Chinese spy and approved the sale, sure throw him in jail. If Huang secretly bribed Lutnick to approve the sale, sure throw them both in jail. But that's not what we're seeing?
What am I missing? Seriously, ELI5.
You’re absolutely correct that we have no smoking gun in the public record. What we have, instead, is smoke. Lots of it.
> What am I missing?
"Investigators at the Commerce Department were deep into a monthslong investigation of a Singaporean company that they suspected of smuggling Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chips into China when their work came to a sudden halt late last year.
The investigation centered on Megaspeed, a data center company led by an executive who U.S. officials now believe to be a Chinese spy who had a relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang.
But the case was abruptly transferred to the Justice Department last year. The shift came after Commerce Department investigators working on the case received an email from Nvidia’s general counsel seeking information about the inquiry into Megaspeed.
It is not necessarily unusual for Commerce Department agents working on a case to speak with a company’s representatives about issues involving their firm. But what was unusual was the content of the message. Tim Teter, Nvidia’s general counsel, said that Jeff Kessler, a top official at the department, had given Nvidia permission to reach out about the case.
The agents were alarmed that Nvidia had invoked the name of Mr. Kessler, their superior, who was nominated to his role by President Trump. Some viewed Mr. Kessler’s interaction with Nvidia as violating government procedure and potentially tainting the case, according to current and former government officials and others familiar with the incident” [1].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/11/09/business/economy/nvidia-m...
Maybe the board knows more, and that's why they are "preparing to oust" him. Or maybe it's about the sex scandal.
I don't have money in NVDA but if I did I would certainly want him to stay at his desk until we have the actual gun.
He caused Nvidia to violate export-control law. To help a Chinese intelligence asset’s company. He then corruptly quashed the investigation using Nvidia’s resources. Those are crimes.
> I don't have money in NVDA but if I did I would certainly want him to stay at his desk
I do have money in Nvidia. I want Huang gone. If he stays, there is a real chance the hammer about to fall on him destroys Nvidia as well.
That’s before the shareholder and supplier lawsuits extract billions from the company. Before states’ AGs extract more. Before the Congress lobs a grenade at a Silicon Valley that honestly doesn’t seem to get why this behaviour is contemptible.
This seems awfully handwavy. Civilians don't get to quash investigations.
The legality will depend on what we find under that handwaving, but I doubt very much we will find personal checks written to Lutnik.
I have to ask: If he hadn't slept with the woman, would you feel the same way about the whole affair? If not, why does the sex matter?
Correct. It's called corruption.
> I doubt very much we will find personal checks written to Lutnik
You don't need this to trigger undue influence issues.
> If he hadn't slept with the woman, would you feel the same way about the whole affair?
Yes. That seems to have blown open the scheme Jensen was running [1], possibly with the knowledge of the White House.
I'm flying from Silicon Valley to New York today. The bubble that has people publicly calling this a nothing burger is the exact reason Americans are furious and fed up with our tech sector's leaders.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/nvidias-disappearing-s...
That's why Huang doesn't get to decide whether chips should be sold to China. He can advocate all he wants, speech is cheap.
Wasn’t the swap drained in 2016 too?
Within weeks I saw the naked racism and left the whole party behind. Having learned more about Trump and Republicans since has been ... humiliating after decades of voting 'R'.
Wherever you land on your views in the future, being willing to question everything is a superpower.
Onward!
I can imagine people souring over lack of follow through on economic promises, or the naked corruption with your $coins, but from a racism/xenophobia/morals perspective, I'd feel like most of the signal was there in the 2016 campaign was it not?
The mask-off racism was just beyond the pale, and lead me to look deeper into his past and how he was starting to govern. It became obvious that he'd mostly cheated or lucked his way into fortune and fame.
> Morally I didn't expect him to personally be a paragon of virtue.
Lot of people respond with this, but honestly, that is setting up a straw man to knock down isn't it? No one claims that we should expect any politician to be a paragon of virtue but in terms of how they conduct themselves and the language they choose, there is still a reasonable bar that Trump blew past and set an awful precedent.
Now that's something I'd like everyone to believe, if I was the CIA.
Huang had an affair with a Chinese spy, as well as an affair with someone he manages. Either one of these would be grounds for dismissal at any company I've worked at. Committing both of these offenses shows appalling judgment by Huang.
Firing him seems like a very logical conclusion, not some CIA Illuminati bullshit conspiracy theory.
This scandal has felt like a litmus test for free market idealists vs realpolitik thinkers. Nvidia's board and Trump both knew about the spying allegations for over a year, allegedly. This is not a situation you can navigate with strong principles or a moral compass, you just have to follow the money.
Paraphrasing the apocryphal quote:
Anti-corruption never took root in America because the commoners see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed future CEOs.
This is up there with the most fireable things that have ever happened.
You’re looking for a conspiracy when this is a pretty straightforward story. Jensen’s credibility is shot. Of course they’re preparing contingency plans.
I've already heard stories in social circles in Silicon Valley from senior folks in the industry that they didn't share before. Not because they were hiding anything. But because it wasn't topical. There are a lot of scumbags, and there is a lot of corruption to go around right now.
The first story came from sources close to the White House, or something along those lines. Makes sense since it was a national security issue. The second story is internal to the company.
Very plausible non conspiracy explanation: after the first story came out the exec he was having an affair with was pissed to discover she was in fact the other other woman and went to a reporter.
If someone thinks there is not a lot of sex going on in the c-suite maybe you need to get out more.
Nvidia has a large market share, but AMD, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, OpenAI, Qualcomm all produce AI chips... these are all American companies.
Apple has no product like the SuperPOD, or AMD's CDNA, or Google's TPU, or Amazon's Trainium, or OpenAI's Jalapeño, so on and so forth.