For those of us outside the rarefied air of Fortune 50 boardrooms, what does this mean? I don't imagine the Nvidia board actually does anything, but rather appoints a law firm to interview people, compile documentation, etc etc.
But is this common? Does it have a good ending? What happens if the law firm uncovers some spying?
"Uncovers some spying" - there are 4 different things they might find:
* Jensen divulged national security information
* Jensen divulged NVidia sensitive information
* Jensen outright agreed to do things for Alice (beyond normal and on the level business agreements)
* Jensen unconsciously acted in ways that were favourable for Alice
It's basically impossible to prove the last case. I highly doubt they will find evidence of the 3rd. I think Jensen probably did not do any of the first. If they find anything at all, it will be the second category.
That's the factual part of the investigation.
I imagine the conclusions and framing of the investigation will be held up until its clearer how the political and financial winds are blowing, and the investigation will happily line up with however NVidia (and maybe USG) wants to clean house.
> 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.
> 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.
> In the interview, Huang said that his interactions with her were typical of those with Chinese customers and executives. She’s no longer with Megaspeed, he said.
> “Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” Huang said.
CEO publicly caught lying cannot have a good ending.
https://archive.is/VfRdl
If he were a spy for China's National Security Bureau, the news wouldn't have been written like this.
For those of us outside the rarefied air of Fortune 50 boardrooms, what does this mean? I don't imagine the Nvidia board actually does anything, but rather appoints a law firm to interview people, compile documentation, etc etc.
But is this common? Does it have a good ending? What happens if the law firm uncovers some spying?
"Uncovers some spying" - there are 4 different things they might find:
* Jensen divulged national security information
* Jensen divulged NVidia sensitive information
* Jensen outright agreed to do things for Alice (beyond normal and on the level business agreements)
* Jensen unconsciously acted in ways that were favourable for Alice
It's basically impossible to prove the last case. I highly doubt they will find evidence of the 3rd. I think Jensen probably did not do any of the first. If they find anything at all, it will be the second category.
That's the factual part of the investigation.
I imagine the conclusions and framing of the investigation will be held up until its clearer how the political and financial winds are blowing, and the investigation will happily line up with however NVidia (and maybe USG) wants to clean house.
> 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.
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.
> In the interview, Huang said that his interactions with her were typical of those with Chinese customers and executives. She’s no longer with Megaspeed, he said.
> “Our relationship, our interactions, have been related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual,” Huang said.
CEO publicly caught lying cannot have a good ending.
CEOs regularly lie in public with zero consequence.
Where's the lie?
> Nvidia Board to Probe Spying Case After CEO Admits Infidelity
https://archive.is/VfRdl
> I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/a-message-to-our-company
Some more discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50416801
surprised Grok didn't release the sex tapes yet ...