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AMD admits GPU driver bug is writing data continuously, wearing out SSDs — Radeon owner claims External Events Utility used up 1% of SSD health every month for over a year, company promises a fix soon tomshardware.com/pc-components/…View quoted post on X
Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu’s take on the recent scandal involving Jensen Huang:View quoted post on X
Why the US Seized on the Scandal to Draw Its Sword: Three Strategic Objectives
The purpose of this scandal is by no means to expose an affair. It is to force through three critical objectives that had made no headway in the tech war between the US and China because Jensen Huang opposed them.
The first cut: Completely destroy the legitimacy of Jensen Huang's lobbying against sanctions in Washington
Over the past two years, the loudest and most influential business leader in Silicon Valley opposing a total ban on chip exports to China has been Jensen Huang. He has told the White House the same thing all along: "Cede the Chinese market to Huawei, and the only one that ends up dead is the American tech industry."
But the moment US intelligence labels the woman named as Huang's affair partner "a spy working for China's Ministry of State Security who sought to steer the US toward easing its chip controls," every bit of lobbying he has done for looser controls takes on an entirely different political meaning. It becomes a national security matter, raising the possibility that a foreign spy used a secret relationship to exert influence.
Huang can no longer say a single word in defense of the Chinese market before Congress or the White House. If he does, he will be branded as someone who "fell for an intelligence operation and still hasn't come to his senses."
The second cut: Reverse the H200 export approvals for China and sever the link between Chinese shell companies and Southeast Asian smuggling networks
Look at the timing of the two reports.
On November 8, the very day the Jensen Huang scandal broke, The New York Times published an investigation for which its reporters went in person to dozens of Chinese companies that the US Commerce Department had approved to handle Nvidia's H200 chips. New Matrix in Beijing was one of them. According to the report, the registered addresses of companies approved to buy the chips turned out to be empty "ghost offices," and some of the companies had close ties to entities on US sanctions lists and to firms under contract with the Chinese military.
One exposé says Nvidia's CEO was having an affair with a female spy from Megaspeed, the Singapore company that handled the chip smuggling. The other says the Chinese companies Commerce approved to buy H200s are nothing but shell companies trading on behalf of the Chinese military. The aim of these two reports is clear. They are meant to pressure the Trump administration and the Commerce Department into fully revoking or freezing H200 export approvals for China and, going further, to force a sweeping overhaul of the loophole that let chips be diverted through data centers run by third parties in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
The third cut: Put Nvidia on a national security leash through congressional oversight and an independent investigation
As the world's largest company by market cap and the dominant force in AI, Nvidia has until now enjoyed broad autonomy in how it runs its business. But in the wake of this incident, the three congressional committees responsible for China, foreign affairs, and intelligence have begun examining Nvidia's internal security measures directly. They have even pressured Nvidia's board into forming an independent investigation committee to look into the company's own founder and CEO.
In effect, Washington's national security establishment has planted a watchdog right inside Nvidia's board. From now on, the goal is to make sure that everything, down to where each and every one of Nvidia's high performance chips ends up, conforms strictly to US national security strategy. It also means there is no more room for skirting the edge of the rules or releasing chips with specs specially tailored to regulatory thresholds.
Conclusion
"The scandal was a detonator set off right on cue. The real goal was to plug the holes chips were leaking through."
Jensen Huang made the fatal mistake of letting his guard down in his private life and personal relationships. In the end, he fell into a honey trap, the textbook tactic of intelligence warfare, and was compromised. America's national security and intelligence agencies ruthlessly exploited the weakness his private life had exposed. As a result, they solved three thorny problems in a single stroke: Nvidia's lobbying at the White House to ease restrictions on China, the flow of H200 chips into Chinese shell companies, and smuggling routed through Singapore.
The closed congressional hearing set for November 18 will be the decisive turning point at which the US moves in earnest to tighten its sanctions on China's AI compute even further.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has admitted to cheating on his wife after revealing he had an affair with Alice Huang, an executive now at the centre of a suspected Chinese spying case.
US intelligence officials suspect Alice Huang of working for China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information about Nvidia.
The company’s board has launched an independent investigation. Huang apologised to his wife, children and employees, saying:
“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.”
“I take full responsibility for what I did and the hurt I caused.”View quoted post on X
