NVIDIA CEO ジェンスン・ファンの「4700億ドルの不倫」スキャンダル

AI can make businesses faster. It can also make mistakes, expose data, and execute the wrong instructions faster. ThreatLocker helps organizations set boundaries AI cannot ignore by controlling what applications can run, what they can reach, and how they interact with sensitive resources. Innovation needs more than good intentions. It needs limits. Control AI with zero trust at threatlocker.com slash wired. That's T-H-R-E-A-T-L-O-C-K-E-R dot com slash wired. Hey, this is Brian. If you've been listening for a while and you haven't rated or reviewed the podcast yet, this is your sign. Give us a rating, tell us what you think. Five stars is nice, but we'll take the feedback too. It really helps more people find the show. Okay, on to the show. Welcome to Wired's Uncanny Valley. I'm Brian Barrett, Executive Editor. I'm Zoe Schiffer, Contributing Editor. And I'm Leah Feiger, Director of Politics and Science.

This week, we're getting into the scandal that has had everyone talking. On Sunday, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang admitted to having an affair with a businesswoman who U.S. intelligence says is also a Chinese spy. The affair has brought up all kinds of questions, from what information might have been leaked to China, to why the White House has previously warned about the relationship but didn't do much about it, seemingly. We're taking a step back and discussing what this whole mess means for the AI industry at large, and for the future of the chip export controls that Jensen Long has pushed back against for so long. And after last week's Democratic sweep in the midterms, you would think that the far right would be kind of hiding in the corner, licking their wounds. Instead, now white nationalists, Christian nationalists, and the Proud Boys have declared that the MAGA movement is dead and the Republican Party is theirs for the taking. We're going to get into what these groups are saying and why they see the election results as an opportunity. Okay, so this past weekend, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang sent a message to his employees that no CEO ever wants to write.

He admitted, basically, that he has been having an affair with this woman, Alice Huang, the same last name, no relation. I keep laughing at that. I'm like, the only way the scandal could be more insane is if they were like second cousins or something, but in fact, no. It has made, and this is not something people care about necessarily, but it does make writing these stories a little bit trickier because you have to sort of switch back to first names for a while. Anyway, yes, but not the point. I'm like, I feel like it's fairly obvious that they're not related. However, yeah, I guess you do need to say it out loud. The New York Times has been reporting for weeks that U.S. intelligence identified she was recruited by China's Ministry of State Security, basically they're like CIA, to gather information on him. NVIDIA's board has now opened an investigation into this incident, and Huang is absolutely, like, staying in charge, at least for now while this all plays out. But this whole saga has been both a very embarrassing PR nightmare with potential national security consequences, and it has the company on track to lose more than $470 billion in market value over just two days.

It's an unbelievable amount of money for an also unbelievable story. Story, honeypotting in this day and age, incredible stuff. Zoe, I'm sorry to be this person, but can you take us through like year by year, what we knew, when we knew it? Because this whole scandal didn't just break in the last couple of days. Let me go back to 2023. This is when Megaspeed, the company that Alice Wong is in charge of, was created and it splits off from a Chinese gaming company. just a few months after the U.S. began restricting advanced chip exports to China. And the reason that this is important is a couple of things. Number one, Malaysia, where this company is operating out of, almost immediately when the export controls become a thing, is like identified as a very obvious loophole. Malaysia doesn't have a big AI industry. So if you see big data centers copying up and they're full of NVIDIA chips, you can be sure that those ships are actually on their way to China.

And in fact, it looks like most people in Silicon Valley and in the Trump administration were aware of this. And it just wasn't a huge deal. The other thing that's worth saying is that Alice Wong was a former TV journalist. This is not someone with a computer science background. is not the person you would expect to be in charge of, like, a company that becomes a very big part, a very important part of NVIDIA's business. So in 2024, Jensen begins appearing in public with Alice Wong. Around this time, they're photographed together multiple times. Their body language is a little bit funny. So there are, like, whispers starting at least inside the company. and again Megaspeed begins multi-billion dollar purchases of advanced NVIDIA chips which looks a little sus and I think it's very, very, very difficult some might say impossible to imagine that Jensen isn't fully aware of where the chips are headed Yeah, well because he's and he also has been very vocal about saying

I think China should have chips Few AI executives have had as much sway over Trump's approach to AI and China as Huang, and he's made his position incredibly clear multiple times. I did my best to inform the policymakers in the United States of the importance of engaging the Chinese market and making sure that we serve that market for as long as we can. I've been very clear that even though, although we compete against China, they're not our enemies. If we care deeply about the safety of the world with respect to artificial intelligence, then of course we must open dialogues. We must work with them in every possible way. And he was vocal about this before he and Alice knew each other. This is a core part of his belief system. The kind of two theories are either you sell advanced chips to China and thus China becomes reliant on U.S. chips and maybe they don't build their own industry.

or you don't and you hope that you kind of kneecap them in the short term and your AI industry is able to, like, stay far enough ahead that it's not a huge problem. But Jensen has a very legitimate, I think, argument here. Obviously now he's, like, never allowed to talk about expert controls ever again because he's going to flow. I bet he will, though. I bet he will. I mean, maybe. But it's like China does do this. They make competitive hardware all the time. and then underprice it And so it harms U industry And I think that you know in addition to this being a very good business play like NVIDIA could have doubled its business because China is going through the same data center build out that the U is He also, you know, had a national security argument that wasn't totally far fetched. And I think he also, I've heard of argue, it's a related point, but I think if China builds their own competitive chips, then they'll build their own whole tech stack. And you'll have this entire world of AI that is largely open source, open weight, broadly accessible, that the U.S. is totally shut out of because it's not just NVIDIA chips, it's everything around them.

So setting the merits of it aside, the point is, it's not like Alice Wong said, hey, Jensen, have you heard about China? That's not what this is. Certainly not. And I think, you know, there's a lot of different facets of these arguments. But one that you hear with the open source angle a lot is China will be able to kind of like spread its Chinese AI around the world and gain influence by making a bunch of other countries dependent on their technology instead of U.S. technology. And like that in and of itself would be a big threat. I think you really can't overstate the importance of Jensen Wang with the China conversation in the U.S. Like he is not only the leading voice. I think he's one of the only prominent voices among like Silicon Valley CEOs who has taken this stance of we should work closer with them. Everybody else is running the other direction as fast as they can. And between that and the Democrats coming in, I really do wonder what this is going to mean for our relationship with China.

I assume nothing great. I assume, you know, it's when you lose a voice like that, Trump is still swayable, probably. But who's there to slam? Yeah. And to be clear, China has already come out and said that Alice is not a Chinese spy. And how dare anyone suggest otherwise. So take me to who knew what and when. Can we talk about the Marco Rubio thing of it all? Yeah, so this is kind of the question. So during Trump's latest return to the White House, he and Jensen become quite close. And this is a switch for Jensen, who previously wasn't political. You had other CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, who were kind of known liberals, Democrats, and then made a big switch with Trump's return to the White House. Jensen wasn't like that. He was kind of apolitical and then decided to go all in on Trump, and they seemingly became quite close. And, you know, behind the scenes, Jensen is advocating for his point of view.

He wants special exemptions so that he can sell chips to China. He certainly doesn't want Trump cracking down on the Malaysia of it all, this obvious loophole in export controls. And this makes people like Marco Rubio and other China hawks not so happy, to say the very least. And so at some point, the government becomes aware that there is this affair going on. And Marco Rubio drafts a memo that starts circulating around the White House, basically saying like, hey, this is happening and we think that it's a problem. We don't know who, but someone takes that opportunity to leak the memo to the press and make Jensen look really bad. And the timing of this is crucial because Jensen is more vulnerable in this moment, I think, than he has been in recent past because Democrats just took the House. And so while previously, like, you know, Elizabeth Warren asked him to come testify before the Senate thinking committee, and he essentially said, no, thank you.

I think it's fair to imagine that he's not going to have that option again. And in fact, he's been invited to a closed-door briefing by three Republican House committee chairs on November 18th, so that may be coming sooner than later. Let's talk next CEO. Have there been any rumors or conversations about who would take over? I don't think so. No, I don't think there's an obvious name. I mean, I've been talking to a lot of people in Silicon Valley about this this week, and I have yet to find a CEO who's like, they should get rid of Jensen. But everyone, almost everyone has been like, it is such a red flag that he didn't see the obvious red flags of this random TV journalist who's in charge of this seemingly shell company that is obviously selling ships to China. the whole thing is just incredibly irresponsible at the very very least and i think that that's

going to continue to come up i think one thing i keep going back to is that nvidia is such a different company than it was five years ago four years ago this like for for almost 30 of the years he was building a really great gpus for gaming laptops business and it's only the last three years that he has become, you know, ascended to the top of the mountain because those chips happen to also be very good for AI. Well, yeah, yes. And he did make a bet that that was going to be a really important business and that bet like enormously paid off. But when you talk to people in Silicon Valley who worked at NVIDIA 10 years ago, they will be like, I worked for lame NVIDIA. I worked for NVIDIA when the stock was like, like they always differentiate the people who work for this phase of the company, which is explosive growth, leading, you know, it's worth, what, $4 trillion. It's leading the AI industry. Jensen, until this moment, could do absolutely no wrong. And the company before that was, like Brian said, making gaming chips and was

kind of like, what? Yeah. Not taking away anything from him. He proactively made that bet and is responsible for NVIDIA's success. It is just, I remember lame NVIDIA. And to see all of this happening to new NVIDIA boggles the mind. I know that last week, I, again, shout out to the politics team. Everyone came on over. We wrenched the episode away from you two and discussed all sorts of midterms results, including how the country has really apparently turned away from Silicon Valley. It's been sort of amazing over the last week to watch everyone fully feel their reactions to all of this. Shout out to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, who is now a Democrat once more. Everyone's feeling things is all I have to say. But I would have to add that one of my favorite storylines that Wired is staying on top of is white nationalists and extremists seeing this as a massive opportunity So on Election Day last week white nationalist Nick Fuentes can believe we still saying his name in this day and age

he urged his supporters on X to, quote, get out and vote Democrat. The post racked up over 12 million views, and hours later, when the Democrats performed so well, Fuentes took credit for the victory, writing, quote, we did it again on Telegram, And he later called it the Groiper effect in reference to the nickname given to his followers. He sees the Democratic Party winning as part of a larger strategy for the far right to take over. He's not the only one that felt this way. David Gilbert, senior politics at Wired, reviewed a number of comments from white supremacists, Christian nationalists, other far right groups in the wake of the midterm results. That shows much of the same. These groups basically said that Donald Trump did not go far enough. That's why they didn't win. But now that they didn't win, this is a way for them to get back in the saddle. I know that this logic is a little bit weird here, but stay with me. There is part of it that I look at and go, yeah, of course there's an opportunity for them.

In the last year and a half of Donald Trump being in office, you didn't really need the Proud Boys terrorizing immigrants on the street. You had ICE. You did not need a variety of rights being taken away from trans people. That was happening in the DOJ. This so many different platforms that these groups espouse were being taken over by the Trump administration themselves, which they had promised these groups in effect. So all of these folks have been sort of sitting idly by, hanging out, talking to each other online, with not a whole lot to do, which in theory sounds nice, except for the fact that all a white supremacist really wants is to be needed, it turns out. And now the call to action is here. Leah. Hit me. My first question is you mentioned opportunity, and they see this as an opportunity for whatever. These people are also, how much of it is Nick Fontace and his ilk seeing an opportunity for their movement versus an opportunity to draw attention to themselves,

which is what so often this is about? You know what I mean? Like, how do we separate that out? For sure. I mean, look, I don't think we're going to be able to for a while. But you're absolutely right, because there, again, has been no need to call attention to their play. They're like, Proud Boys are like, guys, immigrants suck. the entire Trump administration is like, we're with you. This is not new info. So the idea of drawing attention, perhaps getting more supporters from people who are so devastated from this Democratic sweep is part and parcel of the plan here. But wait, just so I understand the quote unquote plan, their theory is that they're going to help Democrats get elected, then Democrats will screw up their experience of being in power and thus people will be more disillusioned. And in the meantime, they'll be taking over the void that was left by the MAGA movement. And so then when they go to the right again, they'll be going to the proper way. That's basically it. Minus the part at the beginning about them like, quote unquote, helping Democrats take

over that. I'm not giving them any sort of credit for that. This is just Nick Fuentes, you know, kind of. Right. I'm just trying to understand their logic. It's solid. It's either tremendous cope or 5D chess. And I think I know where I, I think I know what side I'm coming down on. Yeah. 5D chess. It's 5D chess. And that's 100% true. But I do want to talk about this other stat that I'm going to spend a little bit of time thinking about in the coming weeks. And I think that we're all going to have to contend with it a little bit, which is that many extremist candidates still won their seats. While some of the Republican Party's extremist candidates were rejected, the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights was tracking 535 candidates in statewide races who are members of at least one far-right Facebook group. So I'm not even just talking about, like, tweeted something one time. No, no, no. Like, they are members of these various groups. And still using Facebook.

And still using Facebook. Which should be disqualifying in some way. The biggest red flag of all. So of the 476 races that were called by last Friday, we now have more that have been called. It's just been taking everyone a while to kind of pull everything together. 338 of those candidates won, which is a 71% win rate. To be clear, the vast majority of these races saw GOP incumbents keep their seats. These were GOP heavy arenas, which is all just to say, though, that extremism didn't necessarily go anywhere, even if part of this is perhaps going to be taking a little bit of a winding direction. The reason I think this is interesting and we have to discuss it at all, even if it is, you know, COPE or 5D chess, is 2028 is around the corner. And if any of these groups are able to mobilize in any sort of way, link up with election denial folks and like actually get kind of re-inspired by MAGA in general, if, big if, 2028 could look a little bit different than Democrats want it to.

I'm just going to say before we end this segment that, boy, was I wrong about what was going to happen during the election. I personally think Republicans are going to do great in the midterms, but you can cut that because I am not reporting on politics. And that's just my vibe check. Every time I have a hot take as a journalist, it turns out poorly for me. I'm so happy I'm not that kind of journalist, but I just, you know, credit where credit is due. That was not my moment. I don't think it was anyone's moment. And that's the wild part. We all said, like, you know, DEMs are going to do pretty well, but I don't think that there's very few who had any idea about the majorities that we were looking at. Coming up after the break, we have a special edition of Why You're Tired this week. Stay with us. AI tools can write code, access files, connect to the Internet, and execute commands at a speed no human can match. That productivity is powerful, but it also means one bad instruction or compromised tool can quickly become a security incident.

ThreatLocker helps organizations use AI without losing control. Put zero-trust guardrails around tools like ClaudeCode and control exactly what they can execute, access, and connect to. Set clear boundaries around the applications, files, systems, and online destinations your AI tools are permitted to use. Because approving an AI tool should not mean giving it unrestricted access to your environment. Control what runs. Control what it can do Control what it connects to Learn how ThreatLocker can help you safely embrace AI at ThreatLocker slash Wired That T dot com slash Wired From Vanity Fair, I'm Mark Aducci, and I want to tell you about our new show, Fair Game. On every episode of Fair Game, I'll sit down with a leading character in our culture, from the worlds of Hollywood, politics, style, Silicon Valley, and beyond. Fair Game is a deep dive into some of the personalities that shape our world and the stories that you need to hear. Think everyone and everything that you'd read about in the pages of Vanity Fair. So join me, Mark Aducci, on YouTube, VanityFair.com,

and wherever you listen to podcasts. It's all Fair Game. One day last year, police entered a mansion in L.A. County and discovered the couple that lived there had almost two dozen children, nearly every one of them born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into? I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed. Okay, it is time for our Wired Tired segment. Whatever is new and cool is wired. Whatever is old is tired. But we're doing it a little bit differently this week.

Instead of sharing our personal picks for what's new and exciting this week, we're actually going to take a look at what seems to be in and what is out in this new post-election landscape. Who wants to go first? I'll do one. Okay. I'm going to say in is seasteading, but for data centers. They are, in addition to wanting to send data centers to outer space, there's a push led by a big Peter Thiel investment in a company called Pantalasa that wants to put data centers in the ocean and power them by waves. The reason there's an acceleration for this, of course, is that Democrats are now in charge of Texas, which is a data center hotspot, and also all of Congress. They're going to be passing all kinds of data center bills, probably. There's going to be a big pullback, or at least people are worried about that, for domestic data center build-outs. So look to the oceans where no one can stop you. That's in. Incredible. Okay, mine is Woke 1 versus Woke 2.

Does this mean anything to you? Damn it. I'm sorry you were going to say. Okay, well, we can talk about it. No, you go for it. Go for it. So previously, I feel like Woke One was kind of not the most humorous. It felt like the right kind of had the we're speaking truth to power, we're going to make fun of everything, you know, thing handled. And the left liberals were more sanctimonious, I think we can say. One thing that I saw immediately after the election was like, I'm calling it Woke Two humoring together. People are saying that now. This rise of like, we're in on the joke. We're going to make jokes about how we love pronouns and inclusivity and DEI and kind of own that storyline. In a way, I don't know. The X that night, Blue Sky that night, I was laughing. There were some good ones. So good. Living out is in. Millennial optimism is back. Wow. You know, the gift that keeps on giving. I'll say what's out is whatever techno-libertarian political views you had as a CEO before the election are by and large out.

Manifestos are out. Manifestos are out. I don't want to read another 20,000-word manifesto from a techno-libertarian 22-year-old that's telling me that Peter Thiel actually is the person who should be in charge of my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Totally. Out. They're out. And instead, we have a delightful tweet from Sam Altman just after the election saying, people should always be in control of the future. And we have Palantir CEO Alex Karp saying that he's always been. He thinks of Palantir as progressive technology. I think of anyone that works with ICE as progressive. That's always been the case, right? They're progressing towards something, yeah. That's our show for today. We'll link to all the stories we spoke about in the show notes. Adriana Tapia produced this episode. It was mixed by Pran Bandy, who's also our New York studio engineer. It was fact-checked by Matt Giles and Daniel Roman. Kate Osborne is our executive producer,

and Katie Drummond is where it's global editorial director. AI tools can write code, access files, connect to the internet, and execute commands at a speed no human can match. That productivity is powerful, but it also means one bad instruction or compromised tool can quickly become a security incident. ThreatLocker helps organizations use AI without losing control. Put zero-trust guardrails around tools like Claude Code and control exactly what they can execute, access, and connect to. Set clear boundaries around the applications, files, systems, and online destinations your AI tools are permitted to use. because approving an AI tool should not mean giving it unrestricted access to your environment. Control what runs, control what it can do, control what it connects to. Learn how ThreatLocker can help you safely embrace AI at ThreatLocker.com slash Wired. That's T-H-R-E-A-T-L-O-C-K-E-R dot com slash Wired.

One day last year, police entered a mansion in L.A. County and discovered the couple that lived there had almost two dozen children. Nearly every one of them born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived. I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into? I'm Ava Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed. Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co-host of the Run-Through podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access path into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott, and Simone Belotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, Head of Editorial Content at Vogue US, and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's Head of Editorial Content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture

with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the Run-Through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.