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TBPN is a live tech talk show hosted by John Coogan and Jordi Hays, streaming weekdays from 11–2 PT on X and YouTube, with full episodes posted to Spotify immediately after airing.
Described by The New York Times as “Silicon Valley’s newest obsession,” TBPN has interviewed Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Mark Cuban, and Satya Nadella. Diet TBPN delivers the best moments from each episode in under 30 minutes.
Let's actually pull up the merch.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pull it up.
Speaker 1:Let's show
Speaker 2:you what we're working with.
Speaker 1:I wear a size large and everything. I'm six one. I'm responding to the chat. We get it, Jordy.
Speaker 2:You're six one. We get it.
Speaker 1:I know that makes me a short king in your world, John, but I'm doing my best. It's okay.
Speaker 2:Flight to transport Most
Speaker 1:underrated item in the drop Yeah. Is our Nicey jacket.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you were going
Speaker 1:Since 1792. Okay. That's a great This jacket, the construction of it, we work with my dear friend, one of my oldest friends in the world, Sebastian, on this drop who spent his whole career in the fashion industry, you know, as a founder. And I'm already losing my voice. This this jacket just turned out amazing.
Speaker 1:Second item that I wanna call out
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Because it is not just an item of clothing, it's a step forward for mankind. True. Because Yeah. Part of the reason this drop took so long is that we were perfecting the the the plain white tea. So you have the TBPN plain white tea.
Speaker 1:People have been working on this for
Speaker 2:decades. Yeah. Decades, generations.
Speaker 1:In in some ways, hundreds of years. And, you know, many many brands before us have tried
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:And failed to make the perfect white t shirt. We could have, you know, come out with a bunch of apparel, you know, over a year ago, but because we were so deep in the lab perfecting this t shirt, it just took time. So thank you for your patience. But finally did it. They said it couldn't be done, but we did it.
Speaker 2:I think... What what was it?
Speaker 1:And it's literally a blank white t shirt, and it just says TBPN on the tag.
Speaker 2:And obviously... So sort of like an if you know on that. Sebastian worked really hard on that. But I think we also put 9,000,000 of compute behind that working on that. Just crunching...
Speaker 1:Don't think we're talking about the exact... Oh, okay. But it was it was a it was quite the swarm.
Speaker 2:Everyone was worried about the swarm.
Speaker 1:No one had applied, you know, 7 figures of test time compute to the white T shirt problem.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. But that's one of the that's one of the benefits of our of our overall strategy here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. TBPN. That's right.
Speaker 2:Cornering the market. Anyway, I wanna I wanna understand your mindset. I wanna understand your mindset because you're losing your voice. How do you... How does that make you feel?
Speaker 2:Good. You think you might not be able to do the show tomorrow? You have the opportunity.
Speaker 1:I have the opportunity to do this show tomorrow.
Speaker 2:You're feeling a little stuffy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just... I got... I think I got a frog in my throat.
Speaker 2:Good. Good. You're you're a little stuffy? You're a little sleepy today? Good.
Speaker 2:You have the opportunity to get better podcasting while sleepy? Good. Yeah. We're in the Jocko Willock mindset right now. This is this is what will take you into the future for sure.
Speaker 2:You know who needs to, embrace the Jocko Willock mindset? NVIDIA shareholders. Jensen Huang got caught with a second extramarital affair. Good. You have the opportunity to get another job, work
Speaker 1:with you. I need a, you know, transition
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Because We can transition. This is the greatest business tragedy of my lifetime.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And the whole thing is, like, so unfortunate, so disappointing, irrespective of the fact that Jensen seemingly made the decision to have have these affairs and bears, you know, responsibility for that. But it doesn't stop the situation overall from being, like, deeply, you know, tragic for pretty much everyone involved.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You called me yesterday, and I was a little under the weather still. And you said, like, you know, a a second affair has hit the timeline related to NVIDIA. And I didn't put it together that it was Jensen and the vice president of health care at NVIDIA. I just thought it was something else going on in the chaotic NVIDIA world.
Speaker 2:It was in fact related to, him. The news is Jensen Huang resigned as CEO this morning less than twenty four hours after it was reported that he has second affair, this time with a colleague who reported directly to him. The New York Times says the relationship was with Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA's chief... VP of health care, and that the two were seen being affectionate at a San Jose hotel during GTC in March. And so NVIDIA CEO...
Speaker 2:CFO, Colette Kress, will be taking over as interim CEO. We'll take you through her career and and what this means for the company. While the board searches for a permanent replacement, she's been at NVIDIA since 2013. So a lot of people... There's there's some people on the timeline that are like, this is not that big of a deal, but it is, of course, an enormous deal because first, it's a spy.
Speaker 1:Second Who's saying it's not that big of deal?
Speaker 2:Plenty of people that are in the team Jensen. If you go through the timeline
Speaker 1:Oh. It's pretty evenly his situation is not that big of a deal. I think the implications of of Jensen being out, I don't think anyone
Speaker 2:Oh, true. True. True. True. But that's...
Speaker 2:But but there are definitely people.
Speaker 1:But you're putting this into perspective, like, has been running and building NVIDIA longer than I have been alive. Yeah. My entire life up until this morning, Jensen has been CEO
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:Of NVIDIA Yeah. Running it day in and day out. Yeah. And coming from a different era where founders didn't have, you know, extreme control over their businesses. Right?
Speaker 1:So despite being founder led this whole time
Speaker 2:He doesn't have super boating, you mean?
Speaker 1:In that much of a different situation than like a hired gun CEO.
Speaker 2:Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah. In
Speaker 1:that he had a board that has been incredibly loyal and it's obviously very easy to be loyal when your stock has... When when a CEO is leading the company through this sort of, like, historic appreciation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But affair with a subordinate is, I believe, like, a very, very clear line in the sand in the NVIDIA code of conduct applies to everyone. It's a legal issue immediately. It's not a complex morality debate or question about how does this impact his relationship with his family. And none of that matters.
Speaker 2:It's cut and dry. It's... The board has a job to do in this case because it's it's specifically with someone who do reports directly to you at the company, which is against the rules that NVIDIA has agreed to and put forward and created a whole structure around, like every company has. But it's worth restating that this is... I I saw someone as soon as the news drop...
Speaker 2:Dropped said relationship with the subordinate, it's done deal. He's out. And and they were correct. And now Colette Kress is running the company. So she's been at NVIDIA since 2013.
Speaker 2:She was always at the top of my list for the most powerful women in tech. There's been a whole push for powerful women in tech, and I've always been just she's been still underrated. Her, Susan Lee, Sarah Fryer. There's so many others. Anat Ashkenazi, Ruth Parrott.
Speaker 2:There's so many powerful women CEOs. Shotwell. Yeah. Yeah. And she's been among them who they haven't a lot...
Speaker 2:She has not been someone who's been talking at conferences constantly and going on the podcast circuit, but clearly immensely powerful, deeply entrenched in the business from going back to 2013, clearly been there during multiple growth stages, multiple contractions, seen every piece of the business. So this personally gives me a lot of confidence to go forward with business as usual for NVIDIA, the company. It is interesting that she's being framed as an interim CEO, not being framed as a potential successor, but we'll see where all this goes. We have Dylan Patel from Semi Analysis coming on the show at noon Okay. To break down a little bit more.
Speaker 1:Business as usual in terms of the operations Yes. And just making sure that the trains run on time. Yes. The big question is around, like
Speaker 2:Deal making.
Speaker 1:Deal making Yep. On the supply chain side, on the on the on the customer side Yes. And on the sort of, like, capital market side. Given the the sort of, like, shake up, I can't... I imagine that that NVIDIA will maybe pump the brakes on some of this, like, sort of wild deal making in terms of, you know, operating as that central bank of AI.
Speaker 2:Two sides of the NVIDIA coin of the business model of the role that NVIDIA plays. One is make GPU, sell GPU. Right? And CollectCres is clearly completely able to go to all of the buyers, understand their demand forecasts, how many GPUs they want, in what quantities, at what time scales, go to manufacturers, get them made and packaged on time, get them delivered on time. That is not the problem.
Speaker 2:Do do you do you debate that? Or...
Speaker 3:I mean, there's something about, like, TSMC famously, the relationship is very much, like, not set in stone.
Speaker 2:It's Yes.
Speaker 3:Based off mutual respect or whatever. Yes. And that's, like, extremely important that they keep that. And it's seems like more and more that's, like, kind of the main moat of of NVIDIA. Sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's kind of
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe you can just use AI to...
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To be able to push aside and and maybe Apple goes back to being the number one important one or or TPU or or Trainium.
Speaker 2:There's a whole bunch of other folks in the chip design and production world that would love to jump to the front of the line at TSMC. So I agree with you. The question of, like, you know, can you still be the central bank of AI without the central banker of AI? That is your core contention. The other question is on talent.
Speaker 2:I think that there is a question, like Jensen is a founder mode CEO and he's an engineer. And if he's now going to be if the new NVIDIA c p... CEO is gonna be competing against the head of the TPU program, the head of AMD, the head of Tranium, the jalapeno. I'm sure Anthropix is working on custom chips. And then we just talked to 12, you know, new chip companies on the show in the last month.
Speaker 2:You have so many different startups where if you're a... An elite level talent, previously, Jensen could give you a call and say, hey. I want you to come into this organization. I want you to work for me. We're the biggest.
Speaker 2:We're growing really fast. I can give you a three x stock appreciation because I just did, and and we can make a big grant for you, and I can do... I can play very aggressively. And, fundamentally, you still are joining a founder led company. So come here instead of going to Google or Amazon or somewhere else or even AMD.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and that pitch becomes more difficult in the post Jensen era when you could be looking at a at an etched, at a at a Cerebras, a jalapeno program, at, you know, Fractile. Like, there's so many of these companies that offer the founder led journey to a prospective hire. And so that is a big big question.
Speaker 1:You know, on the other side, on the on the capital side, it's possible that you go from Jensen acting as the banker, GP, whatever you wanna call it
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:To investment by committee.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which is
Speaker 2:much better....
Speaker 1:Just gonna be a lot slower, which which slows things down.
Speaker 2:Yep. She was a longtime lieutenant of the departing CEO, Jensen Huang, and oversaw the chipmaker's finances during its climb to become one of the world's most valuable companies. A veteran of the tech industry, Kress... I'm reading from the Wall Street Journal. Kress joined NVIDIA in 2013 after holding finance roles at Cisco.
Speaker 2:Let's give it up for Cisco. Microsoft and Texas Instruments. Kress has overseen the aggressive expansion of NVIDIA's balance sheet, which the company has used to provide financial backstops for customers in exchange for buying its artificial intelligence chips. So she's definitely been in the room for the the becoming the central bank of AI. Whether she's been driving that or not is a different discussion, but she's certainly overseen it and
Speaker 1:been Yeah. I would I would hope that when Jensen wants to rip, 20,000,000,000 into something Yeah. He's getting, you know, the the the two thumbs up
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:From Crest first.
Speaker 2:Crest will take over a company that has been badly shaken by the scandal surrounding Wong. NVIDIA has shed more than $600,000,000,000 in market value this week. Huang's departure after two extramarital affairs includes one with suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee is likely to leave lingering scrutiny of both NVIDIA's dealings with China and its huge balance sheet. NVIDIA has used its massive reservoir of cash to bankroll the broader AI industry, a practice Kress has defended. Critics have argued NVIDIA's efforts to prop up demand across the industry has left it more vulnerable to a downturn, but Kress has characterized the deals as savvy investments.
Speaker 2:From her, she said in August, We recognize the scale of this support, and we know that some will call this circular financing. We see it differently. The equity returns on our invested capital will be excellent. And so she has been optimistic about their financing strategy. But again, a lot of these marks are TBD.
Speaker 2:We'll see where the companies land. NVIDIA's corporate governance has come under scrutiny this week as engulfed a scandal engulfed the company. NVIDIA had no succession plan in place for Huang, and its Board had no chair before Thursday when it named longtime Director Harvey C. Jones to that role. The Board has full confidence in Colette to deliver on our commitments to shareholders, customers, partners and to each of you, Jones said in a note to staff.
Speaker 2:The Board is starting to search for the company's next CEO. I saw Doug over at Semi Analysis throwing some names out there. There's a whole bunch of questions. Maybe they'll pull someone from Apple, Maybe from someone from the NVIDIA bench will step up. We'll see.
Speaker 2:There's some other people that are making a name in the surrounding coverage of the NVIDIA Jensen Huang saga. The 31 year old trader, he called out Jensen Huang's China problem, and he shorted NVIDIA six months ago. Six months, no one really noticed. Culper Research's report all that changed this week. Ben Cohen has the story in The Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2:Should I take everyone through this, Jordy?
Speaker 1:Do it.
Speaker 2:So when Christian LaMarco decided to start his own short selling firm, he named it in honor of the spies who gathered intelligence for George Washington during the Revolutionary War. Now he's caught up in his own story involving national security, the president of The United States, and spectacular allegations of modern espionage. Six months ago, Culper Research published a report outlining its case against NVIDIA, which just today is down 5.65%. It opened lower at the open and has popped a little bit, but still down significantly over the last thirty days after the... Over the last six months.
Speaker 2:NVIDIA had become the most valuable company in the world by making chips that power the global AI economy. His investigation raised questions about NVIDIA's business in China and what he called an uncomfortably close relationship between CEO Jensen Huang and a woman named Alice Huang, who was an executive at one of the major the company's major business partners in Southeast Asia. The 40 page report summarized the firm's short position in a simple thesis. This is not a bet against AI, Culper wrote. We are short NVIDIA for one reason: the company has a significant China problem.
Speaker 2:At first, nobody paid much attention to the 31 year old short seller whose research typically focused on companies most people have never heard of. The day his report about one of the most important companies on the planet was published, Jensen Huang touched down in Beijing aboard Air Force One on a state trip with President Trump. And if you remember, that was a very, very odd trip because Jensen was not added to the guest list initially and then was added at the last second and actually boarded the plane in Alaska. I remember we were like, that is quite... Why is he in Alaska?
Speaker 2:We're making jokes about, like, oh, g... GPUs. Maybe it's cold up there or something because we couldn't really put it together. Well, it was because we now know that there was a lot of back and forth on whether or not Jensen should be on that trip, whether it makes sense, whether it's good to have him on or off. There's a lot of debate going on internally.
Speaker 2:So the next day, NVIDIA stock hit a record high. So this was like the peak. Jensen is in China with Trump, everything. Like, if there's business to be done there, it's getting done. Sometimes people don't care about what you have to say.
Speaker 2:Sometimes they, sometimes people care. Sometimes they don't, Lamarcko said in an interview. Good. It's in this case, they cared six months later. Six months later, questions about Alice Wong, her coziness...
Speaker 1:And this was our... This... Again, this is a question we've been asking this week
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:To ourselves is like, why did it take so long for this story to come out in this way? Yeah. Because, again, in the New York Times, in October, as early as October 10
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Of last year, you had Mega Speed, you had Alice Yep. You had all these names in the New York Times. Yeah. It was obviously a suspicious situation. And so it feels strange that a lot of this information you could have found out at any point over the last year.
Speaker 1:Why did it break over the last week?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it does time up at the midterms. People are thinking that maybe there's more there's more power in the... In in Washington to actually go after something like this.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of there's a lot of these theories, and we'll we'll get to many of them. This week, those questions turns into revelations that NVIDIA CEO was having an extramarial affair with a woman who is now suspected of working for Chinese intelligence services. Culper's report went from being ignored to becoming a rare piece of security analysis to go viral. I've never seen anything quite like this, he said. As his research blew up, so did his phone.
Speaker 2:He muted notifications from X where his NVIDIA posts have racked up millions of views and turned down TV interview requests. NVIDIA has lost more than $1,000,000,000,000 in market value, and the stock is down 20% since Culper's report, but it's unclear if the epic corporate fiasco has made LaMarco money. He declined to say how much he's earned from the most prescient call of his career or if he's still shorting the company. Of course, there were some... The stock had traded down through June and then rallied to basically all time highs October 5, October 6.
Speaker 2:So as a short seller, timing is everything. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So Culper has targeted dozens of public companies, mostly small cap stocks, but LaMarco and his two analysts have taken on powerful forces before. Last year, a window and glass manufacturer hired Elon Musk's attorney and sued LaMarco for defamation after he alleged the company had links to the Sinaloa drug cartel. He also tried to make a $1,000,000 wager with Jimmy Fallon, offering in his report to pay up if the late night host flew in electric air taxis made by Archer Aviation, a company whose CEO appeared on The Tonight Show and a company that Culper was betting against, he never heard back.
Speaker 2:So he was trying to get some money on the line with Jimmy Fallon over Archer, which has been a controversial company for a long time because a lot of excitement and promotional videos, but they have yet to properly ship or or, you know, have customer usage reports.
Speaker 1:Let's get more into some of the Please. Reactions. Please. Take us through. Even Tay Kim last night said you can't have an affair with a direct report.
Speaker 1:It's over.
Speaker 2:It's over.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And that is coming from
Speaker 2:Very strong.
Speaker 1:One of the strongest defenders of NVIDIA throughout every up and down Yeah. Over the last few years.
Speaker 2:Dylan Patel says NVIDIA board needs to chase down Charlie Kawas and Johnny Siruji. They're the only somewhat viable replacements. And so there was some back and forth on this whether or not they had the right shops. I think they have Apple DNA, but... Or Broadcom.
Speaker 2:But we'll see. We'll see. Fabricated knowledge, Doug O'Laughlin over at somebody else's is, not gonna lie, I know a lot of you are on X. If you're a big active manager, you should email the board tomorrow saying that it's a conduct violation, but it's in shareholder interest. He stays.
Speaker 2:Make a transition plan. I don't know. The company is not set up to run without him, like full stop email. This is what I'm talking about, where there is this debate and there's people on on both sides saying he should remain or he should depart. Although, it feels like the departure has happened and he's out.
Speaker 2:So we will see.
Speaker 1:We will see what happens. Sean Maguire is saying now that Jensen is out, my pick for his successor would be Nikesh Aurora. I hope. My opinion, Jensen was so important for the AI ecosystem because he was technical, aggressive, and had the credibility required to be aggressive. What Nikesh did at Palo Alto the last eight years is remarkable and reflected in a stock, which is up 10 x.
Speaker 2:Multiple TBPN...
Speaker 1:He's one of only a handful of people who have the credibility required to be aggressive on day one. Nikesh has the three attributes listed above while being a world class deal maker. To keep NVIDIA at the center of the AI ecosystem, there's no easy choice, but he'd be my go to. Mhmm. What else is going on?
Speaker 1:People are talking about whoever bought Jensen's jacket for $960,000. Of course, the proceeds went to charity. I think, like it or not, this jacket is now worth more, in my opinion. It's like the craziest story in technology history, in many ways, could argue business history. Like, we've never seen we've never seen a fall from grace like this, and I think the jacket is just Jensen owns that jacket forever.
Speaker 1:DA, who was on the show last week, says it's interesting that almost no one in the tech sector seems to think that lying to shareholders and cheating on your wife, presuming she was unaware, are fireable offenses, but yet NVIDIA's board members did. Everyone's hot take on this began with of course it is bad, but the unspoken part is money over everything sign of the times. Sean Maguire disagrees. He says this has nothing to do with money. This is about America winning in AI, which is interesting because then you have to make the argument that selling chips to China is part of America's strategy of winning in AI, which is, again, there are arguments for, but strong arguments again.
Speaker 2:The jacket discourse is very interesting. I agree with you that I think the jacket is a piece of history, probably more valuable, but maybe finds its way into museum at some point.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've never seen somebody memes this hard outside of maybe Charlie Kirk. Yeah. And the irony in this situation is that gen... It's...
Speaker 1:They're... All the generations are powered by NVIDIA GPUs, the thing that his creation.
Speaker 2:Creation is
Speaker 1:so Bernard Hobart says, on one hand, boards have to do what they have to do. On the other hand, he's a guy who's worth $150,000,000,000 knows everyone in hardware, named his company after the Latin word for spite, and he lives in a state where you can't enforce non competes. So like I said earlier, after I'm sure that Jensen is already plotting his next move,
Speaker 2:His comeback.
Speaker 1:There's always a world where you have a situation like with Sam where there's some sort of comeback, but I think it's harder to pull off with active congressional DOJ investigations with a public company. Much, much different situation. And so I would expect after he gets through this period, there's a comeback story that could involve joining, you know, SpaceX Yeah. Working on TeraFab. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Could involve something net new. But he's probably one one trip away, one visit from Taiwan away from having a pretty, like, viable... Like, it'll be interesting if he can, like, if everything he's ever said about NVIDIA's moat, he can sort of
Speaker 2:I take it back?
Speaker 1:Take it back and just show that, like, it really... The moat is... Was him all along. Interesting. It's not hard to imagine a world where he can, you know, rally the right group of people to go and be very competitive again in this category.
Speaker 1:And it's not like he's gonna be like, you know what? I'm actually gonna get into the harness business. I always wanted to always wanted to build a sort of a light wrapper around the Frontier Labs. It's just there's one thing this guy's gonna do, and there's billions of people that would happily back up the truck.
Speaker 2:The information has some more some more details here. Relationship with a woman from whose Chinese firm obtained the banned NVIDIA chips, in which The U. S. Suspected was providing information to Chinese intelligence services. The move comes as several former employees told the information that Huang was widely believed to be in a separate relationship with Kimberly Powell, the vice president who ran health care technology related initiatives of the company, and reportedly directly to Huang.
Speaker 2:The alleged relationship was widely discussed by employees for years, these people said. The New York Times early reported that video evidence of the affair between these two executives have been shared. Yeah. And and Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and and part of it is, like, as incredible as Jensen is, it shows, like, an extreme lack of judgment or potentially, like, an addiction that he would think that with the amount of enemies that he has in the world, people that benefit from him being knocked off of his horse. Totally. Why do you think you can... We're now seeing three. If there's three, there could very well be many, many more.
Speaker 2:Right?
Speaker 1:And the idea that you could do this, given that you're on video Yeah. Every single day of the year.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 1:You just.
Speaker 2:It's... Yeah.
Speaker 1:And and again, there's so many... Like, part of why people are having so much fun with, like, you know, conspiracy theories right now is that there are so many people that benefit in very meaningful way from this series of events. Right? It's like you can make the argument for geopolitical adversaries, other other chip manufacturers, you know, certain religions slash political movements. Right?
Speaker 1:The sort of who who benefits. People have been posting that Yeah. With with EA in all caps.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:No. The idea that it really, at the end of the day, is just surprising that given how much his company is in the spotlight, this didn't come out, you know, last year. It makes sense why they hired the crisis, you know, comms firm
Speaker 2:A year ago.
Speaker 1:A year ago.
Speaker 2:Yep. Makes sense.
Speaker 1:Hillary Clinton was sharing thoughts on the situation Really? Her side. And again, I don't I don't know I don't know what's true at this point. Mhmm. Like, it just feels like a extremely chaotic information environment.
Speaker 1:She was saying, like, Jensen never got a defensive briefing about Alice Huang being a suspected asset or or spy.
Speaker 2:You should have been listening to TBPN a year ago.
Speaker 1:We didn't explicitly say that we were... She was a spy, but we were like, this whole thing is, like, really...
Speaker 2:We basically said to watch out. We didn't know anything. Yeah. The vibes based defensive briefing is maybe the... In the in the future.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Let's get it...... Coordinated.
Speaker 2:The the tinfoil hat.
Speaker 1:Nick Carter says, if I had to guess, we're gonna find out it was a deep state coup in conjunction with China Hawks and the admin, Jordan Schneider What does he say? Fire back. Palmer said China wants Jensen out, so I want him in. Thought... Jordan says, what exactly was on China's wish list from Jensen that he did not deliver on?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's this weird thing where the Chinese labs clearly want NVIDIA GPUs, but China itself is holding NVIDIA GPUs in Hong Kong, not allowing them into the country. And so you can't... I don't think you can look at China as a sort of monolithic, you know, group. It is very...
Speaker 1:There's very clearly mixed interests.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, I... I'm I'm very interested in Palmer's state here. I don't understand what evidence there is that China wants Jensen out. How is that...
Speaker 2:What what data point are we looking to? I I can't tell what China wants ever because I can't read Mandarin, and and also I don't have access to their closed door meetings of what they are planning. It's very hard.
Speaker 1:So isn't there isn't there a whole history of, like, US intelligence assets in China just getting wiped off the map?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think so. I have no idea. I I I I I have no idea why they would want Jensen out. Why...
Speaker 2:Yeah. It seems like they would want him in. I I don't know. Even even just the basic the basic spying, I I don't know. It's a very, very confusing situation.
Speaker 2:So I'm sure we'll learn more, and that's what, you know, the investigations are are for, basically. Jordan Nanos summarizes a screenshot from Semi Analysis's most recent post. Here are the clear benefits of the current regime where Chinese labs are able to access GPUs remotely and not in China. Profits flow to American companies. The U.
Speaker 2:S. Can monitor what Chinese labs are doing. The U. S. Can cut off their access GPUs through politics or by force almost instantly.
Speaker 2:American companies such as NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, Google, Amazon, Microsoft Meta, Super Micro, and Dell all depend on Chinese companies for their supply chain. American companies such as NVIDIA and AMD employ Chinese engineers who live in China to develop hardware and low level software for their GPU systems. Yeah. These two countries are just so intertwined. It's it's never going to be as simple as like, yes or no.
Speaker 2:Should we work together or not? Like, everything is everything is more complicated.
Speaker 1:Gavin Baker says, well meaning, patriotic... Actually, I'm gonna have Tyler read this because it's gonna destroy my voice. Good. Tyler, you can can post up and I get to I get to listen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Here you go in your inbox.
Speaker 3:Oh, this is pretty long. Well meaning patriotic China hawks, are not AI experts, are putting American national security at risk. China had zero chance of ever catching American AI with the export strategy that Jensen supported. Their labs would have continued training using less powerful American GPUs, which meant American labs would have always been ahead given scaling laws. And in the event of a conflict, we could have simply turned off all the Southeast Asian clouds.
Speaker 3:Simply stated in AI terms, America had machine guns, and we were giving China muskets to prevent them from developing their own machine gun variants. Given that it looks like China hawks will get their preferred policy, China will likely soon have a chance of catching American AI by going down an alternate less power efficient AI hardware path. They almost certainly would not have gone down this path if less powerful GPUs were still available in China and via Southeast Asian clouds.
Speaker 1:Totally disagree with that last sentence, but continue.
Speaker 3:And it will be much less stable world if China pulls even or ahead of America in AI after developing their own alternative AI hardware and gives this technology to Russia, Iran, and North Korea. And all of this will be possible if the China hawks get their preferred policy.
Speaker 2:I hope Dwarkash does some very vague interview that's like a metaphor for this situation. Did you see the the fall of the Incas interview that he did?
Speaker 1:It was about humanity and...
Speaker 2:Sea Shepherd. Yeah. It's like this expert in how when more advanced civilizations got to South America, they just steamrolled the Incas and Aztecs. And it's just an interesting history lesson, but then, of course, it's like a metaphor for super intelligence taking over and whatnot and lets you... Makes you grapple with this idea of a of a higher form of intelligence arriving.
Speaker 2:I hope that's how this is processed in the Dwarvesh That would be a that would be a fun way to to deal with it. Is there anything else that's hit the timeline? The chat has been very helpful in keeping us up to date. There have been rumors of a of a third third Jensen affair. I don't know how confirmed that is at this point.
Speaker 2:Tyler, have you been tracking this at all?
Speaker 3:Yes. That was confirmed in Reuters.
Speaker 2:In Reuters.
Speaker 3:Okay. So this was, like, a second
Speaker 2:NVIDIA employee. Okay. Yes. And, of course, the employee line is is is firmly in the sand at NVIDIA, but they have already taken the action because Jensen is no longer the CEO. So not a huge update there, but still worth sharing.
Speaker 2:But thank you for being with us. Thank you for tuning in during this tumultuous time in technology. We have a real wild run of shows next week. We'll be at Tomorrow X in Austin on Tuesday and Wednesday, interviewing many of the top investors, CEOs, founders in this industry, understanding more of what this news means for the technology industry as well as just what's going on with the AI trade broadly. We will see you tomorrow at eleven a.
Speaker 2:M. Pacific. Leave us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Sign up for our newsletter at tbpn.com and have
Speaker 1:the best
Speaker 2:Thursday ever. Love you. Bye.