Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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.
Insane weekend timeline and turmoil. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, took the top spot on the naughty list. Yep. Over the weekend...... It up just
Speaker 2:so we have it.
Speaker 1:Yes. Right here. Bloomberg reported this. It's also in the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 2:The list is looking sparse right now.
Speaker 1:Wait. I thought there were short sellers on the naughty list. Oh, we took them off?
Speaker 2:We got dropped.
Speaker 1:I think we gotta flush this out, but
Speaker 2:we're not You almost put short sellers on the nice list Yeah. Just based off their timing.
Speaker 1:Well, they've done very well.
Speaker 2:Because the AI trade was over, but they they were sort of right for the wrong reason.
Speaker 1:Yeah. They've done very well. Well, fortunately, we have, you know, a a small... A smidgen of time before Christmas. We're we're we're minutes away, but let's actually count it down.
Speaker 1:Let everyone know exactly how far away we are. There are forty five days till Christmas. Now it's not a joke. We are actually in the endgame. We're very, very close.
Speaker 2:Canner says Forty five days away from Jensen is gonna be setting up some coal powered data center.
Speaker 1:Boom. Oh, because he's gonna get coal from the night. That makes sense. A lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. That works. Anyways, what what happened?
Speaker 1:So Bloomberg reported that NVIDIA Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang admitted that he had an affair with a woman identified in a series of reports as a suspected Chinese spy plunging the chip colossus into a crisis like none before in its three decades history. Truly, like
Speaker 2:This is one of those
Speaker 1:flawless business execution. Right? Like, in three decades, there hasn't... There's never been an NVIDIA crisis at all. It had been like...
Speaker 1:There's been like... Think there's been demand crises. Small business things.
Speaker 2:Things that are things that are cyclical.
Speaker 1:But there's never been like, oh, he put his foot in his mouth and there's drama or like something weird's happening. Like, it's all been very clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Super clean. Yeah. So basically, I'm standing I'm standing in my kitchen
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yesterday.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And normally, when when I get push notifications from, like, legacy media Mhmm. It's horrific crisis Yeah. Overseas.
Speaker 1:Some political or something.
Speaker 2:You know, like like a train accident.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But this one stopped me in my tracks that I screenshot immediately and I sent to you. And and I was... That he admitted it. Yeah. Because that was the...
Speaker 2:I was...
Speaker 1:Because it was alleged earlier, but it was like, who knows? It could be some
Speaker 2:kind of cheated... Going off of all the pictures that they had together, it looked really, really bad. Yes. It looked like they had a special relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's all I would say.
Speaker 1:Right? But at the same time, if you were doing a spying operation, you... Like, part of the spying operation could be, hey. Just go get pictures where you're close with him, and you pat him on the back. We'll take a picture, make it look like you're having an affair, even if he's not.
Speaker 1:Right? But, of course, the push notification revealed everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And again, so we... I believe it was October tenth of last year. Mhmm. We talked about we talked about Alice.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Talked about Huang. Said we discussed Alex Huang. I would... We discussed her access to Jensen.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We highlighted her state media background. Yeah. Yeah. We questioned Mega Speed's activities.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We didn't explicitly say that she was a spy, but it fit the sort of exact Yeah. Like, archetype of what, you know, this this woman who was a reporter, suddenly she's running a multibillion dollar, you know, Malaysian hyperscaler
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, impressive run Yeah. If it was real, but there was kind of cash appearing out of nowhere from Shell corporations. And given that we have a similar background in media, did... Were just sort of joke... We were just joking, like, you know, very, like Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, we didn't necessarily feel qualified to set up a a hyperscaler. So on on That's true. On on one hand, it was it was very impressive. But on the other hand, there was just, like, it was just extremely suspicious, the entire thing.
Speaker 2:And there was reporting
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In the New York, like, bunch of reporting We talked
Speaker 1:to lot of we talked to a lot of Neo Cloud founders.
Speaker 2:And it's like,
Speaker 1:oh, they've been working in real estate for a long time. They've been working in in crypto mining for a long time. They've been building things for a decade, and now they're having the AI moment. It's very rare that you talk to someone who's like, oh, yeah. Like, I...
Speaker 1:I've I've actually never seen a data center in person, but I set one up and I'm doing great. It's a little it's a little stretch. The Wall Street Journal has done some investigation into Alice Wong's, like, you know, background, but it's still a complete mess. I... I'm not at the bottom of it at all.
Speaker 1:I can read a little bit of a summary here. So she began her career as a state media journalist before moving into finance, including positions at major Chinese financial firms in HSBC. In early twenty twenty three, she took control of Mega Speed. And it's like, how? Like, I would love to take control of a big company.
Speaker 1:That would be amazing. Anybody have a company that they want me to take control of?
Speaker 2:She was handed the keys.
Speaker 1:Normally, when someone takes control, I mean, either they have a ton of capital and it's very clear how they got the capital, like, inherited it or they made it in investing or something or they raised it from outside partners and now they own the company. Very odd that they just take control. Very unclear what... How that happened. It was a Singaporean company spun out of a Chinese gaming business called Seven Road, and she became its managing director, but was introducing herself as the CEO and maybe still introduces herself as the CEO.
Speaker 1:And then basic pitch for Mega Speed was it was an NVIDIA reseller, NVIDIA AI compute provider, and it served customers, including Alibaba. Although she formally relinquished ownership and resigned as director in November 2023 when a Singaporean businessman, James Tan, took over. She apparently continued exercising significant operational leadership representing Mega Speed at NVIDIA's California conference in early twenty twenty four, meeting Jensen at Computex in June 2024 as well, and publicly interacting with him again in Taiwan in May 2025. A business partner told The Wall Street Journal that she was still introducing herself as Mega Speed's CEO in August of last year. So she's out.
Speaker 1:She controls the company, then she sells... Maybe sells the company. It's very unclear. Meanwhile, Megaspeed was acquiring GPUs from NVIDIA, prompting a US Commerce Department investigation beginning in late twenty twenty four into whether restricted chips were being diverted to China. Again, I don't even know if you need to divert them, if you can just set up a data center in Singapore or Malaysia and then just do the training or inference over the wire.
Speaker 1:But nevertheless, the US Commerce Department started the investigation. US officials also suspected Alice of passing information to Chinese intelligence, and NVIDIA is investing... Investigating whether Jensen was targeted through their personal relationship. The key unresolved question is whether the November 2023 sale represented a genuine transfer of control or primarily a change in legal ownership while Alice continued running the business. It is a bizarre structure.
Speaker 2:Definitely, like, the most sus company in the world.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was saying, like, if you went to Silicon Valley
Speaker 2:At least in at least in tech.
Speaker 1:If you went to Silicon Valley and you were... So this is this is the actual structure. Seven Road International is a Singaporean subsidiary of a Chinese owned company that owns Huang Lei Limited, which is Alice Wang's ownership vehicle that's registered in the British Virgin Islands.
Speaker 2:Wait. She doesn't own her ownership vehicle?
Speaker 1:Owned Swift Data PTE Limited in Singapore, which is now owned by James Tan from November 23 onward, and that owns Mega Speed International. I'm I'm just trying to parcel all this out. I... There... There's a lot more investigative journalism that needs to happen to actually really piece this together.
Speaker 1:This is like Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and credit to my
Speaker 1:take, but
Speaker 2:to the New York Times and other publications for, like Washington. Yeah. Clocking this a year ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I
Speaker 2:was gonna say, like, put me
Speaker 1:as a seed round with this structure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. We're Chinese, Singaporean, and we're owned by the British Virgin Island, then it goes back to Singapore and back to China. It's, like, the most circular
Speaker 2:Yeah. I... This was a this was a black swan
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:For me. It was. Because Yes. Look. It's been very obvious forever that Jensen has not wanted to lose the Chinese market.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He has constantly advocated for Yeah. Selling chips to China, clearly wants to do it. I don't think it's for malicious reasons.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I think he sees that China is the second biggest computing market. He wants to be there. I think he knows that China is going to remove their dependency on US chips ASAP one way or another. And so he's looking at it as I just wanna make as much money. It's it's sort of like a loyalty to the dollar.
Speaker 2:I think he wants to, like, make as much money as he can Yeah. In the Chinese market while he can and understand that that it will be lost either way over time. Yes. I don't think he... And and another way to read that is that he doesn't believe in sort of ASI.
Speaker 2:Doesn't he doesn't he doesn't believe in x risk. He doesn't As AI... He's not worried about cybersecurity. Yeah. He just doesn't...
Speaker 2:He he's like, I make computers. I sell them. I wanna sell as many as possible. And there's a lot of ways you can criticize that. There's lot of ways you can criticize that.
Speaker 2:Dwarkash is looking, you know, the the interview where he's pushing him on like, why are you selling nukes to China? Jensen says, that's ridiculous. Yeah. It's like, you know, this isn't... Stochastic parrots basically.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, the the the the analogy doesn't make any sense. Yeah. Blah blah blah. But you can read you can read into that as like, this guy does not believe in sort of any any anything like ASI related.
Speaker 2:He's like, make computers. I wanna sell computers. Totally. So all that being said, this was, like, just so so incredibly sloppy and unnecessary. And, like, you should have had a million people around you that would step in and say, like, you know, this looks really bad.
Speaker 2:Sure. Just why are you doing this?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You run the largest or one of the largest companies in the world. You're under incredible scrutiny. You have to be in DC constantly. And There's a
Speaker 1:There's plenty of demand in America. This was another thing. It was like, you don't even need to sell the GMUs to China because there's so many Americans that wanna buy them.
Speaker 2:So it's like, basically, like, greed greed and lust got him into this Yeah. Situation. Yeah. And I was still... I I don't know.
Speaker 2:I still going into yesterday, I wanted to believe that Alice was trying and and they were in the same places at times. Yeah. But it it... You know, he was just like, I'm all business. I'll sell you some some chips.
Speaker 2:And so Totally. Seeing him admit this Yeah. Was was super disappointing. And I feel horrible for, you know, his family and and really everyone involved. It's like, if you had told me this two years ago, I would have said like, like, that's a funny, like, AI 2027 scenario.
Speaker 2:Like the, you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it was a meme. Like last year, it got to be such a meme of like the CCPGF. Oh, if you're doing anything in AI, like China's gonna send a honeypot for you. And a lot of people were saying like, okay, look, that's over the top, and potentially offensive.
Speaker 1:And also, dude, no one's sending a honeypot after you're like rapper. Like, you're not like actually that important. Yeah. But a lot of people were like, oh, yeah. Like, I like the China would love to get what I'm building, you know, and it was kind of like this ridiculous thing.
Speaker 1:But the fact that it was like a public meme that had been like beaten to death on the timeline that people... It wasn't even funny anymore, and then it still happens. It's crazy. It's really, really crazy.
Speaker 2:No. A a mistake of historical significance.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yeah. No. Totally. Like
Speaker 2:Now how how do you how do you let how do you let this how do you let... I mean, it's just, like, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly careless.
Speaker 1:Yeah. There is an interesting debate from... I saw Joe Wiesenthal tweeting a little bit about it. I saw Ben Thompson writing a little bit about it, which is basically, if you play back the the old NVIDIA story, a lot of it is aligned with globalism, global capitalism that was encouraged. Like, we we...
Speaker 1:It's very easy to look around at the last few years and say, oh, well, like, of course, competition with China is really serious. Of course, AI is really, really important technology. But if you go back ten years, it's like, oh, no. China's in the World Trade Organization. Like, of course, we should sell our...
Speaker 1:We should try and sell as many of our products over there as possible. People were complaining about Facebook not being able to sell their products over there, about a lot of American companies not being able to enter the Chinese market effectively. And so for a long time, the mandate and the cultural goal of America was, yes, export everything that we have that is good. Make all the money you can. This is the social contract around our business community.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And only recently has it become very obvious, correct, but also consensus that, okay, maybe we need to be careful about how we do business with our geopolitical rivals. Maybe they are trying to overtake us. Maybe they're trying to copy stuff and not let us bring things in and then flood the international markets with their competitors. Right?
Speaker 1:And so maybe you don't wanna bring your best technology up there because they'll disassemble it, copy it. There's a whole bunch of other discussions and dynamics that are now in vogue that weren't twenty years ago, ten years ago. And so if you're if you're building your business for decades Yes. Under that regime of, like, you know, the government is basically incentivizing you. Hey.
Speaker 1:They're saying, hey. We will help you export your goods. Like, we want the GDP to grow. We want you to be big, and you and you grow up in that, then it... It's not it's not this crazy, like, oh, America has always been against selling to China, and he's, like, bucking the trend.
Speaker 1:It's like, no. He's just of the old guard.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's how I... NVIDIA has a massive r and d center in Shanghai. Yeah. Right? They've...
Speaker 2:That they've had, that I'm sure they've
Speaker 1:been scaling
Speaker 2:But, like, the two two things
Speaker 1:Two thousand's peak was like, oh, you're big enough to to expand to China. You've made it. You're an American hero. Like, you're bringing our stuff over there. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Bill Clinton said the Internet will democratize China because trying to shut down
Speaker 2:the Internet is like nailing the toilet down the wall. So if Alice Huang never existed Yeah. Never interacted with Jensen, I think he would have been doing all the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:Yes. Yes.
Speaker 2:And that being said, the fact that she does exist, they had a relationship that he admits to.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:He's cheating on his, you know Yep. His his wife. Yep. And then he's been doing all this other stuff. It's like, it could not look It could not look worse completely destroys all his credibility in Washington.
Speaker 2:Sure. I don't think he can... At this point, he can't advocate one way or another without looking bad.
Speaker 1:Totally.
Speaker 2:Because if he advocates for, you know, the status quo
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is like, you know, supporting, you know, broadly, you know, supporting chip sales, advanced chip sales, all these things, he looks bad because it's like, wait, you've been having an affair with the...
Speaker 1:Are you just doing that because...
Speaker 2:And if if he now starts advocating the other way, it looks like he was compromised the
Speaker 1:whole time. That's true.
Speaker 2:Wow. He's in such a bad spot. Yeah. This is somebody who... He is on the road more than any other CEO on Earth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's constantly hit... Like, the whole NVIDIA game has been... Jensen's game has been show up once or twice a day, three times conference, a
Speaker 1:every news and more constant.
Speaker 2:And and, you know, constantly be be spreading the the gospel. Totally. I don't know that he can do that anymore. I mean, it's like, it's hard to stand up in in front of a... In front of the same crowds and and say the the same things.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And it's just it's just unbelievable. Yeah. Like...
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then and then also, I mean, we're still in the alleged spying camp, I think, with the...
Speaker 2:Not really. Not really.
Speaker 1:They're still probing. I... They they they don't have, like, a this is what information was transferred. This is what was stolen. This was what the spying entailed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's a big question there because like, is it espionage, sabotage? Is the idea getting into Jensen's phone, screen recording?
Speaker 2:This is... This seems like this seems like not something... This seems like really bad for for China's interests if they want chips because you had the top guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The one guy you
Speaker 2:The guy who's financing everyone Yeah. Who already is aligned to your interests.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Seemed like it.
Speaker 2:For sure. Seems to be that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. But maybe you're
Speaker 2:worried about is a a god among gods. Right? Like, when he is in a room Totally. Full of all the top people
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:He is the one that's going around, you know, shaking hands. Like like he... Like everyone. Everyone has to... Everyone everyone is
Speaker 1:trying to get a computer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it seems bad. And and and to me, the disappointing thing is like he was he was one of the few people that was just sort of removed from all of the the pettiness and the infighting. Right? Mhmm.
Speaker 2:He was like, you guys might be fighting, but I'll give you compute. I'll give you compute. I'll give you compute. Yep. And let's all be, you know, like he was one of the few people that was able to be, you know, basically, like, as long as you're buying NVIDIA GPUs, you're my friend.
Speaker 2:Sure. We can all coexist. I'm gonna support this, that. Yep. But, yeah, truly a...
Speaker 2:Can I historical historical proportions and, like, it's just a very? It's a very sad day for the American technology sector.
Speaker 1:And Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like... Yeah. I mean, I... I'm surprised the the stock is not
Speaker 1:selling off hammered. It's down something 5%, especially relative to the Nasdaq, which is up two and a half percent. So there's actually been a broader rally in the market off of Thursday, Friday's turmoil. Right?
Speaker 2:Well, it's probably road people to some degree rotating out of...
Speaker 1:NVIDIA into... I I don't know.
Speaker 3:AMD is up almost 13% today.
Speaker 1:Wow. That's that's wild. Yeah. I like that we're getting some claps for NVIDIA. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Let me It's tell just like you didn't... Yeah. It's not like you needed the most elite security team to tell you that this was a bad idea. It's not like you needed to run... No.
Speaker 2:I... It's not like you needed to run a background check and be like, hey, should I be hanging out all the time with somebody that Yeah. May or may not control the most suspect Yeah. Company Yeah. In technology.
Speaker 2:Even
Speaker 1:e e e even if even if you even if you want to do business broadly, it's like, send a 65 year old sales rep who's like some... Just like complete suit who's like, I got the spreadsheet out. If you'd like to buy, let's follow the letter of the law, and here's what... Here's how much you can buy. Having the CEO go over there and and and drink wine and take pictures is rough.
Speaker 1:It's a it's a it's a tumultuous outcome. Well, ridiculous day. Anthropic... You saw this? Anthropic just dropped Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2?
Speaker 1:Boom. This is this is...
Speaker 2:Jensen's like, drop a new mind.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know. I... It it it it... It's crazy. I mean, I I imagine that this is just like they have their plan in the lead up to the IPO.
Speaker 1:But, like, I have a feeling that it's gonna be hard to get this to break through today given
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, I think it'll be Refreshing. The the AI is a relentless technology. Yeah. And the people involved are relentless, and it doesn't care about Relationship.
Speaker 2:The midterms. It doesn't care that, you know, the the the the sort of face of AI globally Yes. Is having an affair with an alleged spy. It just doesn't care. The the progress is gonna is gonna continue.
Speaker 1:I think the pre training team at Anthropic was distracted over the weekend. I gotta I gotta keep reading these Bloomberg articles.
Speaker 2:A lot of the imagery that's been coming out just feels like I just assumed it was AI because it looked so incriminating by itself that, like, there's no way.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think these were maybe pulled from some sort of, like, Snapchat story or Instagram story or WhatsApp story or something, but she had posted a number of photos. And, yeah, they look... It... It's like really so many so many photos.
Speaker 1:Jensen's memo went out to the whole team. We read a little bit of it. There's a very funny there's a very funny screenshot, which I have no idea if it's true, but it looks like two people gave it the...
Speaker 2:The crazy thing is 30? Like, if you play back the last couple years Mhmm. And you imagine there's a world where NVIDIA is run by, like, a manager style CEO who's not a founder, who's just, like, we're gonna do... We're gonna invest in continued r and d
Speaker 1:How would that be different?
Speaker 2:And buybacks. Like, I don't think I don't think you run around giving sprinkling billions of dollars all over the industry backing any team
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That that appears to be viable at all giving them...
Speaker 1:Central Bank of AI.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You you don't... I I just think if it's not your company and you don't, like Yeah. Like Jensen is incredible Yeah. In so many ways.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I don't think that this story needs to, like, take away from that. Somebody can be, like, very bad on some dimensions. Right? Like, he's bad on not having affairs with alleged spies. Sure.
Speaker 2:And he's very good at, you know, being the face of of compute. Right? He's very good at at at at playing that game.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think the the sort of scary scenario, at least if you're a venture capitalist, is like, well, what happens? You know, I... As of right now, unless the story gets like way way way worse, it which seems like it's possible
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I see Jensen staying in this role. Yeah. But I think a lot of people are thinking like, what happens if you don't have this sort of like founder led company that's willing to throw $10,000,000,000 here, 10... You know, $20,000,000,000 here.
Speaker 1:Or do creative deals.
Speaker 2:Or do creative deals by companies that that aren't really working.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:It's felt for it's felt for the last year that if you were an AI company, Jensen was like past the point of, let's say, like, north of a billion dollars. You're like too big to fail in in in sort of like Jensen's world view. It seemed like he wouldn't Sure. It seemed like he wasn't gonna let a company that had any relevancy fail. And I think that without him in that seat, like, I think that changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He kinda loses some of the soft power, which he was
Speaker 2:throwing Totally. And now and now it's like he can he can go and do what he's always done very well. But it's like he's gonna it's like he's giving a talk with, an insane black eye. And it's just like this... Gonna be this, like, elephant, constant, like, elephant in the room.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And again, I'm still I'm still shocked that we're even having this conversation.
Speaker 1:What did Dylan Patel say over at Semi Analysis? He says nothing will happen to Jensen over the next six months. Is there a prediction market for CEO?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So right now, the chance that he leaves before July of next year is 31%.
Speaker 1:That's pretty high.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, he has a... Like a... I I saw some reporting about the board structure. It seems like it's a lot of allies. He's the founder.
Speaker 1:It's...
Speaker 2:No. It's a weird it's a weird situation where it's like him being chief executive post having an affair seems like bad for NVIDIA, but also like the alternative is worse.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Don't know who would replace him. He's kind of a singular figure. Like, who's the... Who's number two at NVIDIA?
Speaker 3:You don't really have it clear.
Speaker 1:His son-in-law? Possessor. I think his son I think his son-in-law right now. But Dylan Patel says nothing will happen to Jensen over the next six months. This story will largely die down in mediafinance, but Democrats will call him into Congress.
Speaker 1:They will investigate the GPU sales to Chinese companies hammer him with questions. That's when the shoe could drop. So oddly, it seems like the AI safety folks, geopolitically minded folks are maybe breathing a sigh of relief because this will ultimately probably result in on net less smuggling of chips to China?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think you'd... I think you default. They sort of... The the... Your default assumption is that they get what they've been asking for.
Speaker 2:Who's that? The hawkish crowd. The the China hawks. The China hawks get
Speaker 1:what they want.
Speaker 2:Because, like, how how can you have your strongest soldier Yeah. On the opposing side
Speaker 1:Can't really offer.
Speaker 2:No longer has credibility on top is what I was saying.
Speaker 1:It's like the China hawks side has, look, China really wants these GPUs. They sent a spy for America's
Speaker 2:top guy. So if he continues to advocate with what he's been advocating for, it increases the likelihood that he goes, like like... In front of Congress. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That that that seems like happening for sure. If he switches up now, now that he's admitted and he's and he's under investigation, it it looks even worse. So Mhmm. A question I have is Ross doubted on on Yeah.
Speaker 2:Sixty minutes was asked... Was was talking with Trump. Yep. And he talked about, like, a a head of a major AI company who he called and said, kiss your wife and kids, and do you like the color orange? Kids?
Speaker 2:Yes. Oh, okay. And so I think you can... The the the sort of one... And this apparently happened like a year ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so I think it would be safe to assume that that was Jensen at that at at, you know... And again, it calls into question like so much that's happened over the last year. Yeah. Right?
Speaker 2:Like...
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's weird because when you when you hear about Trump being aggressive towards an AI founder or AI leader, you think you think Daria, obviously, because there was a whole Darfur Harbour in a war battle. But it seems like with what we know now, it's actually much more jostling with NVIDIA
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:On the global stage.
Speaker 2:At least I had the question why Jensen was so outwardly, like, the biggest fan of of Trump and was constantly in in taking any... All over the last year, taking any opportunity to, you know Yeah. Praise and and all these things. And, like, he's smart enough to know that the the political pendulum is gonna swing back and forth, and that going and being the loudest, most outspoken supporter
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It seemed like kind of a short term
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Kind of like a a short term arbitrage Yeah. That maybe wouldn't be worth the trade.
Speaker 1:Didn't Apple just play the Trump two era perfectly? Tim Cook, they know he's on the way out, so they send him to the Melania screening. And then immediately, you get Ternus in there. Clean slate. Never never overstep, never overplayed the hand.
Speaker 1:Either way, did what they had to do, you know. But yeah. Even even I feel like
Speaker 2:But yeah. Now now it's like the the
Speaker 1:like it being like badass that Trump got shot or something. But other than that, it wasn't so over the top. Like Jensen was leading in charge.
Speaker 2:But when you look at the the pressure that the admin is gonna be under come January
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Combining that with now optically Mhmm. Jensen will probably be thrown in with a lot of those kind of Yeah. In just general skepticism and investigations where it's like, hey, isn't your your buddy Jensen is also under investigation for, you know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I think everybody needs to be on alert for for spies at this point. Tyler, where were you this weekend?
Speaker 3:I was at Michigan. University of Michigan.
Speaker 1:And are you are you loyal to TBPN or are you loyal to fraternity culture? Can you say that beer pong isn't fun? Can you say that with a straight face or...
Speaker 3:I don't wanna comment on this.
Speaker 1:Interesting. I think he might be deployed by the fraternity industrial complex to keep keep tabs on some unks. What about what about Jackson over there? You were you were... You lived in Texas before you came here.
Speaker 1:Right? And were you were you deployed to keep keep an eye on us Californians out here? Are you working for the Texans?
Speaker 3:I want my state.
Speaker 1:Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 2:Here's to God and football. In ten years from now, Street, good friends living large in Texas. Texas forever, street. Texas forever.
Speaker 1:Can you say, the the f one fifty is, is not a great vehicle?
Speaker 2:I've only driven an f three
Speaker 1:fifty. Fantastic. I I I think we're I think we're safe here. But everyone needs to be on alert. And it and it will be.
Speaker 1:I I I really do hope that the investigation unearths like, okay, like, was there spyware as as a piece of this? Like, was this...
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing. That's the that's the thing. Bill Bill yeah. Bishop Bill Bishop has had some some great commentary on this. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:One of the things that he brought, obviously, is, if if Jensen and Alice were ever alone and Jensen had any of his devices, it's just like now you can't you can't guarantee that that somehow or another, the Chinese state apparatus doesn't have more access to
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:What NVIDIA is doing.
Speaker 1:Yep. I mean, there still is the the the question of, like, if you get access to even the CEO of a major American semiconductor's phone or or computer, like, is that enough to actually speed up semiconductor production in your country? Like... Because you might have, like, a bunch of sales reports. Maybe you have access to some schematics and some some Yeah.
Speaker 1:PDFs and design files. But is that enough to speed up? Or or do you need machinery that you don't necessarily have access to and you need to get the physical hardware? But I I I think as much optimism there... As there is around this leading to increased chip controls on China from the China hot crowd, there's probably a lot of pessimism around, okay.
Speaker 1:Well, we have to assume that China has way more information about our semiconductor supply chain in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The other thing that's rough is, like, Jensen had given a quote over the last couple weeks Mhmm. Saying to... I think it was Bloomberg that literally saying, like, our... My relationship with Alice Huang was nothing out of out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2:It was a normal... Some... I'm paraphrasing, but something to the effect of it was a normal business relationship. So then it was like, okay, you were just like lying Publicly. To public, you know, lying to the media, you know, within within recent history.
Speaker 1:I do wonder what's gonna happen with Fable 5.2, Mythos 5.2. Everyone's kind of expecting, like, a 5.5 jump. And and then also Fable's been, like, expensive, so it wasn't ramping as fast as Opus 5.5. So is the... Is this, like, a...
Speaker 1:Is the is the goal of this model to get more adoption and an actual revenue out of it or merely use it for the for the knock on effects that you get from having a great model? But I'm sure we'll see more reactions. Discuss it tomorrow. Gavin Baker weighing in. NVIDIA's board stated today that it found no reason to believe that either national security or NVIDIA secrets were compromised.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's what... That was my big question. As a result of Jensen's actions, they are initiating independent investigation overseen by a committee of independent directors, assisted by outside independent counsel, that will examine all available information. This will be an unbiased, exhaustive and thorough investigation given the fiduciary responsibilities of these independent directors.
Speaker 1:Jensen said that, I support the investigation. We'll cooperate fully. I love our country and our company. I'm committed to protecting NVIDIA and supporting America's national security. I'm proud to and grateful to be an American.
Speaker 1:Gavin says, I've known Jensen for almost thirty years. I simply do not believe he would ever knowingly do anything to disadvantage either America or NVIDIA. The only thing he has ever said to me about China is the absolute importance of keeping the American hardware ecosystem led by NVIDIA ahead of China. That's it. NVIDIA doesn't have a contract with TSMC.
Speaker 1:I don't know how real this is, but Prakash, AdaPi, says NVIDIA does not have a contract with TSMC. That's really all you need to know. People say it's just like a hand Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, implication there is, like, he couldn't possibly be removed from
Speaker 1:Yep. He was a builder relationship.
Speaker 2:Because that that would... But but but at the same time, it's not exactly like if TSMC was like, oh, one of our largest customers in NVIDIA has a new CEO. We we we don't wanna give them...
Speaker 1:Call him see how much he wants to buy. You know, that's gonna be day one. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that was from the door catch interview where he said NVIDIA's... And TSMC don't have a legal contract.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 3:They just have this mutual trust.
Speaker 1:Oh, weird. That's very, very interesting. I wonder what the advantages of that are. Anyway, anything else on the on the spy?
Speaker 2:So Lulu is highlighting... So Shakil said, note that NVIDIA's spokesman John Rizzo has put out multiple statements in recent weeks that we now know are false, unclear, of course, if he believed them to be true at the time. John said Jensen's interactions with miss Huang are not unusual or unexpected. And Lulu says, no serious comms person would ever lie like this. Rule number one is never lie to the press, never lie to anyone.
Speaker 2:I assumed he believed this to be true. If so, he was deceived by his leadership and made to be a useful idiot and should resign on principle. Palmer says there is another possibility, Lulu, one that dominates my group group chats. Jensen is sleeping with all customers. And so when they say his interactions were not unusual or expected, they mean he is on a rampage seducing thousands of AI hardware execs with a glance.
Speaker 1:It's a timeline and turmoil day for sure. For sure.
Speaker 2:And without further ado... Rolling Flashback.
Speaker 1:Leave us five stars on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Goodbye. We love you.