Information Overlord: The Fall of Jensen Huang, Whodunit?

What I Released This Week

• Coffee Break: Who Benefits From the Nvidia Spy Sex Scandal Allegations? — Naked Capitalism, Nov. 11th.
• Coffee Break: Election Aftermath Sees Dems Battle Over Schumer & Jeffries — Naked Capitalism, Nov. 9th.

From the Let It Roll Podcast

A lot of country music this week, but it’s great stuff. I should probably have put the Ken Burns episode earlier in the decade; oh well. The R&B episode is a particular favorite because I learned a TON from RJ Smith, and Black LA in the 40s was very much at the cutting edge of culture.

• Rhythm and Blues Exploded Out of 1940s Los Angeles Led by Nat “King” Cole & Big Jay McNeely: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 5.5 — Let It Roll, Nov. 13th.
• Roy Acuff, Bob Wills, Gene Autry & Woody Guthrie Lead Country Music Through Hard Times: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 5.4 — Let It Roll, Nov. 11th.
• Bob Wills & Western Swing: Let It Roll From the Beginning… 5.3 — Let It Roll, Nov. 9th.

From me as Nate Wilcox — The MMA Draw & the Mad Squabbles Show

• Trump Trolls MSM, Makes Joke of Dana White & UFC — The MMA Draw, Nov. 9th.
• Cheap Shots: A Stand-Up From Back Mount, a Fall Guy, Power Slap & Is MMA a Sport? — The MMA Draw, Nov. 7th.
• No More Money for UFC or WWE Talent? — The Mad Squabbles Show (YouTube), Nov. 11th.

We’re about 2 weeks into our annual fundraiser. We’ve raised about $9,915 out of a $14,500 goal from 80 people. This blog is free for everyone to read, and we’ve got about ten thousand visitors a month. Of those about 6K are regulars.

The simplest truth of capitalism is that you get more of what you pay for. Money sends the message and resources required to do things. In most cases your power is tiny, one of millions, but this isn’t like that because the numbers and the need (to keep the blog and Ian running) are relatively small.

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What I’ve Been Reading and Watching

AI Bubble

Behind Jensen Huang’s spy scandal, a shadow war for Trump’s ear on China — Washington Post
Huang’s downfall, which has the potential to mark a dramatic shift in power, was ultimately set in motion by one of the capital’s most influential China hard-liners, national security adviser and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Rubio issued a memo warning Trump about the relationship between Huang and a suspected Chinese spy, based on a report generated by the CIA, according to a person familiar with the matter. Rubio used the CIA report to write his own, recasting the agency’s reporting in his own more assertive terms, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe confidential intelligence.

AI Bubble: ‘Circular financing is over’ | Ed Zitron — The Tech Report (YouTube).

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang RESIGNS After Second Affair – AI Stocks Crashing — Eli the Computer Guy (YouTube).

• The Hater’s Guide To Megaspeed — Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At. “Up until as recently as last week, talking about NVIDIA’s illicit shipments of GPUs would have seen you branded a conspiracy theorist or a ‘doomer,’ mostly because the allegations are so severe, but also because NVIDIA’s bull run was so impressive and rapid, the idea that any meaningful part of it was the result of anything underhand simply couldn’t register with the most dented cheerleaders for the AI bubble.
  “And yet, none of this should have been a surprise. Culper’s research — which I referenced heavily in the free piece — was published in May 2026, and it formed part of the basis for its short position. And it needs to be stressed how significant this is, and how much peril Culper would find itself in if it turned out to be wrong — and, therefore, how confident it was in its findings.
  “If Culper was wrong, it didn’t open itself up to potential civil action (US defamation law sets a higher bar than in other countries, like the UK or Australia, but it still exists), but also, if you’re wrong when making a short, the losses are theoretically infinite.
  “The Wall Street Journal’s piece (that ran on Wednesday) fails to square the circle of how the largest media outlets in the world ignored the story entirely, yet the most damning part is that even in accepting that Culper might be onto something, the Journal fails to mention that 20% of NVIDIA’s Fiscal Year 2026 revenue might have come from China, nor does it make any attempts to discuss the contents of the report.”
• Jensen’s Bizarre Adventure — Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At.

• Jensen Huang Hired a PR Firm Known for Handling Sex Scandals Last Year — Wired.
• US intel isn’t sure if businesswoman spied on Nvidia for China, doesn’t mean she wasn’t a risk, sources say — CNN.
• Jensen Huang resigns. — Gary Marcus.
• Jen-Hsun: Not Quite White Enough — Indi Samarajiva.
• The Real Play Behind Jensen Huang’s “Spy” Scandal: A Classic DC Two-for-One — @realGuancha. “First, they want to kneecap Jensen’s influence in DC. Huang has successfully lobbied the Trump administration to ease export controls on high-end AI chips like the H200, a move that has drawn strong opposition from China hawks in both parties. Linking his affair to an executive at a firm suspected of chip smuggling offers a convenient way to undermine his credibility, raise questions about whether he could be compromised, and put pressure on the White House to tighten the screws on chip exports again.
  “Second, they’re pushing the ‘Chinese spies are everywhere’ narrative to stir up security panic. Spinning a personal affair and a business compliance dispute into a ‘Chinese spy’ story—without publicly presenting hard evidence—plays straight into Western fears. It smears China’s image while giving Congress political ammunition to push for harsher tech restrictions and tighter controls on cross-border talent and business exchanges.”
• I’ve found a key clue about who’s really behind the push to hunt down Jensen Huang. — @Dream1984Tube (in Chinese). “I’ve always thought it was the anti-China hawks colluding with the media to take down Nvidia and Jensen Huang in the midterm elections, but the headlines and articles the media have been publishing have been sounding increasingly strange, full of blatant racism. Now I’ve discovered that they’re all just front-line thugs, and I can’t help reexamining the reporter who first published the New York Times’ spy story, @AnaSwanson. Why did she make such a big deal out of such an obviously absurd lead? Then I searched her past coverage and found the same core sources repeatedly cited across her key news articles and in-depth reports on AI and chip technology. Anyone familiar with how the media works knows you wouldn’t trust someone enough to keep citing their views in so many high-frequency contacts over such a long period unless you had a very close, trusting relationship. Guess who I found—Jack Clark.
  “Co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic / head of the Anthropic Institute”
• Turns out @AnthropicAI founder Dario was also involved in the story that recently broke about Jensen Huang’s affair. — @wenser2010 (in Chinese).
• Anthropic is the mastermind behind this smear campaign against Jensen Huang. — @gelunding (in Chinese).
• Lutnick stalled Trump’s Nvidia–China chip curbs after Oval talks — Axios. “The next one to be burned and triaged is Lutnick.
  This is turning into Trump’s night of the long knives.” — @snekotron.
• Eli Lilly CEO becomes latest to push back on Dario Amodei’s ludicrous, Elizabeth Holmes-like medical claims — Gary Marcus.
• The great Generative AI unraveling — Gary Marcus. “I also warned that LLMs lacked reliability; a raft of studies showing a lack of ROI seems to bear that out. There is an argument that things are improving, but even if they do they may not improve fast enough to justify the trillions being invested.
  “Meanwhile, nobody will be surprised if the massive Microsoft outage stems from code that was written by generative AI. And the systems remain poor at following instructions. The Klarna effect, in which companies rehire humans after making extravagant claims around AI, is yet another sign that GenAI is still not as good as it was cracked up to be. (Some future of AI may be better, of course, but we are not there yet).”

Outages

• What could possibly go wrong? Nationwide FAA Ground Stop edition — Gary Marcus. “We are reaping what the arrogance of Silicon Valley — and the ineffectiveness of Washington — has sown.”

Trump 2.0 Regime

• Alina Habba Milton Loses $50 Million Contract That Enraged Trump — The New York Times.
• Firm Linked to Trump’s Sons Got Nearly $40 Million in Federal Contracts to Screen for Ebola and Other Diseases — ProPublica.

Democrats

• The Democrats’ First Move After Their Big Win? A Giveaway to Big Oil. — The New Republic.
• Democrats Missed Hegseth Impeachment Vote While at a Fundraiser with Defense Lobbyists — Drop Site News.
• Why Does Chuck Schumer Have So Much Support? — @matthewstoller. “Schumer’s model of operating the Senate is very specific. He allows Senators a lot of room to legislate on their priorities, and operates as a logistical center to get them what they need to have a comfortable job. Money, staff, parking spots, whatever. But especially money for reelection. He is a very hard worker, perhaps the hardest in the Senate.
  “Where does he get that money? Good question! Ironically, he gets it from those members themselves, indirectly. If they push legislation that challenges powerful interests, he uses that as leverage to get support from those interests, and then redirects that money to get those same people reelected. The legislation tends to die, as that is often the price for the money. Schumer also offers some adjacent useful policy choices that are incrementally useful to Senators on their pet questions. So it’s a sort of odd dynamic, where Senators spend their time doing busywork in order for Schumer to generate the funds to get them reelected to keep doing busywork.”
• The Case For Jeffries — @matthewstoller. “Dem members of Congress and base voters see Hakeem Jeffries very differently. I’ll try to make the case for Jeffries, from the perspective of members. Ironically, they like him for the same reason voters don’t, which is that he’s nice and passive. He’s NOT Pelosi.”

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