Dwarkesh Patel
But we have a lot of Nvidia developers in the US, and that doesn’t prevent American labs from also being able to use other accelerators in the future. In fact, right now they’re using other accelerators as well, which is fine and great. I don’t see why that wouldn’t be the case in China as well, if you sell them Nvidia chips, just the same way that Google can use TPUs and Nvidia—
Jensen Huang
We have to keep innovating and, as you probably know, our share is growing, not decreasing. The premise that even if we competed in China, that we’re going to lose that market anyways… You’re not talking to somebody who woke up a loser. That loser attitude, that loser premise makes no sense to me.
We’re not a car. We are not a car. The fact that I can buy this car brand one day and use another car brand another day, easy. Computing is not like that. There’s a reason why the x86 deal exists. There’s a reason why ARM is so sticky. These ecosystems are hard to replace. It costs an enormous amount of time and energy, and most people don’t want to do it. So it’s our job to continue to nurture that ecosystem, to keep advancing the technology so that we can compete in the marketplace.
Conceding a marketplace based on the premise you described, I simply can’t acknowledge that. It makes no sense. Because I don’t think the United States is a loser. Our industry is not a loser. That losing proposition, that losing mindset, makes no sense to me.
When Jensen went on this tirade, I chalked it up to his desire to dominate his market:
I think it’s fair to say that Jensen’s core defense, that doing business with China is in the national interest of the United States, doesn’t really make sense. It does make sense that it would help him keep NVIDIA as the most valuable company in the world and ensure he doesn’t lose his influence and control over the silicon that matters most. The obvious question is whether what’s best for Jensen and NVIDIA is also best for the Western nations, and currently it’s not obvious why these two interests fully align. I’m not saying they don’t overlap, but it’s not exactly a one-to-one match.
Which is ultimately why, when pushed, he breaks down to the core essence of his viewpoint: he isn’t a loser, and he will not lose a market he knows he can dominate.
I also went one level deeper and highlighted a point industry analysts seem to overlook:
I think that while it’s important to note that Jensen’s story is a great example of a family achieving the American Dream, and that NVIDIA is a credit to the ingenuity and talent in the United States, it’s very difficult not to point out the incentives that might be influencing his opinions on China.
His framing is that NVIDIA needs to be the unified layer that both Western and Eastern AI run on. Failing to do so is going to be disastrous for the United States. Some things to consider around this thesis:
It’s likely to be much more devastating for Taiwan, his country of origin and NVIDIA’s main manufacturing pillar.
Taiwan has historically represented the vast majority of NVIDIA’s advanced GPU manufacturing. While it would be unfair to blame Jensen for the disastrous decade of mismanagement at Intel and its failure to win a meaningful portion of NVIDIA’s fabrication, it’s also not something that can be fully ignored. He’s played his role in reaching this state of play, where any conflict surrounding Taiwan would lead to an incredible short-term shock in the global economy. The fact that Musk is trying to solve this bottleneck with Intel and the TeraFab project speaks volumes: Jensen isn’t willing to meaningfully diversify the supply chain (and, as a consequence, weaken the “silicon shield” around Taiwan), so others are stepping in to do it.
However you read this week’s events, being naive about them won’t help. The campaign against Jensen was a well-orchestrated effort to demoralize and silence him. The story was the opening act of an operation that, as I write this, appears to have achieved its goals.
This was also self-inflicted, in a way I’d call boomer hubris. It has been obvious for a while that NVIDIA is delivering shipments to China that circumvent the restrictions. The administration seemed to look the other way, which suggests it saw the activity as useful, even if it was barely concealed.
The idea that Jensen was “honeypotted” and tricked into these deliveries is childish. He may well have had some kind of situationship with Alice Huang, but it’s very unlikely he didn’t know she could only run her company with the CCP’s permission.
Money doesn’t explain it either, since there was plenty of demand for the chips elsewhere. The realpolitik is that Jensen used his influence in a way he believed served several goals at once, in the interests of both the US and Taiwan. That was a risky bet, and he badly miscalculated what would happen if the Trump administration withdrew its protection and tacit consent. I call it boomer hubris because he should have had far better contingencies in place: a board stacked with loyalists, the ability to go on the offensive quickly, and political allies ready to defend him in public. Instead, he ignored the risks and bet that his importance to NVIDIA and the economy would be deterrent enough.
Let’s go through what led to this and what happens next.