Gerrit De Vynck 🦭

I write about AI for the @WashingtonPost.
Signal me at GerritD.27
email: [email protected].

[Ben Smith @semaforben]

Tracking Jensen's view on China https://t.co/zvXrOfJwcW @jdcapelouto

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

they think they are being effective as-is -- see the immense shift in public opinion against AI, the wave of people just elected to more strictly regulate the tech etc.
they also generally don't have a background in traditional escalatory political tactics.
and then I think just the knowledge and fear of their movement being crushed by the American state if they ever did anything remotely violent

[Cory Weinberg @coryweinberg]

A split-screen across tech this week: Dario Amodei's Wall Street coming-out party, with Jensen Huang's corporate drama

But the 2 men, who have had plenty of sniping, need each other more than ever

First NYT byline outlines IPO stakes, politics + history:
https://t.co/au1wentMA3

[𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @CharlesCMann]

Terrific @TheAtlantic piece on archaeologists' and anthropologists' slowly dawning realization that now-submerged areas on the coastal shelf--swathes of land drowned when the glaciers melted--may be where much of our species' early history took place. (Link in reply)

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@Tylerauto88 yes, driving motorcycles is one of the most dangerous things you can do on earth

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

these are wonderful until you think about getting hit by an F150 while driving one

[Car and Driver @CARandDRIVER]

Toyota is relaunching the Scion brand, and its first product is the KEI-01, a tiny truck with a 660-cc engine. The KEI-01 is basically a rebadged Daihatsu Hijet Jumbo, but will be assembled in Princeton, Indiana. Initial sales will be via a fleet-focused trial program, but limited retail sales could come if there is strong enough demand.

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@DGAllan @harrisonlowman right, I saw the longer clips that other people are posting, and in french especially that seems to be what he's saying

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@NatPurser wow sounds like a great contact to have!

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@Vesmic87 probably for the best. I saw one on the highway in Calgary the other day

[pokey pup @Whatapityonyou]

Holy shit this article about ICE agents hired by DHS is brutal.

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@semaforben Lisa Su

[Ben Smith @semaforben]

Weak board, no successor — governance nightmare https://t.co/zNXkuWVrQl

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

crazy to have emoji reacts on this at all

[Singularity Research @SingularityRes]

Who are the two people who reacted with 🎉 to Jensen’s infidelity post?

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@lennysan thanks in large part to aggressive fishery management!

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@US_Stormwatch @united we need to gatekeep this just the right amount so not too many people go but there's enough demand so united doesnt cancel the route

[Patrick McGee @PatrickMcGee_]

There’s a silver lining to all this drama. However much America needs Jensen Huang the founder, the engineer, the CEO, it can do without Jensen Huang the foreign-policy strategist, AI soothsayer, and unofficial adviser to the White House. Thanks to his affair, that role is likely over.

Latest in @TheFP

https://t.co/1be1TlWMTc

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@RMac18 the funny thing is that John Rizzo is one of the few spokespeople who doesn't try to fight having his name on things. Almost everyone from Google/Anthropic/OpenAI doesn't want to but he's never had any issues with it (in my experience)

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

okay this is all true but you still need Trump to repudiate his relatively dovish stance on China

[Jukan @jukan05]

Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu’s take on the recent scandal involving Jensen Huang:

Why the US Seized on the Scandal to Draw Its Sword: Three Strategic Objectives

The purpose of this scandal is by no means to expose an affair. It is to force through three critical objectives that had made no headway in the tech war between the US and China because Jensen Huang opposed them.

The first cut: Completely destroy the legitimacy of Jensen Huang's lobbying against sanctions in Washington

Over the past two years, the loudest and most influential business leader in Silicon Valley opposing a total ban on chip exports to China has been Jensen Huang. He has told the White House the same thing all along: "Cede the Chinese market to Huawei, and the only one that ends up dead is the American tech industry."

But the moment US intelligence labels the woman named as Huang's affair partner "a spy working for China's Ministry of State Security who sought to steer the US toward easing its chip controls," every bit of lobbying he has done for looser controls takes on an entirely different political meaning. It becomes a national security matter, raising the possibility that a foreign spy used a secret relationship to exert influence.

Huang can no longer say a single word in defense of the Chinese market before Congress or the White House. If he does, he will be branded as someone who "fell for an intelligence operation and still hasn't come to his senses."

The second cut: Reverse the H200 export approvals for China and sever the link between Chinese shell companies and Southeast Asian smuggling networks

Look at the timing of the two reports.

On November 8, the very day the Jensen Huang scandal broke, The New York Times published an investigation for which its reporters went in person to dozens of Chinese companies that the US Commerce Department had approved to handle Nvidia's H200 chips. New Matrix in Beijing was one of them. According to the report, the registered addresses of companies approved to buy the chips turned out to be empty "ghost offices," and some of the companies had close ties to entities on US sanctions lists and to firms under contract with the Chinese military.

One exposé says Nvidia's CEO was having an affair with a female spy from Megaspeed, the Singapore company that handled the chip smuggling. The other says the Chinese companies Commerce approved to buy H200s are nothing but shell companies trading on behalf of the Chinese military. The aim of these two reports is clear. They are meant to pressure the Trump administration and the Commerce Department into fully revoking or freezing H200 export approvals for China and, going further, to force a sweeping overhaul of the loophole that let chips be diverted through data centers run by third parties in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

The third cut: Put Nvidia on a national security leash through congressional oversight and an independent investigation

As the world's largest company by market cap and the dominant force in AI, Nvidia has until now enjoyed broad autonomy in how it runs its business. But in the wake of this incident, the three congressional committees responsible for China, foreign affairs, and intelligence have begun examining Nvidia's internal security measures directly. They have even pressured Nvidia's board into forming an independent investigation committee to look into the company's own founder and CEO.

In effect, Washington's national security establishment has planted a watchdog right inside Nvidia's board. From now on, the goal is to make sure that everything, down to where each and every one of Nvidia's high performance chips ends up, conforms strictly to US national security strategy. It also means there is no more room for skirting the edge of the rules or releasing chips with specs specially tailored to regulatory thresholds.

Conclusion

"The scandal was a detonator set off right on cue. The real goal was to plug the holes chips were leaking through."

Jensen Huang made the fatal mistake of letting his guard down in his private life and personal relationships. In the end, he fell into a honey trap, the textbook tactic of intelligence warfare, and was compromised. America's national security and intelligence agencies ruthlessly exploited the weakness his private life had exposed. As a result, they solved three thorny problems in a single stroke: Nvidia's lobbying at the White House to ease restrictions on China, the flow of H200 chips into Chinese shell companies, and smuggling routed through Singapore.

The closed congressional hearing set for November 18 will be the decisive turning point at which the US moves in earnest to tighten its sanctions on China's AI compute even further.

[Gerrit De Vynck 🦭 @GerritD]

@teddyschleifer amazing!