Brian Gordon

Strategy | innovation | knowledge creation in science, engineering, and technology | organization | cognitive science | AI

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

Let me try and articulate what is see is a genuine tension between Bayesian subjective credences across theories of the world and what constitutes a probability calculus within a possible world bundle.

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@provisionalidea And while I get how you can frame the Chinese system as something akin to ‘hypercaptialism’ with a top-down policy signal, this underplays 1) the coherent supply chain wide industrial policy elements and 2) it’s -FCF as a system. Both of which are hard to square w/‘capitalism’.

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@provisionalidea And the U.S. is running a roughly $1t current account deficit at current run rates. That is pretty much the opposite of a neo-mercantilistic policy, de facto. And the stated objective of the current adm is clearly more like ‘balanced trade’ than neo-mercantilism.

[James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️ @provisionalidea]

it has been interesting to see how many basic western market and civil society principles keep getting subverted on main ‘because China’, using arguments that the US must become like China to beat China

one of my perennial favorites is incumbent American monopolies arguing their monopoly status is inherently good and they should be deputized as ‘national champions’, referencing China’s (much more narrow!) concept

[Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板 @BaldingsWorld]

NVIDIA has 32,000 people working in R&D and you think one person leaving the company brings whole place crumbling to the ground?

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@EliSennesh @vineettiruvadi That looks very cool. I vote yes.

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@pontific8 @dwarkesh_sp Keeping up with the jargon frontier is a Red Queen, which is probably what makes it such a useful indicator 😅

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

Lock-in only works if the customer is trying to minimize costs and isn’t pursuing a complex move in the landscape. There is zero credibility to the argument that China would give up on endogenization because of lock-in or comaparative advantage or bad ROIC. @dwarkesh_sp is right.

[Strxwmxn @strxwmxn]

"You're not talking to someone who woke up a loser."

This was an insane clip, even before Jensen was caught in a CCP honeypot.

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

Individuals certainly play an important, foundational role in technological innovation. But it’s still important to look at the actual history; NVIDIA pivoted to exploit the AI opportunity. There was no grand vision for AI at the onset 👉 https://t.co/rutNsRhuwA

[Erik Torenberg @eriktorenberg]

If you don't believe singularly great people drive innovation, you see leaders as replaceable and progress as inevitable. But Jensen isn't replaceable, and progress isn't inevitable.

Jensen helped create the AI boom, brick by brick. He lives with the intractability of the physical world every day. Onlookers downplaying his accomplishments live in fantasyland.

[𝕆𝕝𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕣 𝔹𝕖𝕚𝕘𝕖 @oliverbeige]

The "superintelligence" community seems to slowly come around to the realization that knowing organization theory is just as important as knowing computer science. Maybe they should've picked up a Herb Simon book a few years ago.

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

This clip reminds me of an old saying among trial lawyers:

"If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts.

If you have the law on your side, pound the law.

If you have neither, pound the table."

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@RuxandraTeslo We can even quantify changes in agency with frameworks like empowerment (in RL). The Laplacean thesis of determinism is just a metaphysical posit; so maybe we don’t have meaningful agency, but maybe we do. I’d rather err on the side of thinking we do and start from there.

[Dmitri Alperovitch @DAlperovitch]

Whether or not Alice Huang had been recruited by the Chinese Ministry of State Security has always been a tertiary issue.

What’s quite clear is that:

1. She has been a large Nvidia customer (and a sexual relationship with her is highly problematic from a corporate policy and governance perspective for Jensen on those grounds alone)

2. She is controlling a shell company Megaspeed dedicated to smuggling compute to both US Govenment-listed Chinese AI companies and to data center build outs in China itself - all in serious violation of US law, potentially making Jensen part of a criminal conspiracy to evade US export controls.

3. She is connected to an entire web of Chinese shell companies trying to do the same.

Jensen wasn’t fired because he had an affair with an alleged MSS agent. He was fired because he:

1. Had at least one and now, quite plausibly, multiple affairs with people in his reporting chain in violation of company policy. Something that has gotten numerous CEOs fired over the years, including at Intel and McDonalds.

2. Lied to his board about his
relationship and forced the company to put out false statements to the public, putting it in legal jeopardy.

3. Was involved in a sexual relationship with a Chinese smuggler that had violated US export controls laws and provided her with billions of dollars of Nvidia chips that facilitate that criminal activity.

4. By lying and hiding that relationship from his family, the company, and the public, he put himself in a position to be blackmailed by Chinese intelligence services.

5. He very likely ordered his general counsel to interfere in an investigation by US government into his mistress’ smuggling operation.

6. He presided over stunning and extensive compliance failures to investigate and prevent his chips from being smuggled illegally into Chinese mainland and being provided to PLA affiliated institutions, all in violation of US law.

This is a shocking indictment of him and his record and the board clearly had no alternative but to fire him.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

If the NYT/WSJ timelines are correct …

When Jensen Huang joined the president on Air Force One to go to China in 2025 and attended the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in September, Trump had already been told that Huang was sleeping with a suspected Chinese spy, and his administration was already investigating an illegal relationship between the spy’s company and the Chinese Communist Party

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

I’m not sure this is that surprising? Coding is only one part of some kinds of scientific work. Reading, writing, thinking, and discussing are core to all scientific work.

[Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy]

The new report from Anthropic on Claude use is great. One surprising finding: scientists in almost every field are using Claude primarily to *write* rather than *code*

[Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science @MishaTeplitskiy]

The new report from Anthropic on Claude use is great. One surprising finding: scientists in almost every field are using Claude primarily to *write* rather than *code*

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

This, but for science

[Niteesh Yadav ( नितीश ) @Niteesh22]

I think we’re already seeing a generation of designers who don’t really know how to design from scratch. They’re comfortable working with design systems, using existing components and putting together interfaces, but struggle when asked to create something from the ground up.

And with AI becoming part of almost every design workflow, I think this is only going to get worse.

I remember a time when designers would sketch, illustrate, experiment with typography, play with vectors and bring things together to create something. We spent time doing research, speaking to customers, observing behaviour, running feedback sessions and figuring out what to build and why. We understood how to create a visual language, build a brand and make things feel different.

Of course, not every designer did all of this, and I’m not suggesting that things were necessarily better back then.

Design systems have made our lives easier, and AI is going to make us even more efficient. That’s a good thing. But I think somewhere along the way, we’ve started confusing the ability to put things together with the ability to actually design them.

There’s a difference between knowing how to use a design system and knowing how to build one. Between choosing from existing patterns and understanding why those patterns exist in the first place.

And that’s what worries me about AI. Not that it will take away design jobs, but that we’ll become so dependent on these tools that we gradually lose the curiosity, judgement and craft required to create something original.

If we don’t want to end up in a world full of AI slop, we need more designers who can think beyond existing patterns, question things and build from scratch.

The tools are getting better at making things. We need to get better at deciding what should be made and why.

[Mackenzie Hawkins @mackhawk]

A year ago, we asked Nvidia about a Shanghai data center with links to Alice Huang. They declined to answer our questions and insisted that when it came to Megaspeed, there was nothing to see

We now have filings showing there are indeed banned Nvidia chips at that site

Thread:

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

A Prolegomena of sorts

[Vineet Tiruvadi, MD, PhD @vineettiruvadi]

What is Control Theory? A brief introduction through intuition and flows.

https://t.co/ENefwA2RLI

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

@BaldingsWorld The idea that offering GPUs to China would undermine the policy driven demand and strategic imperative wrt endogenizing chip, data center, and SEM industries is contradicted by the entire history of Chinese industrial policy and CCP stated objectives. It’s magical thinking.

[Brian Gordon @GordonBrianR]

These really aren’t difficult things to understand. Strategies and policies have boundary conditions. Once you move OOD, the theory you are operating with might fall apart. Knowing where these boundary conditions lie is part of being able to successfully deploy the construct.

[Blume Industries CEO Balding 大老板 @BaldingsWorld]

I like Ben's work I think he believes this in good faith and it is entirely wrong. I would ask Ben or anyone else to give me literally ANY example...ANY example where China has not sought to replace foreign suppliers regardless of industry or policy by non-Chinese states