It wouldn’t be RSI, it’s just a different algorithm solving the weights no?

I will leave it to people more informed than me to offer distinguishing, but abstruse stories like ‘Model A improves weights in Model B’ don’t blow up on HN without reason.

Great story , thoroughly enjoyed. I wonder what the criteria are as a private (if publicly-traded) enterpise to merit the security training treatment. I imagine it’s a combination of size and sector, but I’d also be interested in how _voluntary_ is it, and whether it is invited or not. I mean the security establishment has long seen the American technical economy as a valuable asset to the state, so they may feel compelled to act to engage and protect said asset whenever they decide is appropriate (whether or not the private enterprise itself would like the brieifng or not).

Thanks! I generally only do mega-posts like that when I happen to have some unusual perspective from my unique journey - and I realized a lot of people were default mapping the Jensen situation to a 'normal' person and business context.

> I wonder what the criteria are as a private (if publicly-traded) enterpise to merit the security training treatment.

We had a large and growing operation in China which included development, not just sales. Even before Trump 1, there were signs our operations there were being targeted by Chinese intelligence, so we already were in contact with US intelligence. I wasn't in that loop in detail, just aware it was happening and considered a serious problem (most employees never even heard about it). We did later wind down most development in China. While there were several reasons, that was a key, though unpublicized, one

AFAICT, my briefing wasn't 'mandatory' from the govt. It was coordinated through our IT dept but was definitely considered high-priority from a company perspective. I hadn't heard about the mtg request initially, probably because my admin team was doing the usual schedule filtering and prioritization. But I got a direct call from the IT VP on my cell in the evening to bring it to my attention so I could get it prioritized to happen before I went to China.

The company isn't FAANG / Mag 7 but definitely in the next tier down. You've almost certainly used more than one of the products and several of the technologies. With user bases in the tens of millions, we were definitely a top tier target and I had a C-level title even though I never had (or would want) access to root keys or anything like that.

In big public companies there's a group of a few dozen execs who have special stock trading restrictions above employees, managers and even directors and I was in that group, so I was used to getting some special extra security precautions. Stuff like IT coming to my house to install a special hardware VPN gateway (back before they were more commonplace). And those precautions were just insider trading and general IP concerns. So the call about the FBI mtg wasn't totally out of the blue.

> American technical economy as a valuable asset to the state

My sense is it was really from that kind of mindset. They consider securing American technological and economic leadership a crucial mission. In general, I think the public under-appreciates just are large a priority the 'economic mission' is for intelligence agencies of all countries - and the US was probably late to scaling that game behind the Russians, Chinese and even some European allies.

While it's fun to hear about the cool 'state secret' and 'spy vs spy' stuff like stealing weapons system designs, a lot of intelligence is pretty boring stuff about economic competitiveness and advantage in non-defense related industries like finance, consumer packaged goods, heavy machinery etc.

One of the things I've wondered about is WHY the "Jensen's sleeping with a probable Chinese intelligence asset" was leaked. Apparently US intelligence learned she was an intel asset (from our own counter-spying). When that happens, it would be communicated via private back-channel to Jensen and/or NVidia's senior IT security exec. The fact it was later leaked to the media, is... curious. It's probable that Jensen had already gotten the message and cut her off. Did the Chinese leak it once they realized their asset's access was burned as a way to damage Jensen? Did someone in the White House or Senate intel committee leak it for political reasons? Intel agency professionals generally don't like when their "work product" is leaked - especially for cheap political reasons, but the people they ultimately have to give it to seem to enjoy it. Games within games. :-)

Please never visit East Africa.

That’s good advice in general.

>for the biggest competitor for world hegemony.

thank you for maintining the WW1->Cold War era great-game / hegemonic frame. Nation-states love you for it.

by the way - are we allowed to debate whether the alleged honeypot was in fact herself an intelligence agent of one sort or another, or was it just the (somewhat justified) background level of ‘she / her company is a Chinese national / has significant Chinese ownership whether private or public, and therefore subject to China’s version of our US national security letters.

I just was seeing very little advance-neutralizing of 1950s Red Scare talk in these comments.

Based on the background information on her, her nationality, and lack of visibility into funds to purchase the chips, the general consensus is she is a spy. The only thing left is to discuss the follow on stories.

I hope it’s apparent to everyone that the natsec state (whether CIA or FBI for its domestic counterintel mandate) had to actively engage in ‘conspiracy theorizing’ in order to determine whatever exposure Jensen had, which seems to be bearing out to some as-yet-unknown degree. Worth keeping in mind next time you’re feeling shy about expressing your own latest conspiracy theorizing.

>The institution of marriage exists to counteract the natural human tendency to be "unfaithful". No one needs to make excuses, they need to accept the fact that this kind of thing happens and update their expectations.

fair observation and sad society’s current script still demands it be posted under anon throwaway account.

I actually don’t have anything derogatory to say about Jensen.

But bonus instructive irony points if (de-facto gpu-based) LLMs were used by the malicious actors to psych-profile him to probe for which of the many character vulnerabilities we all share assortment of that he would be more receptive to.

And with one letter, Jensen ceases to be a blackmail target candidate.

Author David Brin has been outspoken lately about politicians taking active measures at neutralizing the effects of blackmail, (which Jensen’s activity happens to match), in pointing to an older post of Brin’s: https://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2025/09/how-hero-might-escape...

(i don’t recommend reading directly as it is verbose, but summarize with AI)

We’re told that erosion of land, quickly (over geological timescales), churns & buries whatever was on the surface. I wonder whether they can determine when the 4-billion year old meteorite actually impacted what we now call the Sahara Desert.