NVIDIA黄仁勋辞职及FAA通信故障：Bloomberg播客深度解析

Sean Duffy, the treasury... Transportation secretary, excuse me, tweeting this just moments ago, ten minutes ago here. Operations are slowly returning to normal this morning. Planes are pushing back and taxiing and taking off, and it is safe to fly. Writes, we are in close coordination with the airlines to support the ongoing recovery. That's right. But, of course, there's a knock on effect, and Americans will continue to see delays and cancellations as carriers try to reschedule.

We're gonna go now to Ed Ludlow, who is the host of Bloomberg Tech. But, Ed, I understand you were up late with some of our colleagues trying to figure out what exactly happened here. I confess I listened to the entire press conference, and I'm still not sure. So maybe story, though. It is a text something with routers. Please explain. Yeah. So you you know, you have secretary Duffy on Friday the thirteenth talking about routers.

And, basically, the the FAA has a really old telecoms network. It's called FTI. And the good news is they identified the problem. Routers started getting overloaded that had a cascading effect. Controller communications got impacted, and radar data got impacted. The worrying bit and something important to clarify is that they don't know why the the routers became overloaded. So they know they did. Still investigating what's going on.

So what happened last night was a big scramble. There were phone calls between the FAA, the intelligence services, the carriers themselves, all gonna say, does anyone know why this is happening? And and what do we do about it next? And, you know, you guys have covered the headlines on on how the the country thinks it needs to now modernize, which at this stage of the game seems a little late. And the other piece is that I think l three Harris is a company, a name that's involved in diagnosing what's what's going on.

But I think, you know, I'm due to fly to New York tomorrow. I hope I'll see you guys next week. We're looking forward to that, and likewise, hope that you get here on on time. Yes. L three Harris Technologies, according to our colleagues at Bloomberg News, operates and helps maintain the older telecommunications network. It has been tasked here to diagnose the cause of the data overload. Without question, the big story of your week, Ed, was the one involving NVIDIA.

And for so many years now, you have interviewed Jensen Huang. I remember I was saying a few moments ago as we dealt with the story in the last hour. Seeing you in Washington after one of those big NVIDIA conferences that took place Yes. There, you had occasion to speak with him there. Talk a bit about... I guess legacy is the wrong word here. But but as this company looks to hire a new permanent CEO, who might be a good cultural fit for this company?

How difficult it will be to replace him given, yes, the kind of business acumen that that he had, but also the technological expertise that he brought to bear as well as one of the cofounders of this company? Sure. I mean I mean, I spent, you know, a reasonable amount of time with over the last three or four years, and, you know, I posted about this during the week. But the lesson is that the access to to someone is no substitute for the reporting.

And, you know, frankly, all of us were none the wiser. Right? So the the the real question that we were still standing with is what is NVIDIA without Jensen one? There are lots of very talented people there, a deep, deep bench of talent from software to chip design and architecture to hardware engineering, but it's a it's a real thing. Right? You know, what does that look like going forward? And you guys may have seen overnight there are initiatives from different corners, real initiatives.

There were some fake ones circulating too to try and push the board to consider bringing Jensen one back. There was a report in the Financial Times that Renee Haas, who is the ARM CEO, had been approached, about the role as as NVIDIA CEO long long term. NVIDIA's board issued a statement in response to that saying they have not made any formal approach to anyone. But Rene Hasleth is is is one of the names in the running because he was at NVIDIA for quite a long time.

In 2006, he had about a seven year stint leading the compute business. All of NVIDIA's technology today, the blueprint for it is based on ARM designs, ARM architecture. So there's a lot of logic in that, but it seems very early. And, again, you know, like, there is so much we do not know. There is so much we do not know with, both an NVIDIA board investigation going on internally, relying on outside counsel too, and then various US justice department investigations that span a very broad range of questions.

And some of the questions being posed are pretty off the mark too around Johnson Wong, so it's interesting. I mean, he's gonna have an interesting couple weeks ahead of him. And I'm wondering, is it at all realistic that he could have a redemption arc and come back at this level, this high profile level? What does that look like? Does he have to show some sort of penance? He obviously is gonna have to testify in front of lawmakers.

Does he get rid of the leather jackets, which we've been talking about ad nauseam and kind of rebrand physically as well as, within the company? What are his options? Sure. You... So as of Wednesday night, right up until late Wednesday, you know, Jensen Huang was holding on based upon our reporting, and then he he conceded. And and the board... You know, we wrote Jensen Huang was ousted. A lot of people came back to us and said, no.

He resigned. You know, in the board statement, it says Jensen Huang resigned effective immediately. That that, you know, the board moved to to make this happen. The the the thing is that that that we need to be super clear on is there are three basic separate issues. There is Jen Sun Huang's infidelity. You know, NVIDIA's code of conduct accounts for that. Right? You know, he had one or more affairs. That... That's a a...

An isolated issue. Mhmm. In one specific affair with Alice Huang... Alice Huang, there's lots of reporting on. The US authorities and NVIDIA are looking at whether that relationship meant that NVIDIA's trade secrets or IP or any national security considerations were disclosed to parties that they shouldn't have been. Xi is an alleged spy for China. That that idea is being disputed and debated, but that as well is a third separate bucket from whether, you know, those those secrets were were disclosed outside of of of a safe zone.

And then you guys will have seen so much on the Bloomberg about Alice Wong and whether chips that were banned for export made their way into China somehow. You know? And those are all separate, and we don't have updates on them. When the board issued a statement Sunday and gentleman confirmed he'd had an affair, they said there was no reason to believe at that time, Sunday, almost a week ago, that there had been any IP trade secret or national security leakage.

So, you know, you just have to wait, I'm afraid. Christina, sorry. As I as I think of these buckets like my legendary patience, I'd love love. Yeah. I I also just think of Alice Wong as a customer of NVIDIA. So as you talk about kind of that first bucket of code of conduct, I imagine that, you know, regardless of the allegation here for being a spy, that that an issue as well. Talk about this meeting this week. We're looking ahead to earnings, Ed, and there's a town hall that will follow that, what, twenty four hours later.

And I'm curious what you'll be listening for from Khaled Kriz, the the interim CEO of the company, who's gonna be a familiar voice to many investors and analysts on the call. She's been on it before. She is, of course, somebody who's been at the company for, what, more than a decade. What are you listening for at the... What you... If you... I don't know if you'll be able to hear it yourself in real time, but bu