"Fuck Around and Find Out"

From the World's Most Powerful Chip Empire to a Public Collapse

There is an American expression that I think captures a remarkable amount of human behaviour: Fuck Around and Find Out. Roughly translated into more polite language: do whatever you want, push the boundaries, convince yourself that you can get away with it, but don't act surprised when the consequences finally catch up with you. It is vulgar, direct, and sometimes considerably more accurate than the carefully constructed analyses that tend to appear whenever powerful people fall from their pedestals.

On November 12, 2026, that expression acquired a face. Jensen Huang, the founder and the man who had led Nvidia for 33 years, resigned with immediate effect as CEO, president, and member of the board. The company's chief financial officer, Colette Kress, temporarily assumed leadership while the board began searching for a permanent successor. The announcement was as dramatic as it was unexpected. We are not talking about an executive who had lost control of a declining business. We are talking about the man who transformed graphics cards for computer games into the engines of the global AI revolution, building a company whose market capitalisation had reached roughly four trillion dollars.

It is difficult to overstate the position Jensen Huang had established for himself. He was not simply a CEO. He was the company's public face, its most important salesman, strategist, and visionary. When he walked onto a stage wearing his signature black leather jacket, investors, politicians, and technology executives around the world paid attention. New processors were presented almost as historic events, while his predictions about the future of artificial intelligence could influence entire markets. Huang had become something rather unusual: a corporate executive whose personal brand was almost as important as the technology his company developed.

But behind the carefully cultivated image of technological brilliance and seemingly limitless success, there was apparently a considerably more complicated human reality. In the days leading up to his resignation, reports emerged of an extramarital relationship with a Chinese businesswoman whom US intelligence agencies suspected of connections to Chinese intelligence operations. Further reports described a relationship with a female executive within Nvidia. Huang had acknowledged infidelity, but the intelligence allegations against the businesswoman have not been established as fact. Nvidia has also stated that it has no reason to believe that sensitive company information or national security has been compromised.

That distinction matters. Infidelity is not espionage. A personal relationship is not, by itself, evidence that someone has committed a crime or acted against their company's interests. But when you lead one of the world's most strategically important technology organisations, certain private decisions can also become professional risks. And that is precisely where this story becomes far more interesting than yet another scandal involving a powerful man who has been unfaithful.

Genius Is No Guarantee of Good Judgement

What fascinates me most is the contradiction. Jensen Huang has spent most of his professional life understanding and managing technological complexity. He has navigated international competition, economic crises, trade conflicts, export restrictions, and technological changes that have transformed entire industries. He helped develop the technology that now allows artificial intelligence to analyse enormous amounts of information, identify patterns, and solve problems once considered almost impossible.

Yet someone with that extraordinary ability can still end up in a situation where some of the most basic human risk assessments appear to have been pushed aside. After all, it does not require a supercomputer to understand that an intimate relationship with someone who has business interests in a strategically sensitive industry may involve risks. Nor does it take an advanced algorithm to recognise that a relationship with someone in a subordinate position within your own organisation can raise questions about power, favouritism, and conflicts of interest.

There is also something here that I believe says a great deal about our contemporary relationship with success. We have a tendency to turn people who have achieved exceptional results in one particular field into authorities on almost everything else. Someone who has built a company worth trillions of dollars is automatically assumed to possess extraordinary judgement, a superior understanding of society, and some almost mystical ability to make the right decisions. But technological genius is not the same thing as personal maturity. Entrepreneurial success does not guarantee self-awareness. The ability to anticipate the next technological revolution does not mean that you can anticipate the consequences of your own behaviour.

On the contrary, I suspect that exceptional success can sometimes become a liability. Someone who has spent decades surrounded by people confirming his brilliance risks developing a very particular relationship with reality. Rules may begin to feel negotiable. Warnings can seem exaggerated. Criticism may be dismissed as jealousy or a failure to understand. It does not necessarily involve deliberate arrogance. It can be a gradual shift in self-perception, where success slowly creates the belief that one's abilities also provide some form of immunity from ordinary human consequences.

I obviously cannot know whether Jensen Huang thought that way. Claiming otherwise would be speculation. But we recognise the mechanism from politics, business, entertainment, and professional sport. People who have enjoyed almost unlimited power over their surroundings for long periods can eventually begin behaving as though the boundaries no longer apply to them.

And then reality arrives.

When Private Life Becomes Geopolitics

What makes Nvidia's situation particularly serious is the company's position in the international struggle for dominance in artificial intelligence. Nvidia does not merely manufacture advanced processors. Its technology forms a central part of the infrastructure behind major AI systems, research environments, data centres, and industrial applications. Access to those processors has become a strategic issue for both the United States and China.

In recent years, American authorities have attempted to restrict China's access to the most advanced semiconductors, while American technology companies have had substantial financial incentives to maintain their Chinese customer relationships. Jensen Huang has operated at the centre of this conflict. He has argued for the company's international business opportunities while politicians and security agencies increasingly regard advanced AI technology as a matter of national security.

In that environment, personal relationships take on an entirely different significance. When reports emerge that the head of one of America's most important technology companies has had a relationship with someone suspected of connections to Chinese intelligence services, questions inevitably arise. What information might have been discussed? Were there opportunities for influence? Could business decisions have been affected by personal circumstances? And above all, is there any factual basis for the suspicions?

It is essential to separate these questions from established evidence. Suspicions held by American intelligence agencies concerning Alice Huang do not mean that she is guilty of espionage. Singapore has reportedly examined her in connection with suspected irregularities involving server shipments, but that is not the same as establishing involvement in espionage. Nvidia has meanwhile initiated an independent review of the circumstances.

The problem for a company like Nvidia, however, is that confidence does not always wait for a final legal determination. Investors, authorities, and business partners must make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Sometimes, the emergence of a credible risk is enough to change relationships and influence markets.

And the markets certainly reacted. When Huang's departure was announced on November 12, Nvidia shares initially fell sharply, at one point losing around 13 percent before recovering to close approximately 4.3 percent lower. More than $180 billion in market capitalisation disappeared during a single trading day. These are astronomical figures, although market capitalisation is obviously not the same as money physically disappearing from bank accounts.

This is where Fuck Around and Find Out acquires a much darker dimension. Because the consequences are rarely confined to the individual who took the risks. Shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and entire businesses can be affected by decisions over which they had absolutely no control.

The Problem With Making One Person Bigger Than the Company

There is another aspect of Nvidia's crisis that I find at least as interesting as the scandal itself. How can a company of this magnitude become so closely associated with a single individual that his personal crisis threatens to destabilise the entire organisation?

We frequently describe entrepreneurs as visionaries. Steve Jobs and Apple, Elon Musk and Tesla, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta, Jeff Bezos and Amazon. The individuals become symbols of their companies' identities, development, and achievements. We celebrate their visions, quote their statements, and sometimes attribute almost mythical qualities to them.

But there is an inherent weakness in that model. When the company and the individual become inseparable, it becomes difficult to distinguish the organisation's actual strength from the leader's personal reputation. Success creates a dependency that can become deeply problematic when the founder is no longer there, loses his judgement, or simply decides that he no longer wants to continue.

Jensen Huang was Nvidia in a way that very few CEOs are their companies. He had been there since its founding in 1993 and had led the business through practically its entire development. Replacing someone like that is therefore not simply a matter of finding a person capable of making business decisions and presenting quarterly reports. It also means replacing a symbol, a network of relationships, a way of communicating, and a personal authority developed over more than three decades.

It is far from certain that any single new CEO can accomplish all of that. Perhaps Nvidia instead needs to demonstrate that the company has become bigger than the man who created it. That its technology, employees, research, and organisation are strong enough to continue without the individual who has represented it for so many years.

Handled properly, that might actually prove to be a healthy change. Companies should not depend on one individual always making the right decisions, always behaving appropriately, or always being available. A genuinely strong organisation must be able to survive the departure of even its most significant people.

Isn't that one of the defining characteristics of good leadership? Building something that continues to function even after the founder has left the room?

AI Can Predict Patterns – But It Cannot Guarantee Human Wisdom

There is an almost philosophical irony in this entire affair. Nvidia has become one of the most valuable corporations in the world by providing the technology that makes large-scale artificial intelligence possible. Every day, we are presented with stories about how AI will identify risks, optimise organisations, analyse human behaviour, and help us make better decisions.

We already use artificial intelligence to detect fraud, examine financial transactions, analyse medical images, develop software, and simulate complicated future scenarios. The technology is becoming increasingly capable of handling tasks that previously required extensive human experience and specialist knowledge.

Yet this story demonstrates how limited our ability remains to manage perhaps the most important factor in any organisation: human nature itself.

Because even if we create systems capable of calculating probabilities, detecting anomalies, and recommending optimal courses of action, there is no guarantee that people will follow those recommendations. Human beings are not driven exclusively by rational considerations. We are influenced by emotions, desires, the need for recognition, fear, pride, loneliness, and countless other factors that do not always fit neatly into a well-organised decision-making process.

I think this perspective is frequently missing from the debate about artificial intelligence. We are so preoccupied with asking what machines will eventually be capable of doing that we sometimes forget to examine what the humans controlling them are actually doing.

We build increasingly sophisticated technological systems, yet we continue to organise substantial parts of our economy and society around the personal judgement of a relatively small number of individuals. We concentrate power in the hands of a few corporate executives, politicians, and investors, then assume that their success automatically justifies the trust we place in them.

It is a rather extraordinary contradiction.

Especially at a time when we are simultaneously discussing how artificial intelligence should be monitored, regulated, and held accountable for its actions. We demand safeguards for algorithms while the people at the top of the hierarchy are sometimes allowed to operate under considerably weaker constraints.

Perhaps we should devote at least as much attention to human accountability as we do to the potential risks posed by machines.

Nobody Is Above the Consequences – Not Even Those Who Build the Future

I have no intention of participating in some moral public stoning of Jensen Huang. His private life is primarily a matter for him and the people directly affected. Infidelity is not a crime in itself, and it would be deeply irresponsible to equate unproven intelligence allegations with established criminal wrongdoing.

But it is equally reasonable to conclude that anyone leading an organisation of enormous economic and strategic importance has a responsibility to consider how their own actions may affect that organisation. Leadership is not simply about generating growth, developing technology, and delivering financial returns. It is also about understanding risks, maintaining trust, and recognising that one's own behaviour can become a vulnerability.

Jensen Huang's contribution to the computer industry does not disappear because of his resignation. He has been a central figure in a technological transformation that is likely to shape the world for a very long time. No scandal can erase that achievement. But his downfall demonstrates that historic accomplishments do not provide lifelong immunity from the consequences of subsequent decisions.

Perhaps that is precisely what makes this story so profoundly human. We have grown accustomed to seeing the great entrepreneurs of the technology industry as almost superhuman figures. They build the future, reshape societies, and control financial resources greater than the national budgets of many countries. Yet behind the corporate empires, billions of dollars, spectacular presentations, and ambitious visions are still people with the same fundamental weaknesses as everyone else.

And when people begin to believe that their success exempts them from the ordinary rules of reality, reality tends to remind them otherwise.

That is why I think Fuck Around and Find Out captures what has happened so effectively. Not as a celebration of someone's personal failure, but as a reminder that power never cancels responsibility.

We can design processors containing billions of transistors, build data centres the size of industrial complexes, and create artificial intelligence that surpasses human performance in an increasing number of specialised areas. We can develop technologies that transform economies, labour markets, and entire societies.

But we still haven't managed to design anything that guarantees good judgement in the human being holding the steering wheel.

And perhaps that is where the truly great challenge lies. Not in making machines more intelligent, but in ensuring that the people controlling them understand the consequences of their own actions.