Self-Imposed Prison: The Crime and Punishment of Huang of the Leather Jacket Cult

Author: Zuo Ye Waibo Shan

There is a victory called retreat, and there is a defeat called occupation.

NVIDIA rose with the spinning fans of its GPUs, but Jensen Huang fell amid the brewing provocations. With a blast from The New York Times, the top global wind vane for AI sounded the blue clarion.

However, all of this has nothing to do with Lao Huang anymore. Looking closely, failing to become the terminator of the AI bubble—was it a thrilling escape from the peak by entering the fray, or merely an appetizer luring one into a trap? History will judge his merits and failures.

Although 88% of employees wish him to stay, an interim CEO with a finance background cannot shoulder the heavy responsibility. However, his political patron, Trump, has calmly accepted reality. The Department of Justice under his command has also launched an antitrust investigation. The lame-duck administration can hardly hold things up alone.

But one thing is certain: the era of NVIDIA belonging to Jensen Huang has ended here.

Perhaps, there is only Jensen Huang within the era, not a so-called "Era of Huang."

Small fish go to jail, big fish get pushed out

“A Legend replaces a Legend!”

Elections are a game for fools.

In 2008, the first African American president took residence in the White House, and people optimistically believed that the United States could weather the financial crisis.

But Guobao Bank was merely a small Chinese bank in Manhattan's Chinatown, yet it suffered an unjust disaster. It was the only bank investigated in connection with the "subprime mortgage crisis." Yes, not Goldman Sachs or Morgan were prosecuted, but a Chinese bank at the credit union level.

In 2026, NVIDIA, struggling to dance atop the AI wave between China and the US, was forced to dismiss its CEO—a founder who had served for 33 years—in an extremely undignified manner, simply because he did not support the loser of the previous election.

Avoiding politics but leaning Democratic was the mainstream choice for West Coast tech companies before 2016, but the Silicon Valley right wing represented by Peter Thiel changed everything. You cannot choose both parties; you must pick a master among them.

However desperate Bezos and Zuckerberg looked in their last-ditch efforts to curry favor with Trump before the 2024 election, the backlash now faced by Jensen Huang and Musk will be even worse.

The thin blue lines easily slit the throat of the sitting president, yet still crave to chop off the head of the defeated like a revenge saga. It is hard to say whether this represents the ideological bias embodied by The Economist, or if racism is hiding underneath.

Image: Heads rolling (Source: @TheEconomist)

If it were a punishment of competitors, Jensen Huang would bear at least three sins:

① Anthropic is on the verge of an IPO, and the path for Chinese open-source models to accelerate using "American chips" must be severed; Huang Le's value lies in assembling all elements of the safety narrative in a dramatic fashion;

② Data centers need to be built, but the political noise must come from the Republican Party; Jensen Huang's value lies in ending the politicization of data centers since the midterms, allowing them to run quietly;

③ A personally scandal-driven approach, a zero-second launch amidst the DEI resurgence, first crushing them in public opinion, and ultimately steering tech companies back to their pre-2016 trajectory.

It is safe to boldly predict that Jensen Huang's skin tone is suited for sacrifice, while Musk's connections are suited for co-optation. When combined, they create a scene of prosperity.

Image: Shelf life of only two years (Source: @zuoyeweb3)

Before 2024, employees at NVIDIA were staunch Democrats. But since 2025, Jensen Huang and Trump have grown increasingly close, with statements like "America's unique advantage lies in President Trump."

Indeed, lobbying far surpasses donation, which itself is a signal of who supports whom at the center. But in today's politically polarized climate, absolute loyalty is the only standard; anything less is absolute disloyalty.

Contemplating danger, retreat, and change, the political wind direction is unsuitable for long-term steadfastness. CUDA can be laid out over many years, but the iterations of the B300/H200/A200 series accelerate year by year.

From a macro perspective, an economic cycle is essentially a financial bubble triggered by a technological collapse.

No one knows whether AI will turn into a bubble. Jensen Huang has always conducted business purely as business when dealing with China, while China, as the largest external variable, continuously impacts America's AI narrative. No one knows what else the US is hiding.

Whether delaying the bubble or proactively bursting it, NVIDIA can no longer hold a monopoly; professional managers must be brought in to act as political spokespersons, and if necessary, detonated early so the bomb goes off during Trump's term.

AI hardware such as AMD and Intel are in the hands of ethnic Chinese, and there are plenty of perfect scapegoats for the US economy. Just as Israel serves as a political placeholder, WASPs incite civil wars between Jews and Chinese. They appear as bystanders, but are in fact the eternal masters.

One legend is not replaced by another; the leather jacket doesn't wrinkle, it just gradually fades.

Let imagination seize power

“Live by the sword, die by the sword.”

In 1968, facing the late Eastern monsoon by two years, students in Paris grew increasingly angry, hoping to smash an old world only to create an eternal new one.

The boundless pursuit of the new gives rise to unrestrained fantasies. Everything drifts toward nihilism with hormones. The old world was not replaced by a program, system, or ideology.

But reality is material. The silent majority voted de Gaulle back in. Compared to Chinese peers or Musks, NVIDIA is more suitable for demolition.

Image: The Achilles' heel of 3% (Source: @zuoyeweb3)

Founders of US tech firms, eager for capital markets yet fearful of losing control, gave birth to the dual-class share structure. But NVIDIA was founded too early, or rather, Jensen Huang attempted to replace capitalist property rights with the Confucian values of trust and righteousness prevalent in Chinese society.

Musk holds absolute control over SpaceX, Google belongs to the duo of Page and Brin, but Jensen Huang relies on absolute board support—a simple majority of 6 out of 11 is enough to withdraw backing.

If someone tells you that multisig wallets are unsafe, you tell them that a $4 trillion NVIDIA isn't exactly in the clear either.

A single-point crisis is certainly terrifying, but collective blind conformity is even less rational. Outsiders will not defend your blood and sweat; they only care about their own titles and stocks.

After the frenzy and passion subsided, France never fully stabilized. Street protests tenaciously persisted for decades, regardless of leftists, rightists, or centrists.

They, the intellectuals, saw through the rotation game of elections, pondering how to defeat capital and power, how to control them. This became a compulsory course for intellectuals in the post-WWII and Cold War eras.

From Soros adopting Popper's concept of the open society, to Reagan refining a masterpiece collection of Soviet jokes, to Obama eventually distilling diverse philosophies into diversity as a devastating tool.

Youth are forever angry, and the media forever high-strung.

Everything is merely coincidence. The New York Times published its article on October 29, which initially failed to spark a tidal wave of outrage. Until an October 6 Financial Times report raised the tsunami. In between lay merely a week where the Republicans lost the midterm elections.

The world changed colors, and AI got a new boss.

The collapse of FTX originated from a CoinDesk report, Huang's downfall began with an NYT piece, and ended with a single statement from the board.

When you defend Jensen Huang, you can't even find a competitor. Even if antitrust regulators strike, the operators behind it are multiple Pulitzer Prize winners. Even if the Democrats take action, the grand cause of national security is irrebuttable.

We should even be grateful it is 2026, and not many are focusing on gender issues as they did during Biden's term.

Image: Under the banner of justice (Source: @semafor)

Draw your sword, look around in bewilderment, but who exactly can you target?

Even the Democratic Party has no supreme representative. If Binance gets hacked, you can blame General Kim, but the US president is still a Republican. The Democratic National Committee is merely an electoral body, lacking a Politburo like a Leninist party.

Unable to defend himself, with no enemies to fight back against, even Musk, owner of 𝕏, can only offer verbal support. But Trump cannot save a corporate CEO, as the state apparatus must conduct its investigations.

Everyone is in the game, playing their assigned role. The onlookers are also part of the play.

The old world is behind you

“Strike the shepherd, and the sheep scatter.”

The great economic purge is still ongoing. Politically, Defense Secretary Hegseth has become the new target. Someone must take responsibility for the failure of the Iran war. Trump has already become a pathetic, down-and-out old man.

And precisely Huang must take responsibility for victory. Americans believe that in the US-China AI chip competition, the US holds an absolute advantage. Yet someone must answer for China's rise in large models. Liang Wenfeng cannot be chosen, OpenAI is being beaten back step by step by antitrust authorities, and absolutely leading NVIDIA, meanwhile, is actually the easiest target to strike without damaging existing advantages.

Because I stand on moral high ground, I can lower my baseline.

Purges are a millennia-old fine tradition in Europe and America. From the Inquisition to the KKK, the core remains identical. Even through long-term tempering, Europe has long set industry precedents for the US.

Politically, the US keeps Europe as a mistress, but from the perspective of exporting values, Europe remains the US's strict spiritual father.

Facing cross-border tech enterprises rising after WWII, nation-states must both control their wings and collude with them to carve up the world. Early antitrust measures are increasingly ill-suited to reality. Dismantling one's own advantageous enterprises results in foreign nations growing stronger.

Image: Fines cannot cultivate competitiveness (Source: @zuoyeweb3)

Once market competition ends, enterprises often must bind themselves deeply to politics to enjoy monopoly rents.

Since AT&T sacrificed Bell Labs, antitrust is almost solely treated as a constraint mechanism, rarely truly enforced. EU fines function like tax farming; they neither nurture local enterprises nor block foreign ones. Their sole purpose is to sustain a massive bureaucratic system.

Then came rating tools like ESG, and compliance measures like GDPR penetrating enterprises worldwide. Paradoxically, these force major companies to implement compliance standards. Whether in China or the US, spiritual compliance equates to conforming to EU regulations.

In the end, America sells chips, Europe sells luxury goods, and China sells large models at cabbage prices.

People lose value far from home. When Chinese people collectively sell chips in the US, distinctions between precious and cheap arise. Politics can use public opinion as an agent to take everything away.

Image: Short-selling started long ago (Source: @WSJ)

This is by no means alarmist talk. As early as 2024, the White House had already taken notice of Huang Le. Half a year ago, someone publicly released a report shorting NVIDIA. But these are merely dramatic plot points in a one-week miniseries.

The visible hand will make you despise, but next comes the stage of the invisible hand. The only question is: do ideological fanatics truly possess the capacity to manage a high-tech industry?

Sam Altman of OpenAI believes in AI, but Ray Dalio, long before losing his testicles, had already achieved enlightenment on the Scaling Law at Baidu. The subsequent leap forward is merely the inevitable conclusion of a long storyline.

Jensen Huang has fulfilled his mission, but the entire AI industry—and even the plight of Chinese people in the US—will not improve. Because the system no longer rewards correctness, only political correctness.

If China's AI performs well, it means overseas Chinese in the US failed to properly enforce bans. If the US's AI performs poorly, it means overseas Chinese in the US withheld their intellectual contributions to America.

What if the US does well in AI?

That would be the strongest chip company led by Americans.

From Wang Laboratories to Huang's GPUs, it's nothing but oversized laundry rooms and massage parlors.

Conclusion

It is not because people invented science that they stopped hunting witches, but because they stopped hunting witches that they invented science.

When FTX collapsed, SBF eventually gave up resistance, turned around to play video games, and likely used NVIDIA's GeForce series.

It is difficult to know what kind of psychological journey Lao Huang went through over those four days from October 8 to 12, or whether he recalled the past events of GPU mining. That was the earliest collective memory of Huang in the crypto circle.

At the 2013 Xiaomi launch event, Huang shared the stage with Lei Jun and was thrilled. During the 2019 PoW ETH transition, "stinky gamers" frequently suffered disasters. Amid the ebb and flow of mining booms, Lao Huang finally found his second growth curve.

Then came the AI large models taking off in 2022. After years of perseverance, NVIDIA met its destiny. Little did it expect its ending to be that of a scapegoat.