Western Decline

真想抓间谍的话，谁会把情报寄给纽约时报？ 华盛顿那帮人偏就这么干了。据媒体转述，黄仁勋这份情报在他们手里捂了整整一年，连个常规应该有的“防御性简报”都没知会过他本人。结果到了中期选举前一周，突然像挤牙膏一样喂给《纽约时报》、《华尔街日报》和《金融时报》。 这放料的节奏堪比短剧。10 月 29 日先爆他跟中国女商人黄乐“关系密切”，隔天就补刀说女方在 Megaspeed 当高管时被中国情报部门招募。再过一周，连国务卿鲁比奥春天督办的机密备忘录都据转述搬了出来，定性成“恋爱关系”，一直逼得黄仁勋今天发公开信承认“对妻子不忠”。短短十天，从交友不慎、间谍渗透一路升级到桃色实锤，全套剧本一气呵成。 在我看来，这出戏的导演，极大可能是华盛顿的对华鹰派。他们真正想砍的是白宫里的交易派，而黄仁勋，只是被挑中拿来祭旗的靶子。 为什么偏偏拿他祭旗？看看他过去两年在干嘛就明白了。为了放宽对华限制，他成了华盛顿最卖力的头号说客，天天跟白宫念叨“把中国市场让给华为，最后死的是美国科技业”，主张放行 H200。 更让鹰派脑溢血的是，特朗普还真听他的。今年 5 月访华前，黄仁勋本来不在随行名单上，特朗普一个电话把他拽上了空军一号；到了 9 月北京高层访美，他又成了国宴座上宾。政府里早就有人憋着一肚子火，嫌白宫对北京太软弱。 那么怎么把这位总统红人从谈判桌上踢下去？干脆给他塞一个“间谍女友”。只要坐实枕边人是中国间谍，那黄仁勋过去两年说的每一个字，就不再是商业游说，而是妥妥的“间谍活动”。 于是华盛顿在这事上彻底精神分裂了：国会忙着拿他祭旗，总统却忙着替他擦屁股。 一边是众议院联名发难，逼他去作闭门说明；另一边，特朗普今天还在夸他是“正派人”，替他找补说“大概有苦衷”，甚至下周亚洲行还打算带着他。 可总统越护着，黄仁勋就越危险。现在还只是共和党鹰派发难；等明年民主党一接手，连商务部也要受到牵连问责。特朗普把他绑得越紧，民主党就越乐意拿他开刀，借他的脑袋去打特朗普“对华软弱”的脸。 那这桩间谍案到底是真是假？高明就高明在，情报多半是真的，但动机彻底是有鬼的。 仔细看就会发现，所有监控情报全指向女方，没有一条指向黄仁勋泄密。但只要逼他承认“出轨”这个唯一能核实的真锤，舆论就会自动帮他坐实“间谍”的罪名。 为什么偏偏选在现在喂给媒体？因为女方人在中国，司法根本鞭长莫及；情报在白宫内部压了一年，特朗普又置若罔闻。当一份真情报既上不了法庭、又改变不了总统的决定，鹰派手里就只剩下最后一招：在总统访华前夕，把料捅给报社。 毕竟，抓不抓得到间谍无所谓，只要能让黄仁勋闭嘴，这封信就算寄对地方了。

Taiwanese semiconductor analyst Andrew Lu’s take on the recent scandal involving Jensen Huang: Why the US Seized on the Scandal to Draw Its Sword: Three Strategic Objectives The purpose of this scandal is by no means to expose an affair. It is to force through three critical objectives that had made no headway in the tech war between the US and China because Jensen Huang opposed them. The first cut: Completely destroy the legitimacy of Jensen Huang's lobbying against sanctions in Washington Over the past two years, the loudest and most influential business leader in Silicon Valley opposing a total ban on chip exports to China has been Jensen Huang. He has told the White House the same thing all along: "Cede the Chinese market to Huawei, and the only one that ends up dead is the American tech industry." But the moment US intelligence labels the woman named as Huang's affair partner "a spy working for China's Ministry of State Security who sought to steer the US toward easing its chip controls," every bit of lobbying he has done for looser controls takes on an entirely different political meaning. It becomes a national security matter, raising the possibility that a foreign spy used a secret relationship to exert influence. Huang can no longer say a single word in defense of the Chinese market before Congress or the White House. If he does, he will be branded as someone who "fell for an intelligence operation and still hasn't come to his senses." The second cut: Reverse the H200 export approvals for China and sever the link between Chinese shell companies and Southeast Asian smuggling networks Look at the timing of the two reports. On November 8, the very day the Jensen Huang scandal broke, The New York Times published an investigation for which its reporters went in person to dozens of Chinese companies that the US Commerce Department had approved to handle Nvidia's H200 chips. New Matrix in Beijing was one of them. According to the report, the registered addresses of companies approved to buy the chips turned out to be empty "ghost offices," and some of the companies had close ties to entities on US sanctions lists and to firms under contract with the Chinese military. One exposé says Nvidia's CEO was having an affair with a female spy from Megaspeed, the Singapore company that handled the chip smuggling. The other says the Chinese companies Commerce approved to buy H200s are nothing but shell companies trading on behalf of the Chinese military. The aim of these two reports is clear. They are meant to pressure the Trump administration and the Commerce Department into fully revoking or freezing H200 export approvals for China and, going further, to force a sweeping overhaul of the loophole that let chips be diverted through data centers run by third parties in Singapore and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. The third cut: Put Nvidia on a national security leash through congressional oversight and an independent investigation As the world's largest company by market cap and the dominant force in AI, Nvidia has until now enjoyed broad autonomy in how it runs its business. But in the wake of this incident, the three congressional committees responsible for China, foreign affairs, and intelligence have begun examining Nvidia's internal security measures directly. They have even pressured Nvidia's board into forming an independent investigation committee to look into the company's own founder and CEO. In effect, Washington's national security establishment has planted a watchdog right inside Nvidia's board. From now on, the goal is to make sure that everything, down to where each and every one of Nvidia's high performance chips ends up, conforms strictly to US national security strategy. It also means there is no more room for skirting the edge of the rules or releasing chips with specs specially tailored to regulatory thresholds. Conclusion "The scandal was a detonator set off right on cue. The real goal was to plug the holes chips were leaking through." Jensen Huang made the fatal mistake of letting his guard down in his private life and personal relationships. In the end, he fell into a honey trap, the textbook tactic of intelligence warfare, and was compromised. America's national security and intelligence agencies ruthlessly exploited the weakness his private life had exposed. As a result, they solved three thorny problems in a single stroke: Nvidia's lobbying at the White House to ease restrictions on China, the flow of H200 chips into Chinese shell companies, and smuggling routed through Singapore. The closed congressional hearing set for November 18 will be the decisive turning point at which the US moves in earnest to tighten its sanctions on China's AI compute even further.

Chamath: “I got it totally wrong. This election was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.” “What I don't think I understood clearly enough, and I think that this election has made it extremely clear, is that since COVID, we have moved past political ideology. And I want to say this again, I do not think Democrats or Republicans matter. That is my real takeaway after this election. There is a central bloc of people that vote on the prescient issues of our time. What are these people voting for? I think what they are shouting now, they were trying to signal, and now they are shouting, is a broad-based belief that the economy has completely decoupled from reality and is broken. The economic reality in America is broken. There is a small percentage of people, the four of us on this pod and all of our friends, who are the asset owners of America, and we have benefited in every weather condition. When rates were zero, we benefited because we were able to build our businesses with very cheap capital. When rates were high, we benefited because we had pricing power. And in every condition in between, we've all managed to continue to accumulate and grow assets, but we are few and far between. And then there's everybody else who are wage earners, and the structural capacity of the American economy to support and grow wage earners is broken. I don't think this has anything to do with socialism. I don't think the far left won particularly more than they were expected to. I don't think the far right won particularly more than was expected. This was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.”

You are so out of touch and this is exactly why your party lost. It was much more than just the war and inflation. Second biggest concern was corruption. Even if inflation drops, there is still no trust — people are tired of the broken promises, chaos, cruelty and corruption with this administration.

She had sex with 251 men in 10 hours. Five at a time, four minutes each, no breaks. Guys mailed Polaroids of their d*cks just to get in line. She was 22. Two years earlier she was on a full law scholarship at King’s College London. She was promised $10,000 for the shoot. Never saw a dollar. The film made millions. The last man in line was Ron Jeremy. He’s in prison for r*pe now. Her name is Annabelle Chong. She was born Grace Qu in Singapore in 1972. Straight-A student. Gifted education program. Raffles Girls School, one of the most elite schools in Southeast Asia. Full scholarship to study law at King’s College London. The kind of student entire countries build futures around. Then London broke her. She was gang r*ped. She dropped out, moved to Los Angeles, enrolled at USC to study gender studies and art. In 1994 she answered an ad in LA Weekly for an adult talent agency. Five months later, on January 19th, 1995, she shot what became known as The World’s Biggest Gang Bang. 251 acts. Approximately 70 men. Ten hours. She called it a feminist statement. She said she was modeling what a “female stud” would look like, inspired by the Roman Empress Messalina. The film became one of the highest grossing adult titles ever made. She was promised $10,000. She says she never saw a dollar. In the video below, she sits on Jerry Springer’s stage and explains the logistics the way a catering manager would explain a buffet. How many at a time. How long each round lasted. What the application process looked like. Her sister is backstage crying. Wives and girlfriends are waiting to confront the men who showed up. She doesn’t flinch. Her sister comes out and says, “You’re killing us. You’re killing the family.” Annabelle responds by comparing herself to the temple priestesses of ancient Babylon. Jerry cuts her off. “You weren’t celebrating anything. You were lying down to get screwed by 251 guys to make a movie.” She looks at him and says, “To get screwed is a wonderful experience. I feel alive, Jerry. 1995 is the year of the pig. And I just feel that I started the year off right.” In 2003, she walked away. She earned a degree in software engineering. Today she writes code as a senior front-end engineer in California under her birth name. She once said, “Annabel is dead and is now replaced full-time by her evil doppelganger.” A law student from Singapore was r*ped in London, became the most famous gangb*ng performer in history, called it liberation, was never paid for it, and now debugs JavaScript for a living. The Sundance documentary was about the woman who broke the record. Nobody made one about the woman who broke herself getting there. Did the industry exploit a r*pe survivor who reframed her trauma as feminism, or did she exploit the industry right back and walk away before it noticed?

对黄仁勋的猎巫行动来自这些依然觉得自己服务的读者是own the world 老白男记者对亚裔和华裔的种族歧视和偏见，因为黄仁勋是华裔，就可以被编造通共帽子，而实实在在在中国有工厂的马斯克因为是白人，他就会选择无视

Hallmarks of a smear campaign: anonymous sources, a bit salacious, compliant journalists, leaking side not winning the debate, vindictive, innuendo not evidence. If Huang provided information that gave China an advantage, say so. ft.com/content/a55a2a22-4479…

Do you support the Green New Deal? Ossoff [smugly]: no Do you support Medicare for All? Ossoff [smugly]: no Do you support abolishing ICE? Ossoff [smugly]: no Any poll that has Jon Ossoff or Gavin Newsom as more likely to win a general election over AOC is a junk poll.

Chuck Schumer has gone from a punching bag for Democrats to the architect of their historic landslide, @FranklinFoer writes. He spoke with the senator: theatln.tc/8GgiSxtj 📸: Tom Brenner / Getty

AOC said she's backing Jeffries for Speaker.