Are we going to pretend that Jensen Huang is an anomaly? An abnormality in a world where the combination of wealth and power belongs to a bizarrely small number of men? An incongruity and absurdity in American society that remains misogynist and male supremacist? Where sexual predators, rapists, and narcissists like Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein thrived only because of their wealth? Where wealthy men are rarely held accountable for crimes and corruption? Please.
Why is Jensen Huang making news media headlines and buzzing in gossip rags? Not because he and the technology industries building Artificial Intelligence centers milked the nation’s tax revenues to grow their obscene personal wealth and influence on US politics and policies. Not because the Constitutional and Ethical lines between government and private business have been breached. Not because technology, religious, consumer, and fuel industries…to name a few…have created an American oligarchy. An oligarchy that increasingly wields authoritarian power over communities and local governments, dismisses workers’ and residents’ rights, adds fuel to the fires lit by wage gaps, income disparity, growing poverty and homelessness, higher costs, debts…
Because he is a distraction.
He was stupid to believe himself impervious to the consequences of stupid decisions. Stupid to believe that beautiful smart women are attracted solely to him as a man. Stupid enough to ignore the consequences of quid quo pro between governments and relationships. Stupid because he did not connect the dots but assumed that his conceit and talent and membership in the billionaire circle-jerk would be his forever cocoon from accountability.
No one in journalism, government, academia, psychology, or over the age of twenty-one is truly that stupid. Except for men.
This story distracts from bigger stories: corruption in government; the power that very few hold over the rest of us; Republican party losses in Congress and state governments; the consequences of DOGE’s and Trump administration’s attacks on science, health, immigration, public education, and national security; rising costs in housing, healthcare, higher education, food, and fuel; and the rise in influence and numbers of far right groups.
I do not suggest that the story should be hidden or that Huang himself should be protected from scrutiny or that investigations of security breaches in US industries should be squashed. However, I do suggest that Americans, journalists, and government leaders should look farther and deeper.
This incident did not happen in a vacuum, nor did it happen overnight. This incident is too familiar, too easily dismissed as a ‘boys will be boys’ story, too much like all the other stories of corrupt and unethical dealings between our elected officials and private business leaders. This is bigger than a moral scandal in the Huang family. This story has all the odors and red flags of corruption, of industry-wide and government-wide depravity...ROT at the core of the technology industry and this White House.