Reed’s view
Jensen Huang made a lot of mistakes, but the one that really brought him down was getting too involved in DC.
The skillset of a great technologist is the opposite of someone who’s great at politics. Technologists have to think years, sometimes decades in advance. When they figure out a winning formula, they bet everything on it.
That’s a really bad way to operate in Washington, where things move on two-year election cycles and commitment to any one idea, faction, or ideology is a liability if and when the political winds change.
When Donald Trump was elected president for a second term, it seemed like the world was suddenly a fundamentally different place. The White House was open for business in a way never seen in history. It was irresistible for a lot of tech people (Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen also fell into this trap).
For a while, it seemed like Huang was one of the few technologists to find success in DC. His friendship with the president helped advance his worldview — that America should export its technology around the world, even to China. But it was all a mirage. Political people understood this would never last, and it would end in hearings, investigations, and prosecutions.
