Jensen Huang a victim of hubris

The Saga of Jensen Huang is no ballad, but it will probably be sung and talked about in tech circles for decades (until superseded by the next scandal).

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang "stepped down" a couple of days ago, after damaging allegations of an extramarital affair with Chinese "honeypot" and suspected spy Alice Huang (no relation, thankfully) came to light, closely followed by revelations of a second affair with Kimberley Powell, the company's vice president of health care. CFO Colette Kress has been appointed as interim CEO and, while in a normal company, she would be considered a good and capable leader, stepping into Huang's shoes is a mighty task, and it is just assumed that Ms. Kress is not up to it, so the comapny is searching for a suitably high-powered and high-profile successor to Huang. 

Good luck with that. Jensen Huang is the founder and only CEO Nvidia has had, and is the closest thing to a tech rock star we have. He makes Elon Musk look like the unlovable nerd he really is. Huang rocks his signature black leather jackets, signs autographs at public appearances, and hob-nobs with the likes of Donald Trump and other high-level politicians and celebrities. He is revered in tech and financial circles as near-divine, having grown his company from a lowly producer of graphics chips for video games in the early 90s to the world's most valuable (or now second most valuable) enterprise, worth $4 trillion, in short order. 

Nvidia is regularly called the engine behind the AI boom - whatever you might think of that - by virtue of its hardware and software being the foundational infrastructire that powers AI training and deployment which requires crunching vast quantities of data at once. Nvidia chips are now the standard and indispensible environment for AI development, and almost every major AI lab relies on Nvidia hardware (chips) and software to train and run their models.

By retaining control of the company from start to finish and ruling it with a rod of iron, Huang has also made himself indispensible. As the media gushes that "Jensen Huang IS Nvidia!", and categorically denying that anyone else could possibly run the company, the vacuum at the top is palpable. You have to feel kind of sorry for Colette Kress.

What it has really brought home, though, is the over-reliance on key founder figures and the lack of succession planning. Huang is 63 years old, so not old old, but headed for retirement age. Did the board of directors think he would live forever? He could have been knocked down by a bus on any given day, even if a major sex scandal didn't cut short his tenure first. Were they just too scared, or too star-struck to even suggest it? 

Nvidia would not be the first big company to mess up its succession plan - Hewlett-Packard, Coca-Cola, Subway, Uber and Starbucks are just recently examples that botched their transitions. But Nvidia is not just a big company, it's a monster.

In true nepotist style, not unlike a certain North Korean dictator, Huang appointed a daughter (Madison) to a position as senior director marketing in the company, a son (Spencer) to director of product for robotics, and a son-in-law (Nico Caprez) to VP in the AI infrastructure group. But there is no suggestion that any of these were expected to one day take over the big seat.

All of this also begs the question of what measures other tech behemoths like Tesla, Meta, and OpenAI - all run by charismatic semi-mythical founder figures - have taken to ensure their smooth succession. Because Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are not immortal either, even if they like to think so.

Jensen Huang is not actually indispensible and irreplaceable; that's just media hype. The comapny will go on. It has a huge team of strong, smart, capable people. But Huang certainly hasn't made it any easier by playing the rockstar figurehead consummate tech bro type. Drive is good; hubris not so much.

Ford government's blanket freeze on OSAP victimizes the innocent too

The Ontario government is currently sounding the death knell for many a community and career college in the province, as it doubles down on its freeze on the Ontario Student Assustance Program (OSAP), the province's needs-based financial aid plan for students.

It has been known for many years that several of these private colleges were scams. This has been widely reported. It seems, though, that the Ontario government has just woken up-to-date this. It reports various irregularities, from third parties completing coursework for students to thousands of OSAP applications bring submitted from the same IP address to entire courses being completed in a day and final exams in just a few minutes to students who have no idea what college they are supposed to be attending or what course they are enrolled in. 

The government is presenting these irregularities as though they were the clever people who uncovered all this. They have solutions: OSAP should not be available for online-only courses; eligible career colleges must have a physical location; third-party recruiters and immigration consultants should not be allowed to set up shop on campuses; etc. 

All well and good. But, in the meantime, Ford's government has imposed a blanket freeze on ALL private colleges in Ontario, affecting many (most) colleges that are legitimate and bona fide places of higher education and career training. For many, tuition paid through OSAP is their main source of revenue, and.spme will just not be able to survive until the New Year (maybe), when the Ontario government thinks it will have its shit together and will be able to re-introduce OSAP. Many colleges and students have been left in limbo. Some are not sure how they can afford to finish their courses; some have taken recourse to food banks to get by.

It was only in February of this year that the Ontario government carried put an on-depth review of the OSAP program, as a result of which it cut the maximum amount of the grant portion of OSAP from 85% to 25%, saddling poorer students with a hugely higher loan burden they can ill-afford to repay. The move was hugely controversial, but the Tories steamrollered it through regardless.

So, yes, those institutions that are found to have run "coordinated sophisticated efforts to take advantage of students and taxpayers for personal gain" do need to be weeded out and taken to task. But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Some colleges are doing a good job educating young people and preparing them for a life in the skilled trades or computing. Ontario needs such people. Subtlety had never been a hallmark of Doug Ford or his Conservative government, but this kind of burgeoning with a blunt instrument is egregious even by their standards.

As the opposition parties have pointed out, this should have been nipped in the bud years ago, and to some extent the government's own policies have exacerbated the problem.

Madagascar should not be involving itself with Russia

Some people, and some countries, just never learn. Various countries in Africa - Mali Niger, Burkina Faso - have succumbed to blandishments from Russia and agreed to one-sided partnerships in which Russia supplies weapons, training and military expertise to those countries (all military dictatorships) to aid them in their fight, mainly against Islamic insurgents.

In general, it hasn't gone well, in terms of successes in quelling sectarian unrest. (Frankly, I'm surprised that Russia has weapons or military personnel to spare at the moment even if these are mainly private militias.)

Now, another recently-minted military diactorship, Madagascar is looking to follow them down the road of "deepening ties" with Moscow. Russia has already started supplying weapons and instructors through its paramilitary operation, Africa Corps. Again, it surprise me that Madagascar, an economic basket case if ever there was one, has any money to spare for such a venture, although it does seem that countries can always find money for the military, however dire their circumstances. Unlike some of the other Sahel countries where Russia has inserted itself, Madagascar doesn't even have an Islamist problem; its ruling junta just wants to better control the country's beleaguered and exasperated populace.

Various onlookers, including the US's Africa Command are warning Madagascar not to go down the road towards increased Russian involvement, partly out of Cold War-style competition with Russia, but partly for the very real prospect that Russia's motives are never pure. It is almost certain that Russia's real motives are more along the lines of control of natural resources, and insinuation into, and infringement of, national sovereignty. 

China does it through trade and infrastructure projects; Russia prefers the military and security forces route. But you always know that both of them have ulterior motives. You know it will end with tears. Pick your poison.

Why try to impeach Hegseth now?

A vote for an impeachment motion against US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth - initiated, mark you, by Republican Representative Thomas Massie - has failed, blocked by loyal (read "feckless") Republicans. The vote was 211 to 204, and ALL Republicans apart from Massie trod the party line.

This was disappointing, of course. But then I found out that this was the OLD Trump-supporting House of Representatives that was voting. The "Blue Tsunami" of Democrats that was elected earlier this month have not taken their places yet.

Which, of course, begs the question of why Mr. Massie decided to bring forward his impeachment motion now, and not wait until the beginning of January, when he would have had a much more receptive and anti-Trump/Hegseth/war House.

Curiouser and curiouser.

This is not the end of the road, of course. A defiant Hegseth has been retrieved for now ("dodged the bullet", as many news outlets couldn't help but characterize it), and the Blue Tsunami will almost certainly revisit it in January, when its outcome is unlikely to be as close whether it has enough legs to achieve the 67% in the Senate is another matter, but it's more than possible - many Republicans really dislike Hegseth too, although there's a good proportion who would just like to see him sacked, not impeached.

Mark Carney veers still further to the right

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is still a very popular guy nearly two years after taking office (and that's not an easy task in fickle Canada). But the signs are that he has already lost his way.

He was voted in to power as a Liberal, and as someone who, it was hoped, could stand up to the depredations of Donald Trump. Since March 2025, he has governed as a conservative, taking the remaining wind out of the sails of an already-weak Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre, and has gradually re-modelled the Liberal party around him. 

From abandoning carbon tax to expediting oil and gas pipelines, Carney has shown a Trumpian "drill, baby, drill" attitude to resource extraction. It didn't end there: he called for the wholesale privatization of airports, vastly increased spending on defence, tax cuts like the Productivity 2Mega Deduction and the Canada Growth Incentive, and cuts to spending on the civil service, all areas that used to be the province of conservative governments. He's also shown himslf more than willing to deal with dictators and rights-shy regimes (China, Turkey, UAE, Modi's India, etc) that Canada would have thought twice or more about, back in the day. It's all part of what some have dubbed it the "Carney Doctrine".

More recently, though, a few measures suggest that he is willing to take his conservatism still further, perhaps further than even Poilievre might have done.

Exhibit No. 1: A line item hidden deep in the latest federal budget, allocates a millions of dollars to "exploring" the idea of lifting the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration in the western Arctic. Imposed by the Trudeau Liberal administration in 2016, the moratorium is stictly about environmentalism (constraining our carbon footprint and protecting the fragile Arctic ecosystem from development and potential oilspills), but Mr. Carney has left environmental responsibility long behind  in his rush toward development, particularly of the oil and gas sectors. Donald Trump did the same for the Arctic waters of Alaska. Are we now in the same boat as Trump? Carney says it's not about lifting the moratorium at all, but then why the need to explore it? He also says it's about "respecting the environment". Yeah, right!

Exhibit No. 2: Playing fast and loose with immigration and immigration statistics. (Now, where did he get that from, if not from Trump?) Soon after taking power, Carney slashed the official immigration targets. After all, he was elected on a platform of reigning in Justin Trudeau's admittedly out-of-control immigration policy. Now, though, he has announced that he plans to grant permanent residency to 200,000 temporary residents already in Canada, on a "one-off" basis, and that 200,000 (plus an additional 82,000 left over from a similar measure last year) is somehow not included in the allocation of 380,000 permanent residents already announced for 2026. So, we will end up with a total of about 680,000 this year, way more than the Trudeau administration ever dreamed of. Personally, I don't have a problem with this - we need more immigrants - but it is definitely evidence of Carney talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Has Carney lost the plot? That depends on what you think the plot is. The Carney Doctrine is all about "strategic autonomy", "principled pragmatism" (with who-knows-what principles) and "values-based realism" (with the values left conveniently vague). But it's also about re-setting expectations and, more recently, dressing up the wolf in sheep's clothing. As Iago said, so long ago, "Ha! I like not that!"

Swapping Stellantis for Roshel sounds like a win to me

It is finally official that Stellantis NV is selling its Branpton, Ontario, plant, althoigh rumours to that end have been rife for weeks. The Unifor union is apoplectic and complaining loudly about Stellantis' "betrayal". Both Prime Minister Mark Carney and Industry Minister Mélanie Joly have been very outspoken in their vilification of Stellantis, also employing the B word.

But, hold on, the plant is being sold to Canadian armoured vehicle maker Roshel, Inc. That's a win, isn't it? There may be some principled workers who object to manufacturing vehicles that may be used in wars and other conflicts. But the vast, vast majority of them probably won't care who they are working for so long as they have a job. Stellantis has also said it is willing to repay at least some of the federal subsidies they received in 2022, although not as much as they have used (it's not quite clear how much of the subsidies went to which Stellantis plant).

"More than 2,000 workers" have been laid off and idle (on "layoff pay") at the plant since 2023, although the plant employed about 3,000 in its full employment phase. You'd think Unifor would be pleased that someone (anyone?) has stepped in to replace the feckless Stellantis. Surely some employment is better than none? And the kicker? It's a Canadian company replacing a foreign company.

I did see one Unifor spokesperson complaining that, instead of 2,000 employees, Roshel would only be employing a few hundred, and other industry analysts have echoed that concern. That might be a valid issue (although still better a few hundred than zero). But Roshel CEO Roman Shimonov is upbeat about employment: "Our goal is to employ thousands of people, and we'll definitely give the first priority to Brampton people". The company doubled down a few days later, talking of the "potential to create over 2,000 jobs as production ramps up".

So, are the concerns overblown? If so, what's not to like?

Will Self's Umbrella is challenging but rewarding

I've read a few of Will Self's books (The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Great Apes, The Book of Dave) before, but never anything like his 2012 tour-de-force Umbrella.

It's a Modernist stream-of-consciousness masterpiece set in a mental asylum over a hundred years or so, and focussing largely on a particularly quirky long-time patient, Audrey De'Ath (or Death, or Deeth, or Dearth, or Deerth: it varies), and a staff psychiatrist, Zach Busner. Like a slightly-more-accessible Ulysses, there are few paragraphs (one paragraph was 8 pages long!), some idiosyncratic punctuation, and many long, obscure or colloquial words. Thoughts and descriptions unfold, and then are hijacked or distracted before they reach their conclusion. Vernacular slang and popular songs interrupt verbose flights of fancy. Technical medical and psychological descriptions merge with poignant literary minutiae. And all of it shifting seamlessly between the decades without any warning, sometimes seemingly in mid-sentence.

It's a wild cornucopia of clashing styles, often verging on poetry. But it works, and it's unputdownable.

Just a few short clips, to give a flavour of the riches contained:

On he comes ... and still the deep throat gapes in front of him, a gullet of light-stripes indented with bands of pockmarks - the original plasterers' decorative scheme - or else scattered with medallions and stone-rustic quotes seeped-upon-brown.

You'll be needing one, Busner, Whitcomb had said - a jolly arsehole, his long face a fraction: eyes divided by mustache into mouth - else the patients'll think ... Think what? Think what?!

In the submarine hospital all is agitation, the fin-flip along corridor after corridor after corridor, flowing in and out of recesses and embrasures, swirling around buttresses and foaming down the salmon run of the staircases, at the bottoms of which it dissolves in a spray of tics and jerks and grimaces.

So, a challenging but rewarding read. Curiously, though, it became less challenging as it progressed. I don't think this was just me getting used to his style, although there may have been an element of that too. It's almost like Mr. Self felt sorry for his readers, and thought he had punished them quite enough after the first however many pages. Or maybe he just found the initial style too exhausting. Certainly, the style seemed to change after the first 50 pages or so - still erudite and self-consciously literary, but less aggressively modernist and Joycean. It actually became more enjoyable as a result.

Doug Ford digs himself a hole

Did Ontario Premier Doug Ford just write his epitaph?

Already hightly unpopular after a horrible ten years in power, Ford seems to think that he can just brush people off with throwaway comments, à la Trump. But Ford is no Trump, and even Trump can't get away with throwaways any more, try as he might.

Responding to student protests after Ford's callous tuition hikes and cancellation of OSAP grants, a clearly rattled Ford shot back, "These kids are so naïve. They should be ... thanking the government for just investing". He blathered on, digging himself still deeper, "They read the social media and half the people on social media [are] a bunch of looney tunes. They all run out like sheep. Give your heads a shake, kids." 

Well, I guess very few of those "kids", or the "half the people on social media" voted for him, or are ever likely to in the future, so maybe he doesn't mind pissing them off. But everyone else is watching too, and now it's all over both halves of social media. 

Ford has always been insensitive and hard-hearted, partly because he is so out of touch with the poor of his province, born as he was into a wealthy family. Now, he's just reminding people of that. Ford has got as far as he has by being self-consciously "folksy". But this is not folksy; this is tone-deaf and soulless.

As provincial NDP leader Marit Styles put it, "Give your head a shake, Doug".