Huang’s Downfall Could Shake the Economy, and Detainees Have Disappeared From an ICE Database

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Tracy Mumford (0:32)

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Friday, November 13th. Here's what we're covering.

Ben Casselman (0:43)

So everything that's going on with Nvidia and especially with Jensen Huang's resignation has just raised a lot of questions about what's going to happen with the company, with the AI industry, and even beyond that. I spoke to an expert on Thursday who asked, can one CEO's sex life take down the economy?

Tracy Mumford (1:05)

Ben Casselman is The Times' chief economics correspondent.

Ben Casselman (1:08)

And look, the literal answer here is obviously no. But Nvidia really does play a unique role. And that isn't just because it makes something like 90% of the advanced chips that go into all of these AI models. It's because they play this role of almost being a central bank for the AI industry. They have played this really fundamental role in financing and providing loan guarantees to their customers and suppliers, to the companies that run the data centers, to the companies that are designing these models.

And every time that there starts to be sort of a wobble in the AI story, every time the market sort of starts to freak out a little bit, more often than not, it's Nvidia and it's Jensen Huang that kind of have stepped in to steady the ship. You know, they provide a financial backstop or Huang himself just comes out and sort of reassures everybody that the AI boom is still on track. And if they stop playing that role, if they pull back in some way, that could really have profound implications for the entire AI boom.

So while I don't think it's literally true that one sex scandal is going to bring down the US economy, financial markets are built on confidence to a significant degree. And you never know what is going to be the precipitating incident that kind of brings everything down. I wouldn't predict that that's what's going to happen here, but it does really point to the degree to which these sort of interconnected financial pieces and their reliance on AI have become a real vulnerability for the US economy.

Tracy Mumford (2:59)

Meanwhile, a Senate committee has summoned Jensen Huang to testify over national security concerns related to his affair with a woman suspected of being a Chinese spy.

The committee has also summoned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. In his role, Lutnick has control over government restrictions on technology sales, like limits on the transfer of Nvidia's advanced AI chips to China. While many top Trump administration officials have pushed for tighter restrictions to try and keep China from gaining an economic or military edge, they have frequently clashed with Lutnick, who's repeatedly delayed or deferred technology controls, according to people familiar with the discussions. Commerce Department officials told The Times that within the agency, Nvidia was treated differently than other companies. Nvidia's general counsel was given direct access to shape new rules that affect the company, with department staff describing seeing comments from Nvidia's top lawyer in drafts of government policies. A spokesman for the Commerce Department said that it was routine for the government to consult with companies as it finalizes rules. Still, there are also concerns about possible conflicts of interest when it comes to Lutnick and Nvidia. The investment firm he steered for decades, and which is now run by his sons, has a wide range of business interests that rely on Nvidia chips, including some related to data centers in Southeast Asia.

In response to questions from the Times, Nvidia declined to comment. The Commerce Department said Lutnick had fully divested from the investment firm and has not had any interactions with the firm about Nvidia.

Back in September, a professor at a nursing program in California was at home in her pajamas when a group of federal agents showed up to arrest her. The woman, who is originally from Nigeria, was able to call her family that day from ICE custody to say what had happened. But then she went dark. Her siblings tried to look up her name in a public database of immigration detainees, but they couldn't find her. Her lawyer tried too and couldn't find her either. Her family said it felt like she had fallen, quote, into an abyss. Then, days later, she called her brother from a detention center in Louisiana, halfway across the country. Now, The Times has learned that her disappearance from the database was not an accident, but rather part of a new Trump administration policy, with the Department of Homeland Security no longer publicly listing most migrants who have final deportation orders. The DHS database had been a key tool for families and lawyers to track detainees as they were shuffled around a network of hundreds of ICE facilities nationwide. And knowing exactly what jurisdiction a detainee is in can be essential for filing paperwork to fight their deportation.