00:00NVIDIA is at the center of the global artificial intelligence revolution,
00:04but the American chip giant is now facing an extraordinary crisis
00:08following the shock resignation of its CEO, Jensen Huang,
00:13amid allegations of an espionage scandal.
00:15The implications could go far beyond one company's leadership,
00:19raising serious questions about corporate security,
00:22China's intelligence ambitions, and America's technological supremacy.
00:27So to answer all these questions, I'm now joined by Andrea Renda,
00:31head of research at the Center for European Policy Studies here in Brussels.
00:34Good morning. Always great to have you on.
00:37Good morning.
00:37So let's go right to it.
00:40Jensen Huang's resignation, certainly the end of an era.
00:45Could this become a major crisis for the entire global AI industry?
00:51The answer is yes, because Jensen Huang is not just basically
00:56the tech leader of the past few years,
00:59the person that has led the company that was doing GPUs for video games
01:05into becoming the backbone of the modern AI revolution.
01:08But he is also a diplomat, a tech diplomat for the United States around the world.
01:13He's been striking deals. He's been sitting with presidents everywhere.
01:16So there is a soft power in Jensen Huang,
01:18which is also driving the whole AI industry.
01:21And his policy of buying shares or facilitating the rise of other companies
01:27around its ecosystem has really created something that sustains itself,
01:31also because Jensen Huang's has been really somehow the master of puppets of everyone.
01:36So now that you mentioned it, how much damage could this scandal do to the confidence
01:42to the global AI community, particularly investors and governments?
01:46I think it's early days. The scandal could remain self-contained to the position of Jensen Huang.
01:53NVIDIA, of course, is a fantastic company, is a very solid company, can continue,
01:57it will continue producing its chips.
01:59But there is a value to a CEO, to a very charismatic CEO of a company, which is enormous.
02:06We've seen that with Sam Altman, with others.
02:08I mean, the markets have been valuing enormously these figures.
02:11So with the loss of confidence and also the loss of strategic positioning,
02:17NVIDIA is considered to be structurally important and strategic for the whole of the United States,
02:22you know, the whole AI industry might lose its trailblazer and its leader.
02:27And this might mean everyone will now look for alternatives.
02:31And this might lead to a slowdown in the whole industry.
02:34Is China's intelligence apparatus now playing a much more sophisticated game here,
02:41not only targeting technology, but also the people who control it?
02:45I think China has been very sophisticated in building its own AI industry.
02:49It uses everything. I'm not sure it uses spies as well.
02:52I think there is much more to this story that we will discover in the coming days.
02:56There will be an investigation and so on.
02:57So it's early days. It's not necessarily about Chinese spying.
03:01It's about selling ships to China and dodging export controls.
03:05So there are two sides to this story.
03:07We will discover whether it's actually China orchestrating all this,
03:11or it's actually a businessman with the sort of tacit consent of the U.S. administration
03:15managing to do business in a very successful way across the world.
03:20Interesting. And what should Europe take away of all this?
03:24Well, I've been critical in the past of the excess dependency on one supplier
03:28that Europe's factories and future gigafactories had featured.
03:33I think we should diversify.
03:34We should make sure that we don't depend on one single supplier.
03:37And also, we should make sure that gradually we build our own internal capacity
03:41to produce chips or source chips from trusted partners.
03:45Now, this is not going to change for the time being.
03:47NVIDIA chips are the leading ones in the market.
03:49And if we want to build our own tech leadership over the coming years,
03:53we still should continue purchasing those chips,
03:57but also trying to look for alternatives
03:59and also trying to be a bit smarter on the global market.
04:02And finally, who benefits from this crisis, briefly?
04:06Well, the only ones that so far stand to benefit,
04:08well, certainly some of the Chinese companies might,
04:11although they might not be able to use the NVIDIA chips
04:13that they've been using for years.
04:15Definitely the tech giants, the old ones, we might say,
04:18once we were calling them the new ones, right?
04:20Alphabet or Microsoft that are building their own chips.
04:24They're recently also releasing very important chips.
04:27Also, OpenAI has been building its own chips.
04:29They might stand to lead because the whole market will look for alternatives
04:31and they are very attractive.
04:33And a fascinating conversation.
04:35We'll continue with that one day.
04:36And that does it for us today.
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