Blain’s Morning Porridge November 12th, 2026 – Huang, Nvidia, Trump, Corruption and Entitlement…
“Fish rot from the head down….”
Jensen Huang is toast. His fall will trigger doubts and weakness but also demands to know more. Huang has been caught. Who has not? How much more rank corruption is waiting to be exposed among the entitled denizens of the court of King Donald? What sordid skeletons from the past may be reawakened?
Key Takeaways:
- Nvidia’s dependence on Jensen Huang is now exposed as a major market risk. The dominant firm within the AI industry lacks clear succession planning and Huang was seen as the acceptable face of AI by the public.
- Confidence in the AI sector has been wobbling for months. Huang’s departure could lead to instability and trigger another collapse.
- The risks could be exacerbated by rising US interest rates.
- The AI Circularity trade – whereby Nvidia Chips have been financed by Nvidia funding customers through a complex series of trades – could break down.
- The broader concern is how widely the Tech Bro Billionaires who have basked in the adulation of the president since his inauguration may be undermined by Huang’s departure. Who might be next to be exposed as the Trump era ends?
- The risk to the Tech sector could rise as an angry public demand corruption is investigated, leading to a resurgence of questions about Epstein.
Michael Power, my tech and AI go-to-guy, called late last night from South Africa with the appropriate Warren Buffet quote: “There’s never just one cockroach in the kitchen.”
An hour or so earlier, I’d been a guest on The BBC’s World Business Report when the news broke.
I’d been blathering about how the strength of the US economy would feed into strong holiday sales. For all the Midterm noise about how American voters were worried about inflation, I’d suggested it wasn’t such a great concern (at less than 4% it’s an issue rather than a problem or crisis), but that corruption (as shown by the exit polling) was. I suggested the American economy should worry more about rising rates due to the scale of the national debt, and the risk that unwise policies cause the yield of that debt to soar, and how that would impact the economy in terms of borrowing costs like mortgages and cards.
I was just launching into how former crypto-miner CoreWeave’s slightly better than expected numbers don’t actually move the dial on the unsustainability of is debt, and what the fervid hoky-poky Anthropic IPO pricing (up, down, in, out, shake it all about) tells us ($2 trillion in October, $1 trillion on Monday, $1.4 trillion by Wednesday) tells us as the AI market forgets all its worries and parties on.
And then the producer whispered (at a thousand decibels) in my ear… front page of the New York Times!
Jensen Huang’s second affair with an employee.
It was a classic Roy Kent moment. The Richmond FC manager is the master of the single F-Word expletive delivered slowly at volume.
The programme switched tack.
My immediate reaction was its no longer about Huang – he’s done. He won’t survive this. As I called up the Nvidia stock price, I said the 9% crash in Nvidia’s stock (on screen as I watched) in after-hours trading highlights what will be massive contagion risk across the AI sector. It will be about corporate governance failures at Nvidia, which will be magnified by how the past two years of excessive Tech Bro pandering around Donald Trump might deflate.
It’s bound to hit the AI trade. I pointed out how Huang is probably the most “trusted” of the Tech Bro’s on AI risks and opportunities, and how he sits at the nexus of the AI circularity bubble – the man at the core of a tangled web of cross-financing deals that enable tech firms (like CoreWeave) to order massive amounts of Nvidia chips… and how the issues around how much knowledge China acquired through illicit purchases through the Singapore-based Mata Hari (Alice Huang) are still unresolved.
I think I covered most of it and the risk it all goes pop, in less than 100 seconds as the item ran out of time.
This morning…? Who knows. For Nvidia, his inevitable departure is going to trigger a leadership crisis – Huang deliberately structured the company without any form of succession planning. What will happen will happen.
The front pages reckon Huang and how his natty leather jacket is less likely to lead the AI markets, begging the question who will? They are a pretty ugly, unlikeable bunch. At least Huang smiled.
The problem is… Huang may yet prove the pebble that triggers a landslide.
Curiously, nearly every article I’ve seen this morning talks about Huang’s imminent “defenestration”, which actually means to be thrown out a window. The most famous example is “the Defenestration of Prague” in 1618, when Hapsburg Ambassadors where the throw-ees, triggering the 30-years’ War that killed over 30% of middle Europe’s population for religious reasons. History has a way of resonating.
I’ve gone with the Fish Rot from the Head Down quote this morning because Huang’s fall from grace could prove to be the pivotal event that spells the end of the claimed exceptionalism of the US Tech Bros and the climax of Trump corruption trauma.
Just how Donald J Trump’s second innings in the White House would play out was made clear at the inauguration on Jan 20th, 2025. He surrounded himself with adulating billionaires. He didn’t put his hand anywhere near the bible as he took the oath of office. Within days the Morning Porridge was warning that corruption from the closeness of money to power was shaping up to be the defining issue of his administration. And if the President was doing it, the so would all his mini-me’s – which is exactly what’s happened.
Corruption at the heart of government is a repeating, resonating theme through history. Any good history on the Decline and Fall of (insert name) Empire is always about how corruption replaces invention, innovation and good intentions.
For the Tech Bros… they’ve enjoyed unprecedented power, access and praise from a President basking in their presence (oh, how that must hurt Trump – he’s only made a handful of billion dollars from his shady White House dealings, while the Tech bros are making trillions. I suspect Trump’s manic desperation to do deals – like buying Russian energy firms for the family business – is to show he’s also a big-swinging-micky.)
The American people have noticed. That why corruption was their number one concern at the Midterms. The Democrats are promising to investigate it all. Frightened Republicans are desperately seeking to frame it as a politically inspired witch-hunt… (As ye sow, so shall ye reap Donald.) The list of Trump associated misdemeanours is too long and the rot goes too deep to ignore.
And what dark shadows may be reawakened?
There is nothing an angry public like more than watching false idols being toppled. Look at what’s happened in the UK over the last few days, Russel Brand and David Walliams, two TV stars whose sordid philandering’s and rape have been exposed. Brand is already sewing mailbags. It’s inevitable Walliams will join him.
What the Huang affair is likely to awaken is renewed curiosity across America to see what the other cockroaches have been up to… and all these questions will inevitably lead back to power, money, influence and …. Epstein.
Crashing major chords and manic laughter….
Out of time and back to the day job….
Bill Blain
Author of the Morning Porridge
CEO Windshift Capital
Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital
Meanwhile, don’t forget about my new book: The Battle for Hamble
You can read a review on the Society of Professional Economist’s website here.
