Who Honey Potted Who? Secretary of National Embarrassment; The Nerd Reich

Editor's Picks returns after an election hiatus.  The Nvidia story gets a little murky, Pete Hegseth outembarrasses himself, and Jesse Wells is my new hero.

Who Honey Potted Who?

The Nvidia founder and CEO is out and not just as a serial womanizer. Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday, following allegations of extramarital affairs with a "suspected" Chinese spy and an internal executive. Here's the wrinkle. The so-called spy worked for a Chinese tech firm, but the idea that she honey-potted him to get chips that were restricted from being sold to China has some flaws.

Alice Huang (no relation) had been very public about her romance with the ever-clad-in-a-leather-cafe-racer CEO for months, regularly posting pictures of them canoodling on social media—not exactly spy-like behavior. What's more, President Trump was briefed about it at least twice, and that was before he insisted Huang accompany him on a trip to Beijing in May!

It gets worse. Culper Research, a short-selling firm, published findings back in May suggesting Megaspeed, flagged as a spin-off of Chinese government-owned cloud company 7Road, appeared to be "secretly financed by Alibaba via a series of apparent shell companies," and that up to 40% of Nvidia's data center business was linked to China via Southeast Asian intermediaries.

It seems plausible that Jensen Huang, who argued we should sell the chips to China, knew they were getting them and may have used Alice Huang as an intermediary.

Secretary of National Embarrassment

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was reprimanded by a sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier—on Veterans Day, no less! Hegseth narrowly avoided an impeachment motion on Tuesday, then gave a familiarly embarrassing press conference in which he tried to claim this was just the "next step" in going after the "war fighters."

"Put the Secretary on trial today, and the men and women who carried out those orders tomorrow," said Hegseth. "If they're going to come for the warriors, then they're gonna have to go through me." You can probably hear my eye roll.

The next day, an Army sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier loudly reprimanded Hegseth and his entourage for laughing and talking near the memorial. The guard shouted, "All visitors will maintain an atmosphere of silence and respect at all times," after Hegseth, his wife, and senior aides were seen disrespecting the tomb while posing for photos.

The Nerd Reich

Finally, kick-ass protest-song folk rocker Jesse Welles performed The Nerd Reich on Jimmy Kimmel Live this week. Check it out below.