Nvidia lacks a chairman or succession plan
The Wall Street Journal’s 10-Point newsletter said the reckoning over Nvidia’s inquiry into Jensen Huang and Alice Huang’s affair imperils Jensen Huang’s leadership of Nvidia and the AI industry that depends on the chipmaker’s technology and financial help. Nvidia lost roughly $200 billion in market value on Nov. 9 after launching the inquiry, the newsletter said.
The account opened with a late-night party at a Taipei bar in 2024, which it described as central to the saga. Alice Huang told fellow executives, “Jensen’s a great friend of mine.” She sent a text, and minutes later Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrived for a whiskey.
Before long, U.S. and Asian authorities were investigating whether Alice Huang’s firm, Megaspeed, was illegally diverting Nvidia chips to China and probing Alice Huang’s suspected intelligence ties, according to the newsletter. Nvidia’s own inquiry focused on Jensen Huang and Alice Huang’s affair.
The Wall Street Journal said the scandal “lays bare an extraordinary governance vacuum.” Nvidia lacks a chairman or succession plan, and Nvidia initially denied Jensen Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang before Jensen Huang later acknowledged it.
Supply and compensation pressures
Patrick Thomas reported that America’s $100 billion beef industry is undergoing “a painful downsizing” and is poised to make high meat prices a long-term reality. After years of economic turmoil and droughts, the U.S. cattle herd had shrunk to its smallest level in 75 years.
The newsletter said the supply shock is driving up steak and hamburger prices at grocery stores and restaurants to record highs, and that the conditions could last well into the next decade because it takes time to replenish a herd. It added that beef prices have become “the poster child for food inflation and a Trump administration obsession,” that “Everyone is divided on how to fix it,” and that Thomas’s interviews with ranchers, meatpackers and policymakers reveal “a fractured supply chain with few good answers.”
Options Group expected Wall Street compensation to rise this year as firms cash in on market volatility and flashy stock-market debuts. Last year, the average Wall Street bonus rose 6% to a record $246,900, while average total compensation exceeded $561,770, according to New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Youth sports and classroom disputes
The Wall Street Journal reported that amateur athletes’ ability to sign endorsement deals that monetize their name, image and likeness has pumped billions of dollars into college sports and is now extending to high-school athletes. For some parents and coaches, NIL deals create welcome opportunities for students to offset the growing costs of elite youth sports. Others, especially in the six states that still restrict NIL activity before college, think allowing teenage athletes to cash in on their personal brands takes the increasing professionalization of amateur sports too far.
In Silicon Valley and beyond, families are pressuring teachers or calling lawyers over classroom clashes, ranging from a recess squabble to an essay flagged as “76% AI.” Esther Wojcicki, a retired Palo Alto teacher and author of How to Raise Successful People, said parents have “a newfound sense of self-righteousness” in protecting their children, and that the friction is “pushing some teachers over the edge.”
Drone evacuation and survival on the front line
James Marson said he first learned who Pvt. Kostyantyn Vlasenko was while scrolling through social media one morning a few weeks ago. The unit that saved Vlasenko had published footage of him being evacuated by a drone, describing the evacuation as a first in the history of warfare. Marson called the episode a rescue story, but also one in which a drone nearly killed Vlasenko and another drone saved him.
On Oct. 30, Marson met colleague Nikita Nikolaienko and photographer Emanuele Satolli in Lviv, where they sat down with Vlasenko over two days. Marson said interviewing Vlasenko in Ukrainian helped establish a quick rapport. He found Vlasenko remarkably open and said he was struck by Vlasenko’s humor as Vlasenko recounted surviving while holed up alone in a school boiler room on the front line of the war with Russia.
Although attention had focused on Vlasenko cutting off his foot to survive, Marson said what fascinated him was how Vlasenko coped mentally as well as physically. Vlasenko befriended animals that wandered through, gave them names and cracked jokes with his unit on the radio. The animals were part of a space he created for himself that at one point he described as “comfortable.”
Vlasenko kept a photograph of his cats and a key ring with an image of his wife’s eyes with him on the front lines, and he said a connection to everyday life was one thing that kept him going. Marson asked what advances in drone technology mean for a soldier on the front lines and said he hoped Vlasenko’s story showed what it was really like to be “human in a robot war.”
The 10-Point newsletter was curated and edited by Morgan Smith and Gary Mitchell in collaboration with Editor in Chief Emma Tucker.