Jensen Huang reportedly instructed his team at Nvidia "never to think about" planning for a Taiwan contingency. Despite the fact that their business is reliant on TSMC. The Jensen-Megaspeed mess really puts these incredible — and barely-noticed — details from Stephen Witt's The Thinking Machine in a new light: Huang refuses to consider the impact on his global business if China were to blockade or invade Taiwan, despite the regular threats emanating from Beijing to do just that. “To my great surprise, Nvidia had done no contingency planning for this eventuality,” Witt writes. He quotes Deb Shoquist, Nvidia’s executive vice-president of operations: “If something happens to Taiwan and TSMC, the ramifications are so large it’s almost like asking me what I’d do if California fell into the ocean.” Huang had instructed her “never to think about this question.” —from my @nybooks essay earlier this year on Nvidia and American policy toward China: —more thoughts from me today: