#610 The Devil Made Me Do It

It Was a Decision: What the Powerful Teach Us About Human Nature

Why smart people with everything to lose keep making the same choice.

Nvidia’s founder has resigned. Jensen Huang stepped down as CEO and from the board after reports of two extramarital relationships [1][2]. He admitted in an email to staff that he cheated on his wife [3]. One relationship was reportedly with an Nvidia executive who reported to him. The other was reportedly with a client whom U.S. intelligence officials are said to have concluded was recruited by Chinese intelligence [3]. That last claim is reported, not proven, and China denies it [3].

The easy reaction is that he’s a fool. He isn’t. He built the most valuable company in the world. The more useful question is why smart people with everything to lose keep doing this, because the pattern is old.

The pattern is old

Bill Clinton had a relationship with a White House intern, lied about it under oath, and was impeached in 1998, though the Senate acquitted him [6]. In 1963, Britain’s war secretary John Profumo lied to Parliament about an affair with a woman who was also involved with a Soviet naval attaché, and he resigned in disgrace [7]. In 2012, David Petraeus quit as CIA director over an affair with his biographer [8]. In 2018, Intel’s Brian Krzanich resigned over a relationship with an employee [9], and in 2019 McDonald’s fired Steve Easterbrook for relationships with employees [10]. Different decades and industries, same story.

Opportunity

Powerful people are surrounded by deference. Subordinates and clients can’t easily say no, and no one wants to be the person who tells the boss to stop. Access is the foundation of almost every case like this.

Desire

Let’s be honest about it. Novelty, excitement, and attraction are human, and long success and long marriages don’t remove them. Secrecy and danger can make the pull stronger. Most people feel this. Most don’t act on it.

Insulation

This is what separates the people who act from the people who don’t. Decades of winning teach a person that rules bend for them. Research on power suggests it reduces how risky things feel. The cost doesn’t disappear. It just looks smaller from the top.

Isolation

It really is lonely at the top. The people with the most to lose are often the ones with the fewest people willing to say, “Don’t.”

The trap

Powerful people are also targets. Profumo’s case shows it, and the reporting on Huang, if the intelligence assessment holds, suggests the same thing. An adversary who understands human nature doesn’t need to break your defenses. They only need to find the weakness you’ve already shown.

How likely was each factor? A rough estimate

I put numbers on what probably drove the decision. These are my own judgment calls from the public reporting, not data from a study, and they overlap, so they don’t add up to 100%. Each is the odds that the factor played a meaningful role.

Likely factors behind the decision

Author’s rough estimates of the chance each factor played a meaningful role. Not research findings.

Opportunity and access

90%

Desire and novelty

85%

Perceived insulation

75%

Isolation

60%

Inexperience

45%

Deliberately targeted

40%

Marital dissatisfaction

25%

Hatched bar: conditional on the U.S. intelligence assessment being correct, which I put at roughly 85%. The espionage allegation is unproven, remains under investigation, and is denied by China.

Opportunity and desire sit at the top, which matches nearly every case from Clinton to Profumo to Easterbrook. Perceived insulation from consequences comes next, because it explains why the cost didn’t stop him. Isolation follows. Inexperience and marital dissatisfaction sit lower, because there’s little evidence for either and research shows many people who cheat report being satisfied at home.

The “deliberately targeted” bar is a special case. It depends on the intelligence assessment being right, so it’s conditional and not a separate cause. If it holds, it raises the first two bars, because someone may have engineered the opportunity and the excitement.

None of this excuses anyone

Every one of these people could have talked to someone, gotten help, or walked away. Each of them chose to deceive. Opportunity, desire, and a sense of immunity explain why the choice felt easy. They don’t remove it, and Huang’s own words, that there is no excuse for what he did, concede that [4].

The lesson isn’t about sex. It’s about institutions. Rules like non-fraternization policies exist because we know good people fail when power, desire, and opportunity line up. Boards and organizations that treat those rules as a formality are betting that this time, their leader is the exception. Every one of these cases suggests he isn’t.

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References

1. The Hill, “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns amid affair scandals,” Nov. 12, 2026. thehill.com
2. CNBC, “Nvidia stock falls 12% as CEO Jensen Huang announces resignation,” Nov. 12, 2026. cnbc.com
3. NPR (via KPCW), “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang steps down amid alleged spy scandal,” Nov. 12, 2026. kpcw.org
4. Fox Business, “Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns amid investigation into relationship with alleged Chinese spy.” foxbusiness.com
5. Al Jazeera, “AI titan Jensen Huang out as Nvidia CEO,” Nov. 12, 2026. aljazeera.com
6. Bill Clinton: impeached by the U.S. House in December 1998 and acquitted by the Senate in February 1999. Historical record; verify against a primary source before publishing.
7. John Profumo: resigned as UK Secretary of State for War in June 1963 after admitting he had lied to Parliament. Historical record; verify before publishing.
8. David Petraeus: resigned as CIA director in November 2012 over an extramarital affair. Historical record; verify before publishing.
9. Intel, “Intel CEO Brian Krzanich Resigns, Board Appoints Bob Swan as Interim CEO,” 2018. intc.com; New York Times, June 21, 2018. nytimes.com
10. New York Times, “McDonald’s Fires Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook,” Nov. 3, 2019. nytimes.com

The probability estimates in the chart are the author’s own and are not drawn from any cited source. Reporting on the Huang matter is still developing.