What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Trump Dips into NVIDIA’s Chips
Slate Technology
Slate
4.6 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 15 August 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jensen Huang, cofounder of NVIDIA, finds himself president of a $4 trillion company, at the forefront of A.I. technology, and, consequently, something of an international diplomat, as he charms President Trump and negotiates to sell his powerful chips to China.
Guest: Amrith Ramkumar, reporter for The Wall Street Journal in Washington covering tech and crypto policy.
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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, Ethan Oberman, Patrick Fort, and Elena Schwartz.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Monopoly game at McDonald's is back. |
| 0:03.0 | There's over £2 million worth of cash prizes to be won. |
| 0:06.0 | And a chance to get your hands on some epic prizes. |
| 0:09.0 | Go on. It's your go. |
| 0:11.0 | 18 plus UK ends 21st of October. |
| 0:15.0 | Selected menu items. |
| 0:16.0 | App may be required. |
| 0:17.0 | May depend on winning moment. |
| 0:18.0 | See victory rules.co..uk. U.K. If you don't spend a lot of time thinking about tech CEOs, you might not be too familiar with Jensen |
| 0:32.1 | Wong, who runs Nvidia. |
| 0:34.8 | Invidia makes chips, graphics, processing units, or GPUs. |
| 0:40.3 | And for a long time, this was basically the realm of video game nerds. So Jensen Huang was an engineer |
| 0:47.0 | who basically did not have anything to do in Washington, D.C., because he made this relatively |
| 0:52.8 | niche product. |
| 0:58.1 | That's Amrith Ram Kumar, who covers tech policy for the Wall Street Journal. |
| 1:03.3 | With the rise of artificial intelligence, it turns out these GPUs and the products and software and video makes are actually vital. So the company has just gotten gangbusters, |
| 1:08.1 | their market values above $4 trillion now. And the chips they make |
| 1:11.9 | are really these strategic commodities. And Wong, who's got a shock of gray hair and always |
| 1:17.5 | wears a black leather jacket, is at the center of a global fight between the U.S. and China and |
| 1:23.2 | lots of other countries over who gets his chips. He's an engineer turned CEO turned amateur diplomat. |
| 1:31.7 | People in China have nicknamed him Magic Taylor because he has sort of threaded the needle |
| 1:37.9 | between export restrictions in the U.S. and everything going on in China, he sort of found a way |
... |
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