A rule against affairs with direct reports does not, by itself, explain why a founder worth $100bn would lose control of the company he built. Treating it as a sufficient explanation confuses the employee handbook with the distribution of power.

For a middle-ranking executive, the mechanism is straightforward: management can investigate, invoke the rule and dismiss someone it can readily replace. An industry-defining founder presents a rather different calculation. The people enforcing the policy must reckon with how much the business depends on the person who has breached it.

That is the distinction behind invoking Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. A leader at the centre of wealth creation, technological competition and geopolitical rivalry is not interchangeable with a divisional vice-president. This is a comparison about institutional power, not an allegation that Huang had an affair or was dismissed.

The uncomfortable point is that a rule can be strict on paper while its consequences depend heavily on whom it catches. The more indispensable a leader appears, the greater the potential cost of enforcing it. That need not involve a conspiracy or a secret exemption. Dependence supplies its own protection.

Donald Trump offers a political comparison. Public accusations of repeated marital infidelity did not prevent a man on his third marriage from being elected president twice. Corporate employment and electoral politics are different systems, but both expose the weakness of assuming that private conduct automatically defeats accumulated power.

None of this makes an affair with a direct report trivial. The reporting relationship is precisely what makes it a workplace issue. But the seriousness of a breach and the likelihood of punishment are separate questions.

Anyone explaining the fall of an immensely powerful founder must explain what made that power fail. Quoting the HR policy is not enough.