"Ultimately the root of any conspiracy theory is a strong desire to believe that someone, somewhere, is competent at what they're doing." -Amy Dentata
But I don't think I'm advancing a conspiracy theory. There's a genuine crisis at Uber, and that's the important issue here; if a hundredth of what's been alleged is true then that's the main event here and all of this is really Valley inside-baseball navel-gazing. Let's not draw moral false equivalences here.
Still, as a student of Valley dynamics, one has to acknowledge that realpolitik exists whenever things go really wrong. Given that, it's worth wondering whether any parties can take advantage of those conditions, especially given the non-existent state of board oversight in tightly-held SV companies. Chris Sacca and Mitch Kapor have already gone to the press on this (publically), so it's not even that much of a reach.
This is, in some really grim ways, an opportunity which doesn't come around very often.
Consider that "conspiracy theorist" is basically a pejorative these days. There are indeed some tinfoil hat wearers, but there are also a lot of people whose paranoia has been earned through experience and is more justified than it may appear at first glance.
I think the pendulum has definitely swung to the complacent side of things, and that people are more likely to assume coincidence when conspiracy is the correct explanation. I know the impulsive response here is "Hanlon's Razor!" and all that, but I feel that's better applied to keeping interpersonal relations friendly rather than explaining significant closely-timed organizational or social changes.
My experience with such changes at the organizational level has been that there are some key people who are very interested in ensuring that the people in the org believe an organic, coincidental, or otherwise autonomous change occurred, but they've actually spent months coordinating efforts to ensure that the desired changes occur. Politics is an inevitability any time you get more than 5 people in the same room.
We'd do well to hesitate and think before we laugh at the people who put forth "unofficial" narratives.
Of course there are competent people. I know I am, and so are most of the people I know.
The folk who conspired to cheat the emissions tests at VW are competent and organised; the folk at Uber who built the system to track cops are competent and organised; the folk at the NSA etc etc are competent and organised.