Are we reading the same article? If anything this article seems like a submarine PR puff piece to me, made to increase the image of Beto by making him seem "cool" and "hip" by associating him with the typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene. This article is very similar to the pro-Beto stuff that was all over Texas during his senate campaign.
I would challenge the idea that being a “hacker” polls well for a presidential candidate. Recall that “hacking” was a bit of a problem in 2016.
CNET: "Beto O'Rourke has serious hacker credentials. The presidential candidate was a member of hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow"
WaPo: "'Psychedelic Warlord': Beto O'Rourke's past life as a teenage hacker" and "Beto O’Rourke’s hacking universe, explained."
Sources:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/beto-orourke-wrote-murder-f...
https://www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/beto-orourke-has-seriou...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/psychedelic-wa...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/03/15/beto-orou...
[1] particularly when combined with tonedeaf and heavy handed legislation/regulation about the internet.
The current president argued during his campaign that the problems with the country arose from "bad deals" and his experience and expertise at "deal making" was the solution to this problem.
Beto might argue during his campaign that the problems with the country arise from unacknowledged cyber warfare in both social media and voting systems. He could then argue that he is uniquely qualified to lead the government to a more solid footing in that regard and protect the democracy.
Both are simplistic arguments of the form problem is X, I'm an expert in X, I can lead a group to fix X.
Opponents will of course spin up the fear of X and especially if X can be used to achieve the goals of the proponent, try to paint them as being part of the problem not the solution.
Unlike the current administrations "Space" force, I could see a justification for a "Cyber" force if such a force provided protection against, and options for maneuver in an algorithmically generated battlefield.
Elsewhere, the words "hacker" and "hacking" have an almost universally negative connotation.
Which might be the whole point of this piece:
>But the political balance allows him to appeal to both main strands of political thought in Silicon Valley – a key source of campaign money and cultural influence.
He’s a candidate in a primary. Big difference in the audiences.
The Democratic primary electorate is probably the segment of the population with the strongest negative impact around the 2016 election hacking that was evoked in the grandparent post, so while true your comment reinforces rather than negates the point.
Parties don't wheel out candidates, candidates seek the party nomination. Candidates who have done so in the past and whose on-paper qualifications and public esteem have increased since then often remain inclined to do so and have a basis for expecting they might do better.
Many party voters are also inclined to vote for these candidates; some of these are long time supporters.
I'm more surprised that candidates whose resume includes only some local politics, a few terms in the House, and a failed Senate bid throw their hat in to the Presidential ring than that those that spent 36 years in the Senate and run for President twice before, serving for eight years as Vice President after his most recent Presidential run, do so.
I agree with this. It seems an odd stance to take (assuming O'Rourke commissioned, or was at least okay with, this piece) given how other candidates are taking an explicitly hostile stance toward Big Tech. The media has done a fantastic job of convincing people that "election hacking" was a huge problem in 2016 (it wasn't), so it's curious why whatever consultant is working for this campaign decided this was good positioning.
Still, it’s unclear whether the United States is ready for a presidential contender who, as a teenager, stole long-distance phone service for his dial-up modem, wrote a murder fantasy in which the narrator drives over children on the street, and mused about a society without money.
This doesn't read as very pro-Beto to me.
That sentence doesn't even read as not pro-Beto to me, either. It's more of a neutral "this guy is really cool, but is he cool enough?" rhetorical.
In this case, it seems the best way to play it was to just cut to the chase. Summarize it as brutally as Trump could and just be the first to say it. Get it out there so that an opponent can't ride it's energy.
His association with At The Drive-In gives him more street cred than any tenuous relationship with hacking.
They don't use their real names, they have gadgets and mysterious power, not from magic but from skill. They operate outside traditional power structures and governments, you don't know who's working for whom, and they never seem far from a trenchcoat.
Hollywood glamorizes hackers, like violence, crime, rock n roll, space travel, and just about everything else hard.
At the risk of hyperbole, if society glamorized hackers hard, Aaron Swartz might still be with us.
Yea, I've seen it.