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Comment by vowelless | Hacker News Reader

Should the world seize the assets of Silicon Valley billionaires over the US invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and other actions in MENA?

Probably.

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It'd make more sense if you said sized the assets of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, the presidents of companies like Blackwater or Lockheed Martin and Halliburton, Kuwaiti and Afghani logistics companies...

Why? Because they are American?

The case against the Russian oligarchs is better because they are quasi state actors, however, but the case against the Russian oligarchs looks bad too.

Last couple of years big tech in America became quasi state actors, we are seeing it now on social media but the last election was a glaring example.

Last couple of years is just when it became blatantly obvious to pretty much everyone.

Google's founders were funded and supervised by DoD employees in their grad school.

https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...

Here is how "Google Earth" happened: "In-Q-Tel sold 5,636 shares of Google, worth over $2.2 million, on November 15, 2005. The shares were a result of Google's acquisition of Keyhole, Inc, the CIA-funded satellite mapping software now known as Google Earth."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

Facebook launched in 2004. First check from Peter Thiel, who founded Palantir in 2003. DARPA's Lifelog was "cancelled" in 2003.

They were designed to be mass surveillance from the start. Some even funded directly be equity investments at pre-seed/seed stage. Others, funded at the research stage.

And Bezos, Bloomberg, Ellison, Thiel, etc. aren't quasi state actors?

Do you believe this is comparable? I'd be honestly interested why.

They're not. Do you think Biden has been sitting upon his throne for the past 22 years, giving orders to Thiel and Bezos so they can act on his behalf and in return he can give them a little more wealth/power?

The people you quoted have a lot of power and influence. That doesn't make them state actors. The difference is extreme. If you genuinely don't understand that difference, I invite you to read "The Dictator's Handbook" by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, which nicely explains (among other many interesting things) how dictators and authoritarians wield and share power. You can apply those lessons to how Russia and its oligarchs work.

Thanks, but I have a copy of the book on hand already.

In the book de Mesquita refers to regardless of whether the system is Authoritarian or Democratic, rulers have to please their respective circle of power brokers. The only difference is the number they have to placate. And the US is not the prototypical example of the most democratic and grassroots political system out there by a long shot.

To say I believe Biden has been on his throne for 22 years is such a blatant strawman, I find it difficult to take you seriously. Even if he was a Senator since 1973 who clearly knows how to stay afloat in politics for 49 years.

I apologize for the strawman, then. And yes, it's not like there aren't parallels, but you cannot compare the power and influence of a Russian oligarch, who tends to serve as both a proxy/puppet to Putin and a useful way to stash riches, to, say, Musk or Bezos who tend to very much follow their own goals.

American billionaires have too much power, for sure, but that's a statement on the power of money and the ability for people to amass too much of it in one place in the USA. Russian oligarchs have this power because Putin shares it with them.

Since you've read the book (and I'm guessing agree with it, as I do), we're on the same page about the spectrum of democracy vs authoritarianism. But nowhere can you compare the actual individuals. Individual Russian oligarchs are the equivalent of extremely large corpora of people, servants and businesses; not of individual CEOs.

It was a multinational coalition led by America. Not just America...

Comparing people who legitimately made their money instead of ripping off their nation during the transfer of government owned assets to privately owned.

Also Afghanistan wouldn’t wouldn’t have been invaded if they handed over the Osama.

> Comparing people who legitimately made their money instead of ripping off their nation during the transfer of government owned assets to privately owned.

You can't even make them pay proper taxes,... "ripped off their nation" applies very much to most sillicon valley companies.

>Also Afghanistan wouldn’t wouldn’t have been invaded if they handed over the Osama.

"Do what I say, or we'll invade you!"

.... "It's ok, when americans do it!"

And Ukraine would not have been invaded had they agreed to Russia's demands, you fucking bastard.

Did Ukraine harbor terrorists that killed thousands of Russians? Comparing Ukraine to Afghanistan doesn’t work. Ukraine was a peaceful nation. Afghanistan was harboring terrorists and terrorists training camps and these terrorists had attacked US multiple times before. Osama Bin Laden wasn’t even a Afghanistan citizen, he was from Saudi Arabia.

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