Silicon Valley and the VC's who fund it will take anybodies money if they could.
I say this on the biggest VC platform.
I say this on the biggest VC platform.
Silicon Valley has a fascism problem.
I can imagine that if you see authoritarianism through the lens of the "constrained versus unconstrained" views of human nature a la Sowell, then it makes sense that Silicon Valley, ever so optimistic about the perfectibility of mankind, would tend towards that direction.
Is this sarcasm?
Coz from what I can see Silicon Valley is primarily concerned with (in order of importance) 1. $$$, 2. $$$$ and 3. $$$$$
I’ve listened to both Andreesen and Thiel and they both seem pretty anti-authoritarian, but perhaps they just espouse one ideology and practice another?
Yet Thiel runs Palantir, which is arguably any authoritarian wet dream.
Of course he doesn’t go around openly saying he’s pro fascism. Having listened to many of his speeches it’s not surprising he is though.
For Andreesen it’s not as clear there’s a direct link but after having listened to his Lex Friedman episode, I came of thinking he also thinks democracy won’t work.
* I left shortly after the company pivoted into being a PII broker.
That sounds odd, at best.
If the company were considering doing this sketchy-sounding thing, seems like they should've checked with their gov't customer points of contact, or gone straight to the State Dept.
Maybe they did do this, and were operating under permission/instructions, or maybe they didn't.
(Why it's believable that a US tech company would sell out its US gov't customers: many facets of "tech" industry have had such irresponsible, sociopathic practices, since before many current decision-makers entered the workforce, that I think there's no longer much intuitive sense about what's OK and what's not.)
There are plenty of classes of goods that are heavily regulated. For example, explosives.
Of course they will.
America’s police has no problem acquiring arms.
I’d argue that, in effect, they’re already treated as arms dealers, who sell to police all the time.
For one, it turns out that Hamas had a lot more than sticks on 10/7.
The only simple thing about this conflict is that nothing about it is simple. Simplistic takes like this are meaningless trash, and I really genuinely mean that with no ill intent.