So much of it is purely vibes-baed. They want people who celebrate ballsy action and tell them they're important. That's it. Like this interview with a Bernie-to-Trump tech worker is pretty indicative of a type:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like there was some identification with Trump.
> Huge identification, of course. The guy was a contrarian. Think about how much he was clowned in 2015. People said it would be the worst presidency in history. I don't know if it was a good presidency, but it was certainly a great presidency. Warp Speed was an insane operation. Normalizing deals in the Middle East, that's hard. Not going to war. People said he couldn't come back as a felon. Yet he still had the will to win--this shit is inspiring for Fountainhead types.
> One thing that I'm hearing myself say is that not at any point am I thinking about policy. It's all aesthetics. I think Democratic stuff is bullshit because the aesthetics are wrong. There are some policies that I don't like, but ultimately, it felt like the wrong way to do things.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-165330262
How Mark Zuckerberg unleashed his inner brawler ($)
https://archive.ph/fWJfZ
I can't even reliably use PDF codebooks now because all the readers keep fucking up by trying to do more. You can't summarize what is basically a technical dictionary. Stop trying.
Careful about generalising, though. Here's a piece about where the ultra-rich of Silicon Valley sent their political donations. Exclude Musk, and the big donations went to Harris, not Trump... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/07/campaign-spending-crypto-tech-influence
Here's Wired in October, noting how successful Harris was at wooing SV https://www.wired.com/story/bidens-out-silicon-valley-donors-turn-to-kamala-harris/
American liberals may well have lost faith in the tech industry, but it's far less clear that the reverse is true. Microsoft employees gave millions to Harris https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?id=d000000115
So did Meta employees
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/meta/summary?all=2024&id=D000033563
X employees donated almost entirely to Democrats (97%)
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/x-inc/recipients?id=D000067113
Don't confuse a minority of obnoxious tech company owners with the entire industry!
I just want to expropiate the owners.
I'm also wondering if Google isn't getting evil/AI enough that I should just switch to an iPhone.
I think the new iPhones are filled with AI garbage too
5: "Exclude Musk" but, seriously, why would one do that? Exclude one of the literal handful of men who've hoovered up a titanic amount of tech wealth and are abusing it to malignantly influence our world... why, exactly? Moreover, this sort of analysis isn't tracking dark money, in particular, hard-to-trace cryptocurrency payments, no to mention the alleged influence the owners exerted on their platforms' feeds, which would be hard to price but is in all likelihood priceless.
6 compounds the error. If the claim is that the titans of the tech industry are becoming hard-right reactionaries, why would you point to the political donations of their labor force?
10.2: I think that's a common media practice, because donor employer is a required field in campaign finance disclosure, so it's easy to do a few searches and say "The tech industry [defined as tech employees] donated $___m to X candidate this cycle." I agree it's less meaningful at the moment.
I can't decide whether to recommend more discussion of the interview in comment 1. It's very incendiary, in a "why exactly do you store all the dangerous chemicals together in that corner of your garage?" way.
12 is well said (I joked that it was as if he thought The United Federation of "Hold My Beer" was a good model for politics).
When I worked in a biggish tech organization I was amazed how many of my colleagues had shitty Republican opinions about things. Like, otherwise smart, reasonable people who would complain about the "death tax."
"Exclude Musk" but, seriously, why would one do that? Exclude one of the literal handful of men who've hoovered up a titanic amount of tech wealth and are abusing it to malignantly influence our world... why, exactly?
Because the claim is that Silicon Valley, or maybe just SV billionaire class, has gone horribly right wing. My argument is that one of them has, and because he's the richest by far he is skewing the sample; most of them seem to be still fairly liberal.
Moreover, this sort of analysis isn't tracking dark money, in particular, hard-to-trace cryptocurrency payments,
Is the idea here that there are SV billionaires who are simultaneously openly giving millions of dollars to Kamala Harris and secretly giving millions in Bitcoin to Donald Trump? Apart from anything else that sounds rather unfalsifiable.
If the claim is that the titans of the tech industry are becoming hard-right reactionaries, why would you point to the political donations of their labor force?
Well, as long as that is the claim, then you're right. Are we all agreed, then, that Silicon Valley is, as it always have been, a solid Democratic base, that happens to have a few rich Republicans owning some of its companies? Because a lot of people are saying "no, actually, the industry is full of right-wing tech bros".
15: Really rich donors do hedge their bets and support people in both parties sometimes.
16: yes, they do, and we know they do because their donations to both sides are reported publicly.
||
"The government is collecting taxes from fishermen, so they should come and deploy technology to destroy these floating islands."|>
18: pullquote taken, no doubt, from an article on Yahoo News.
(Yes I know they were on a different island but the pun doesn't work if it's Balnibarbi News.)
15.c: I'd say, rather, that anyone talking about "Silicon Valley" without other qualification as a coherent political actor is either a shallow thinker or selling you something.
17: I'd say also that pretending ignorance of dark money and cryptocurrency on US politics is either a shallow thinker or selling you something.
Musk and Zuckerberg control two of the largest information channels in the world and a both very obviously (and successfully) working to move people to the right.
Bezos is doing the same, but without the reach (so far).
I'm not entirely sure everything Thiel is doing, but I'm sure it's reactionary.
26 he gave us Vance. In addition to Thiel and a bunch in his coterie there's Palmer Luckey and his ilk trying to get the big DOD bucks for unproven, unworkable, and way too expensive tech.
Anyway, I use "Silicon Valley" the way people use "Wall Street". That is, the people who run/own things as opposed to the rank and file worker. Ten years ago, I don't think I did that.
Musk and Zuckerberg control two of the largest information channels in the world and a both very obviously (and successfully) working to move people to the right.
This is true - and they aren't alone, there are a lot of very rich people out there controlling very large information channels and using them, with more or less success, to move people to the right. Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Bezos, the Chinese government, the Russian government, Lord Rothermere, AG Sulzberger, and, possibly most damagingly of all, David Smith and his family. I'm not sure how useful it is to see this as a Silicon Valley issue, though it is certainly very helpful for people who work for these people and aren't in Silicon Valley to see it as such.
The Silicon Valley people are the ones on the offensive right now. Ellison is destroying CBS, Bezos the WP and apparently Conde Nast.
I suppose it's also quite helpful to think of this as a problem involving "tech bros" because, whatever this rather vague category means, it certainly lets Rupert Murdoch, David Smith, Lord Rothermere, Xi Jinping etc off the hook, none of them being either bros or particularly tech. I'm reminded slightly of the insistence by the media and entertainment industries that #MeToo was a reaction to something that was just generally wrong with our culture as a whole, rather than being a reaction to something that, yes, happened far too much everywhere, but was very obviously and massively more of a problem in the media and entertainment industries.
And really, fuck off with "the Chinese government, the Russian government."
I'm not getting into some sort of conspiracy theory here about TikTok turning the kids against us or something, Moby, but it's actually true that both China and Russia have very large state-owned media that push a very nationalist right-wing message out to their respective populations!
Yes, yes they do. Most successfully through Facebook.
And that both governments are controlled by very rich men! Xi Jinping is a billionaire! Putin is the richest man in Russia!
Yes, yes they do. Most successfully through Facebook.#
The Chinese government does not push a nationalist right-wing message out to the Chinese population through Facebook because Facebook is banned in China.
The Russian government does not push a nationalist right-wing message out to the Russian population through Facebook because Facebook is banned in Russia.
Things are much worse in other places. But I want the United States to be better than it is now, not just better than Russia. I'm looking at who is making it worse, especially the ones who are making it worse and might need me as a customer or a worker.
26 and 27: I am told that during his interview with Douthat, he was pretty equitable on whether the human race should continue and was ok with machines taking over. Techno fascism
I guess LA has a Tesla Diner now? What a dumb world.
I didn't even know you could eat them.
Tesla had very odd eating habits iirc. Didn't he insist on chewing his food exactly the same number of times at each meal or something?
31: I don't perceive anyone letting the long-acknowledged right-wing titans off any hooks. The question Krugman poses is: why are the Silicon Valley elite (CEOs and venture capitalists) apparently turning suddenly and sharply right-wing?
My sense is yes, this a real phenomenon, and it derives largely from these elite a. looking to kneecap a labor force that was beginning to make organized demands and b. driven absolutely mad by the few excellent Biden appointees beginning to take even modest anti-trust actions against them. To a man, none of these people are interested in pursuing innovation in competitive markets; they are interested in creating monopolies or tacit cartels where they can charge rents. They've convinced themselves that a corrupt government with whom they can deal directly is preferable to one that might exert meaningful control over their operations.
36: They don't limit pushing their messaging to the bounds of their countries.
Shaun Maguire is another one https://bsky.app/profile/jacobsilverman.com/post/3lukfzh5qgc27
I'm a little sad about Malcom Jamaal Warner's death.
47: Me too. Also, drowning on vacation while scuba diving or snorkeling always sounds so unnecessary. The vacation you wish you never took.
48: it sounded vaguely similar to how my dad died, and they were about the same age. Other than that I don't think my dad and Malcolm Jamaal Warner had a lot in common.
I'm sure that was a while ago, but it still sounds awful.
I'm very sorry, peep. That's very shocking and sad, however long ago it was.
I'm sad about Malcolm Jamaal Warner and Ozzy Osbourne, too, although of course the latter death is less unexpected. There's plenty of sadness to go around these days.
51, 50 and 49: That really sounds awful. I'm sorry you had to go through that.
50, 51, 52: Thanks, all. It was over 50 years ago.