4 ms·

"Many in Silicon Valley feel the same about him (David Sacks) as you do."

37 points by dukeyukey 3y ago

altairprime 3y ago
Who is that? What is this in reply to?
- tim333 3y ago
  David Sacks is a SV venture capitalist who argues that Ukraine should sign a peace deal with Russia rather than fighting back the invasion. He tends to follow a bit of a pro Russia narrative and annoy others including here the Ukrainian journalist Ponomarenko, who Paul Graham backs up. Here's a write up on Sacks and some of the issues https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/144/ https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/144/ A bit of a problem with Sacks is he's not very informed on the history of the situation. I heard him on a podcast that he first heard about Ukraine in like Jan 2022 but proceeds to propagandize his position noisily over people who have lived there for decades.
hiddencost 3y ago
American failure to fund Ukraine is possibly our greatest failure in 20 years. And we've made some doozies in that time. To take a concrete and financial tack: The alternative to funding Ukraine right now is an increase in western annual defense spending of 1% of GDP. Indefinitely. But this is also possibly the first just war since world war 2.
- DoesntMatter22 3y ago
  I thought the US was sending billions over there? Is that not the case?
  - dilyevsky 3y ago
    Not anymore - the latest aid package is stuck in the House for months now...
    - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
      Okay but they have sent billions as far as I know which makes the original comment not really make any sense.
      - koube 3y ago
        We were funding them before, but now we are not, and I believe the op of this thread was commenting on how we are not funding then right now. By the time the election season is over and we have another chance at funding Ukraine, it will have been a year of blocked funding. Personally I find it fundamentally unserious that a participant in a war leaves for a year or more, let alone the world's top superpower.
        DoesntMatter22 3y ago
        Was there ever really a chance Ukraine would win? Idk how they could. Russia has more people. Napoleon and hitler both learned that the hard way. I can't see what winning would even look like
        StewardMcOy 3y ago
        It has never been as simple as whichever side has more people, and that has only become more true as military technology has advanced. Many lessons came out of the first two world wars about how modern warfare would be fought. One of them was that it didn't matter how many well-rested soldiers you had willing to fight. If you ran out of ammunition and your opponents have enough left to annihilate you, you'll probably lose. We'll never know for certain, but there's a real possibility that if it hadn't been for the Lend-Lease program, the USSR would have run out of weapons and supplies, and Hitler would have defeated the Soviets. Obviously, there's limits. One soldier sitting on warehouses of ammo isn't going to take out a force of ten thousand. But at the outset of the war, active Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops by only 4 to 1. In the right circumstances, those are winnable numbers. And even better for the Ukrainians, Russia couldn't send all of their troops in. They needed to keep the bulk of them in Russia for defense. Estimates of causalities in the war range from 1:3 to 1:5 in favor of Ukraine. So even if Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops 2:1, all Ukraine has to do is continue killing Russian soldiers at the same rate, and eventually Russia will run out of soldiers to send. That's what "winning" looks like for Ukraine. This is a war of attrition. They win by exhausting the enemy before the enemy exhausts them. But it relies on Ukraine continuing to have enough ammo to kill the Russian soldiers at that rate. This is a war of attrition. Russia's firmly on a wartime economy, and unless the bottom falls out on them, they'll continue to produce weapons and ammo for the duration of the war. Enough for every solider they field? Maybe, maybe not, but they won't run out. Ukraine, on the other hand, relies on the West for weapons and ammo. If it runs out, it loses, and that's why so many people are upset about Western countries dropping support. It's a winnable war for Ukraine, but only if Russia's enemies stay committed.
  - cempaka 3y ago
    There's a certain breed of neoliberal commenter that seems to believe that the West is financially and militarily invincible, and can simply spend any colossal amounts of money it wants to wipe strategic opponents from the map at will. I think in many cases it comes from watching too many Marvel movies.
- murderfs 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mmoskal 3y ago
    This year 18/28 European NATO members will hit the 2% target. They will have to hit 3% or so even if Ukraine holds Russia off [0]. If the tanks roll to Polish and Baltic states borders it will be much more expensive. [0] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/18/can-europe-defend-itself-without-america https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/18/can-europe-def...
    - murderfs 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - smcin 3y ago
    > "freeloading and relying on the U.S. to protect them from everything?" The US famously has routinely run a billion-dollar deficit in its dues to the UN since the late 1980s through the early 2000s [0][1][2], and then again when Trump suspended paying dues 2016-2020 and owed $2b [3]. In the 1990s, CNN ex-owner Ted Turner even donated part of the dues. US commitment to multilateralism is pretty transactional. (The standoff was not completely resolved by the Helms-Biden Act/"United Nations Reform Act of 1999"), which linked payment of $926 million arrears to a series of reform benchmarks). [0]: U.S. Department of State: 97/11/28 Fact Sheet: U.S. Arrears to the UN https://1997-2001.state.gov/issues/fs_us_arrears_un_0997.html https://1997-2001.state.gov/issues/fs_us_arrears_un_0997.htm... [1]: United States and the United Nations - Arrears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_Nations#Arrears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_N... [2]: NYT, 1988 "THE WORLD; Why Does the United States Refuse to Pay Its U.N. Bill?" https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/07/weekinreview/the-world-why-does-the-united-states-refuse-to-pay-its-un-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/07/weekinreview/the-world-wh... [3]: https://www.devex.com/news/with-the-us-still-owing-nearly-2b-un-looks-at-how-to-fund-2021-98866 https://www.devex.com/news/with-the-us-still-owing-nearly-2b...
- cempaka 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - dukeyukey 3y ago
    Is there anything suggesting Russia was open to that? Given they went straight for Kyiv at the start, their goal was not to modestly expand what they already had.
  - quattrofan 3y ago
    [dead]
  - piva00 3y ago
    Russia should have withdrawn its troops and saved hundreds of thousands of their men. See how that works in reverse?
- readthenotes1 3y ago
  "just war"? Hardly, on either side.
  - tim333 3y ago
    Not just for the Ukrainians to defend themselves from an invasion?
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      Which was fairly well instigated by NATO members in the preceding decade. Ukraine seems more a pawn here than a prime driver.
      - tim333 3y ago
        Or a victim perhaps? Russia seems to have invaded a couple of dozen pawns over the years for looking at them funny or thinking of defending themselves or whatever.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
karmajunkie 3y ago
what was the parent post, for those of us who’ve left muskville behind?
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1771638352137101414 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1771638352137101414 Someone else quoting another idiotic post by Sacks
freefruit 3y ago
I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this. His latest tweet connecting the terrorist attack to Ukraine, with no evidence. Is just repeating the Kremlin talking points. For someone who should analytical, it is just strange. The All -In pod, often tease him about being a robot. I genuinely believe he is on the spectrum. I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.
- slibhb 3y ago
  > I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this. It's interesting how often this happens. People start from a reasonable premise and then slowly but surely move to an extreme version. I sometimes think the only way to avoid this kind of derangement is to maintain an attitude of ironic detachment towards politics/current events. Almost everyone I know who deviates from that -- including smart, good people -- is a little bit crazy.
  - YZF 3y ago
    If people were able to do that we wouldn't have e.g. stock market bubbles. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is basically a statement about human nature. Irrational at best of times. Now isn't exactly the best of times, we've been pounded by Covid, the economy, climate, wars. Politics seeks to leverage this irrationality to gain power. Kind of depressing on all fronts.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  > I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish. He is supposedly big fan of Kissinger and Kissinger worked for Nixon who was famously a huge antisemite and also cemented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by intentionally torpedoing the deal that was on the table. All while being holocaust refugee.
- YZF 3y ago
bparsons 3y ago
America was full of these guys in the late 1930s. History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.
- jacobriis 3y ago
  It’s 1938 why aren’t you on the front lines.
bag_boy 3y ago
What’s behind this beef?
jacobriis 3y ago
[flagged]
Animats 3y ago
Supposedly the IKIP branch of ISIL claims credit for the attack.[1] On Telegram. Does anyone have the actual Telegram link? [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall-attack-why-is-isil-targeting https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall...
- aaron695 3y ago
  [dead]
MrSkelter 3y ago
He is an example of the current tech mindset. We praise and elevate anyone who makes money. Their genius is in proportion to their wealth. Suggesting they may not be smart, or brilliant, is heresy. Meanwhile those people believe their own hype and start to share their “insights” in areas far outside any expertise they may have. Many have very little formal education and haven’t read the books or considered the ideas an average undergraduate has. Due to their success and power almost none are used to having their ideas challenged. This is exacerbated by the fact they tend to come from backgrounds which made their success much more likely (wealth, support, developed nations, a familial history of education etc) which means they see certain political opinions as “the truth” or “reality” because they aren’t aware of how they affect the world for people outside their bubble. Sachs is the poster boy, along with Musk, of this. Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview.
- tim333 3y ago
  >Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview I've pondered this. I have a theory that the naivety of their position comes from coming from a country a long way from Russia. In Europe a lot of people, maybe most have some relative killed as the result of a Russian invasion or that of their allies.

37 points by dukeyukey 3y ago

altairprime 3y ago

Who is that? What is this in reply to?

tim333 3y ago
David Sacks is a SV venture capitalist who argues that Ukraine should sign a peace deal with Russia rather than fighting back the invasion. He tends to follow a bit of a pro Russia narrative and annoy others including here the Ukrainian journalist Ponomarenko, who Paul Graham backs up. Here's a write up on Sacks and some of the issues https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/144/ https://vatniksoup.com/en/soups/144/ A bit of a problem with Sacks is he's not very informed on the history of the situation. I heard him on a podcast that he first heard about Ukraine in like Jan 2022 but proceeds to propagandize his position noisily over people who have lived there for decades.

hiddencost 3y ago

American failure to fund Ukraine is possibly our greatest failure in 20 years. And we've made some doozies in that time. To take a concrete and financial tack: The alternative to funding Ukraine right now is an increase in western annual defense spending of 1% of GDP. Indefinitely. But this is also possibly the first just war since world war 2.

DoesntMatter22 3y ago
I thought the US was sending billions over there? Is that not the case?
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  Not anymore - the latest aid package is stuck in the House for months now...
  - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
    Okay but they have sent billions as far as I know which makes the original comment not really make any sense.
    - koube 3y ago
      We were funding them before, but now we are not, and I believe the op of this thread was commenting on how we are not funding then right now. By the time the election season is over and we have another chance at funding Ukraine, it will have been a year of blocked funding. Personally I find it fundamentally unserious that a participant in a war leaves for a year or more, let alone the world's top superpower.
      - DoesntMatter22 3y ago
        Was there ever really a chance Ukraine would win? Idk how they could. Russia has more people. Napoleon and hitler both learned that the hard way. I can't see what winning would even look like
        StewardMcOy 3y ago
        It has never been as simple as whichever side has more people, and that has only become more true as military technology has advanced. Many lessons came out of the first two world wars about how modern warfare would be fought. One of them was that it didn't matter how many well-rested soldiers you had willing to fight. If you ran out of ammunition and your opponents have enough left to annihilate you, you'll probably lose. We'll never know for certain, but there's a real possibility that if it hadn't been for the Lend-Lease program, the USSR would have run out of weapons and supplies, and Hitler would have defeated the Soviets. Obviously, there's limits. One soldier sitting on warehouses of ammo isn't going to take out a force of ten thousand. But at the outset of the war, active Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops by only 4 to 1. In the right circumstances, those are winnable numbers. And even better for the Ukrainians, Russia couldn't send all of their troops in. They needed to keep the bulk of them in Russia for defense. Estimates of causalities in the war range from 1:3 to 1:5 in favor of Ukraine. So even if Russian troops outnumbered Ukrainian troops 2:1, all Ukraine has to do is continue killing Russian soldiers at the same rate, and eventually Russia will run out of soldiers to send. That's what "winning" looks like for Ukraine. This is a war of attrition. They win by exhausting the enemy before the enemy exhausts them. But it relies on Ukraine continuing to have enough ammo to kill the Russian soldiers at that rate. This is a war of attrition. Russia's firmly on a wartime economy, and unless the bottom falls out on them, they'll continue to produce weapons and ammo for the duration of the war. Enough for every solider they field? Maybe, maybe not, but they won't run out. Ukraine, on the other hand, relies on the West for weapons and ammo. If it runs out, it loses, and that's why so many people are upset about Western countries dropping support. It's a winnable war for Ukraine, but only if Russia's enemies stay committed.
- cempaka 3y ago
  There's a certain breed of neoliberal commenter that seems to believe that the West is financially and militarily invincible, and can simply spend any colossal amounts of money it wants to wipe strategic opponents from the map at will. I think in many cases it comes from watching too many Marvel movies.
murderfs 3y ago
[flagged]
- mmoskal 3y ago
  This year 18/28 European NATO members will hit the 2% target. They will have to hit 3% or so even if Ukraine holds Russia off [0]. If the tanks roll to Polish and Baltic states borders it will be much more expensive. [0] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/18/can-europe-defend-itself-without-america https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/02/18/can-europe-def...
  - murderfs 3y ago
    [flagged]
- smcin 3y ago
  > "freeloading and relying on the U.S. to protect them from everything?" The US famously has routinely run a billion-dollar deficit in its dues to the UN since the late 1980s through the early 2000s [0][1][2], and then again when Trump suspended paying dues 2016-2020 and owed $2b [3]. In the 1990s, CNN ex-owner Ted Turner even donated part of the dues. US commitment to multilateralism is pretty transactional. (The standoff was not completely resolved by the Helms-Biden Act/"United Nations Reform Act of 1999"), which linked payment of $926 million arrears to a series of reform benchmarks). [0]: U.S. Department of State: 97/11/28 Fact Sheet: U.S. Arrears to the UN https://1997-2001.state.gov/issues/fs_us_arrears_un_0997.html https://1997-2001.state.gov/issues/fs_us_arrears_un_0997.htm... [1]: United States and the United Nations - Arrears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_Nations#Arrears https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_the_United_N... [2]: NYT, 1988 "THE WORLD; Why Does the United States Refuse to Pay Its U.N. Bill?" https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/07/weekinreview/the-world-why-does-the-united-states-refuse-to-pay-its-un-bill.html https://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/07/weekinreview/the-world-wh... [3]: https://www.devex.com/news/with-the-us-still-owing-nearly-2b-un-looks-at-how-to-fund-2021-98866 https://www.devex.com/news/with-the-us-still-owing-nearly-2b...
cempaka 3y ago
[flagged]
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  Is there anything suggesting Russia was open to that? Given they went straight for Kyiv at the start, their goal was not to modestly expand what they already had.
- quattrofan 3y ago
  [dead]
- piva00 3y ago
  Russia should have withdrawn its troops and saved hundreds of thousands of their men. See how that works in reverse?
readthenotes1 3y ago
"just war"? Hardly, on either side.
- tim333 3y ago
  Not just for the Ukrainians to defend themselves from an invasion?
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    Which was fairly well instigated by NATO members in the preceding decade. Ukraine seems more a pawn here than a prime driver.
    - tim333 3y ago
      Or a victim perhaps? Russia seems to have invaded a couple of dozen pawns over the years for looking at them funny or thinking of defending themselves or whatever.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

karmajunkie 3y ago

what was the parent post, for those of us who’ve left muskville behind?

dilyevsky 3y ago
https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1771638352137101414 https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1771638352137101414 Someone else quoting another idiotic post by Sacks

freefruit 3y ago

I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this. His latest tweet connecting the terrorist attack to Ukraine, with no evidence. Is just repeating the Kremlin talking points. For someone who should analytical, it is just strange. The All -In pod, often tease him about being a robot. I genuinely believe he is on the spectrum. I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish.

slibhb 3y ago
> I understand someone having the viewpoint of America first, look after home first and don't get involved in foreign wars. He however, seems to go way beyond this. It's interesting how often this happens. People start from a reasonable premise and then slowly but surely move to an extreme version. I sometimes think the only way to avoid this kind of derangement is to maintain an attitude of ironic detachment towards politics/current events. Almost everyone I know who deviates from that -- including smart, good people -- is a little bit crazy.
- YZF 3y ago
  If people were able to do that we wouldn't have e.g. stock market bubbles. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent is basically a statement about human nature. Irrational at best of times. Now isn't exactly the best of times, we've been pounded by Covid, the economy, climate, wars. Politics seeks to leverage this irrationality to gain power. Kind of depressing on all fronts.
dilyevsky 3y ago
> I have never heard or read his words showing empathy, even for the terror attacks in Israel and he is Jewish. He is supposedly big fan of Kissinger and Kissinger worked for Nixon who was famously a huge antisemite and also cemented the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by intentionally torpedoing the deal that was on the table. All while being holocaust refugee.
YZF 3y ago

bparsons 3y ago

America was full of these guys in the late 1930s. History doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes.

jacobriis 3y ago
It’s 1938 why aren’t you on the front lines.

bag_boy 3y ago

What’s behind this beef?

jacobriis 3y ago

[flagged]

Animats 3y ago

Supposedly the IKIP branch of ISIL claims credit for the attack.[1] On Telegram. Does anyone have the actual Telegram link? [1] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall-attack-why-is-isil-targeting https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/3/23/moscow-concert-hall...

aaron695 3y ago
[dead]

MrSkelter 3y ago

He is an example of the current tech mindset. We praise and elevate anyone who makes money. Their genius is in proportion to their wealth. Suggesting they may not be smart, or brilliant, is heresy. Meanwhile those people believe their own hype and start to share their “insights” in areas far outside any expertise they may have. Many have very little formal education and haven’t read the books or considered the ideas an average undergraduate has. Due to their success and power almost none are used to having their ideas challenged. This is exacerbated by the fact they tend to come from backgrounds which made their success much more likely (wealth, support, developed nations, a familial history of education etc) which means they see certain political opinions as “the truth” or “reality” because they aren’t aware of how they affect the world for people outside their bubble. Sachs is the poster boy, along with Musk, of this. Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview.

tim333 3y ago
>Both born in apartheid South Africa. Both determined to suggest that has no bearing on their worldview I've pondered this. I have a theory that the naivety of their position comes from coming from a country a long way from Russia. In Europe a lot of people, maybe most have some relative killed as the result of a Russian invasion or that of their allies.