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I've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understan

I've been beating this drum for a while and I'm going to keep doing it. If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029, but any assumption that the current federal government will treat you fairly without taking their side in political battles is a grave strategic error.

RajT88 1y ago
> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029 That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  This. I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive. This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
  - RajT88 1y ago
    You could say "moneyed interests". There is a distinction - there are both huge companies and billionaires, and a lot of the companies are owned in part or in whole by the billionaires. But together, they increasingly determine how our political system is run. It all seems to entrenched and at the same time escalating, it feels like it's inevitable it'll all fall apart. I'm surprised we're not seeing more moneyed interests colluding to establish equilibrium which is sustainable.
- yks 1y ago
  Well, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    That's not quite how facism works. There are the purges. But it's normally not the corporate or moneyed puppetmasters getting purged, rather it's the political allies of the fascists that get purged. Military and law enforcement leaders who start off as allies have a particularly dismal survival record in these kinds of governments, since they don't have even the ephemeral protection of democratic legitimacy.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  The companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly. Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
  - Smeevy 1y ago
    I've seen values estimated at between $150,000 to $200,000 for that trinket. That's actually a pretty solid bribe for most politicians and that's just what's been visible to the public. For comparison, in AZ we had legislators caught in a sting operation that were selling individual votes for gambling legislation for between $660 to $60,000 in the 1990s. We should not normalize this. That was a outright bribe even if it wasn't as big as what others gave. I wouldn't get off the hook for murder just because I argued that Ted Bundy killed waaaaaaay more people than me.
    - scarface_74 1y ago
      Too late “we” as a country already have. This country left caring about ethics and morals in 2016.
  - anigbrowl 1y ago
    The fancy glass engraved with Trump's name is a meaningless trinket, but the solid 24karat gold base is about as obvious a tribute payment as you can imagine.
- mcphage 1y ago
  It may take longer, but they will, eventually. Maybe not Tim Cook.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  Or vote in 2028
causal 1y ago
Trying to give something more power because you think it likes power is generally considered risky https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang=en https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang...
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  The exception, of course, is if you expect to co-benefit - Intel sent their CEO to kiss the ring and now they might be getting free investment money out of the deal. But it's definitely a risky strategy.
  - causal 1y ago
    That is not an exception, it's exactly what the Tweet is talking about
    - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
      It's not. The Intel CEO wasn't obeying "in advance", he went to the White House after Trump announced (with absolutely no explanation) that Intel must fire him.
  - abullinan 1y ago
    It was literally less than 48 hours where the president went from fully negative to fully positive on the intel ceo. I don’t think the ring is all the ceo kissed. That’s the president’s plan for every ceo.
Hilift 1y ago
I doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.
- jurking_hoff 1y ago
  [dead]
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Wow, this stood out. "Only 791 executions were carried out."
    - spwa4 1y ago
      Which means 90% of people who committed extremely serious crimes in service of the Nazis, serious enough to warrant the death penalty, were gradually let out of prison in the years after that. Of the people not convicted to death, 100% were "forgiven". Not really, but read on. Most people convicted to death (AND Robert Schuman, who was convicted, but later founded the EU) were guilty of helping the Nazis deport and massacre people, and not one or two, hundreds at least. Tens of thousands, some. And the reason for releasing most of them is even worse, if you disregard that half managed to escape. The reason is that the resistance (and remaining Nazis, by the way, who in some places killed literally everyone they could get their hands on in retreat) carried out their own executions in French towns, villages and cities. Without courts, or judgement. Needless to say, pretty much everyone in government was guilty and more and more were getting executed. So a "clean slate" was declared, to prevent the country falling apart entirely, and these people were let go. Not just in France. Spain. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. The Netherlands. In countries that were Nazi-leaning (like the Netherlands, Austria or Italy) some government departments (think health, youth, justice and education departments) literally have archives of their own cooperation with the holocaust. Please note that it is now known that quite a few victims of both the courts and the extrajudicial killings were convicted as Nazi collaborators ... BY Nazi collaborators who remained in government and wanted revenge. Needless to say, there was a wave of murders around the time of every release, with suspiciously little effort going to finding the perpetrators.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
>If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.
perihelions 1y ago
> "unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029" I don't understand how anyone could disagree with this assessment. This is the most transparent bribe ever, https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GettyImages-2228840629.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Getty... ("Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc gifted to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an event in the Oval Office of the White House")
ratelimitsteve 1y ago
When the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.
tempodox 1y ago
> in 2029 Nope, King of America is a lifetime position.
- EasyMark 1y ago
  Hamberders don't obey even a king's demands, they are a fickle master
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Billionaires (in good graces) won't go to prison for the foreseeable future, but small fish will. Furthermore, the absurdly rich will exploit their newly-expanded corruption via patronage options with executive, legislative, and judicial branches to harm their competitors and enemies. This is why Tim Cook gave 47 a gold award. The system is coming apart at the seams for ordinary people and they're losing faith in the legitimacy of the legal and economic systems. This is how communism and civil wars start.

RajT88 1y ago

> I wouldn't advise doing it yourself, unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029 That's optimistic that you think anyone is going to prison in 2029.

bilbo0s 1y ago
This. I mean billionaires don't even go to prison for engaging in pedophilia. Which is just about the worst crime you can commit. If anyone thinks liberals or conservatives will put them in prison for bribery, they're being a little naive. This nation is owned by the billionaires. In all honesty, they don't even need to be in alignment with the government. There's next to nothing the government can do to rein in giant banks. If anything, the government has to be certain to make sure the banks are appeased.
- RajT88 1y ago
  You could say "moneyed interests". There is a distinction - there are both huge companies and billionaires, and a lot of the companies are owned in part or in whole by the billionaires. But together, they increasingly determine how our political system is run. It all seems to entrenched and at the same time escalating, it feels like it's inevitable it'll all fall apart. I'm surprised we're not seeing more moneyed interests colluding to establish equilibrium which is sustainable.
yks 1y ago
Well, early supporters of fascism do tend to end up in prison, because fascism needs purges. So in a monkey paw way, I wouldn't bet against the current crop of CEOs falling from graces very hard.
- bilbo0s 1y ago
  That's not quite how facism works. There are the purges. But it's normally not the corporate or moneyed puppetmasters getting purged, rather it's the political allies of the fascists that get purged. Military and law enforcement leaders who start off as allies have a particularly dismal survival record in these kinds of governments, since they don't have even the ephemeral protection of democratic legitimacy.
scarface_74 1y ago
The companies that you could accuse of outright bribery are Meta, Twitter, Paramount, and Disney who all gave money that benefited the President directly. Cook kissing ass and giving the President a meaningless trinket, doesn’t quite arise to that level.
- Smeevy 1y ago
  I've seen values estimated at between $150,000 to $200,000 for that trinket. That's actually a pretty solid bribe for most politicians and that's just what's been visible to the public. For comparison, in AZ we had legislators caught in a sting operation that were selling individual votes for gambling legislation for between $660 to $60,000 in the 1990s. We should not normalize this. That was a outright bribe even if it wasn't as big as what others gave. I wouldn't get off the hook for murder just because I argued that Ted Bundy killed waaaaaaay more people than me.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Too late “we” as a country already have. This country left caring about ethics and morals in 2016.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  The fancy glass engraved with Trump's name is a meaningless trinket, but the solid 24karat gold base is about as obvious a tribute payment as you can imagine.
mcphage 1y ago
It may take longer, but they will, eventually. Maybe not Tim Cook.
EasyMark 1y ago
Or vote in 2028

causal 1y ago

Trying to give something more power because you think it likes power is generally considered risky https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang=en https://x.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1849951974944313590?lang...

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
The exception, of course, is if you expect to co-benefit - Intel sent their CEO to kiss the ring and now they might be getting free investment money out of the deal. But it's definitely a risky strategy.
- causal 1y ago
  That is not an exception, it's exactly what the Tweet is talking about
  - SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    It's not. The Intel CEO wasn't obeying "in advance", he went to the White House after Trump announced (with absolutely no explanation) that Intel must fire him.
- abullinan 1y ago
  It was literally less than 48 hours where the president went from fully negative to fully positive on the intel ceo. I don’t think the ring is all the ceo kissed. That’s the president’s plan for every ceo.

Hilift 1y ago

I doubt anyone will care about this in four years. Society grows accustomed to daily life, as with the Vichy. The job market will be in tatters, similar to what South Africa has now with 40% unemployment. Every time a homeless person steals copper wire from a street lamp in LA, they make $50 from illegal recyclers and it costs taxpayers $10k to fix. $20 million per year, $100 million since 2020. 2029 there will be crime drones swarming LA recording crimes and seeking overly tanned people in real time on YouTube. LA took out a $1 billion loan this year to keep the lights on, and now Denver wants to do the same with zero economic prospects, which is a weird sales pitch.

jurking_hoff 1y ago
[dead]
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  Wow, this stood out. "Only 791 executions were carried out."
  - spwa4 1y ago
    Which means 90% of people who committed extremely serious crimes in service of the Nazis, serious enough to warrant the death penalty, were gradually let out of prison in the years after that. Of the people not convicted to death, 100% were "forgiven". Not really, but read on. Most people convicted to death (AND Robert Schuman, who was convicted, but later founded the EU) were guilty of helping the Nazis deport and massacre people, and not one or two, hundreds at least. Tens of thousands, some. And the reason for releasing most of them is even worse, if you disregard that half managed to escape. The reason is that the resistance (and remaining Nazis, by the way, who in some places killed literally everyone they could get their hands on in retreat) carried out their own executions in French towns, villages and cities. Without courts, or judgement. Needless to say, pretty much everyone in government was guilty and more and more were getting executed. So a "clean slate" was declared, to prevent the country falling apart entirely, and these people were let go. Not just in France. Spain. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. The Netherlands. In countries that were Nazi-leaning (like the Netherlands, Austria or Italy) some government departments (think health, youth, justice and education departments) literally have archives of their own cooperation with the holocaust. Please note that it is now known that quite a few victims of both the courts and the extrajudicial killings were convicted as Nazi collaborators ... BY Nazi collaborators who remained in government and wanted revenge. Needless to say, there was a wave of murders around the time of every release, with suspiciously little effort going to finding the perpetrators.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

>If you run or make strategic decisions for a tech company in 2025, you need to understand that many if not most of your competitors are working hard to figure out how to wield the federal government in their favor. This has been true in every industry and every company for the last 100 years. It's not even illegal, unless you're out there offering quid pro quo bribes.

perihelions 1y ago

> "unless you'd like to go to prison for bribery alongside Tim Cook in 2029" I don't understand how anyone could disagree with this assessment. This is the most transparent bribe ever, https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/GettyImages-2228840629.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Getty... ("Donald Trump speaks behind an engraved glass disc gifted to him by Apple CEO Tim Cook during an event in the Oval Office of the White House")

ratelimitsteve 1y ago

When the reckoning finally arrives the aristocrats will forgive themselves in the spirit of reconciliation and moving on, just like they did after WWII. Plenty of American companies like IBM made tons of money helping the Nazis and then after Berlin fell it turned out they were actually always on the side of freedom and there is absolutely no need to expand the war crimes trials to include collaborators.

tempodox 1y ago

> in 2029 Nope, King of America is a lifetime position.

EasyMark 1y ago
Hamberders don't obey even a king's demands, they are a fickle master

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Billionaires (in good graces) won't go to prison for the foreseeable future, but small fish will. Furthermore, the absurdly rich will exploit their newly-expanded corruption via patronage options with executive, legislative, and judicial branches to harm their competitors and enemies. This is why Tim Cook gave 47 a gold award. The system is coming apart at the seams for ordinary people and they're losing faith in the legitimacy of the legal and economic systems. This is how communism and civil wars start.