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Silicon Valley's capture of our political institutions is all but complete
- bigyabai 1y agoIf you think that it's Silicon Valley capturing the government and not the other way around, you must have missed your Political Science 101 course. They both sing the same tune because it's the feds writing the script, not Sam Altman and Tim Cook conspiring with Thiel. All the seed funding in the world won't disrupt the monopoly on violence. We're here because some dolts actually believed the lie that Silicon Valley was on "our side" of the fight.
- paxys 1y agoExactly. Silicon valley is bending the knee to political institutions, not taking them over.
- dangus 1y ago[flagged]
- heroprotagonist 1y agoMore like, several wealthy people from Silicon Valley funded campaigns to put a government in place which is now encouraging Silicon Valley and other business to bend the knee to the political institutions. It's not always simple to be precise..
- watwut 1y agoSilicon valley is not bending the knee. For quite a few of these people, this is the government they wanted and worked hard to get.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y agoI just don't think that's true. Silicon Valley moguls vary in just how vehemently they endorse skilled immigration, but none of them wanted or suggested an illegal $100,000 H1B application fee. A couple did get tricked by promises that the Trump regime would be more favorable to tech than it's turned out to be.
- convolvatron 1y agoas has been pointed out here, there is some subtlety. surely the cost of $100,000 a head is more significant to some businesses than others. and don't forget that the administration made it clear that they can make an exception to certain employers or sectors for whatever reason
- harimau777 1y agoI don't think that the government doing a handful of things that Silicon Valley dislikes necessarily means that overall the corpos don't support MAGA. That could just be the cost of doing business.
- hippo22 1y agoReally? I think Silicon Valley _loves_ the H1B fee. Prior to the fee, everything was purely a lottery. There was no pay-to-win. Now there is. Silicon Valley has the most money to spend here, so they get the most talent.
- pessimizer 1y agoI wish all the Political Science 101, Civics 101, and Economics 101 people would take another class. First of all, the government doesn't have a monopoly on violence, that's silly; the government has a monopoly on legitimate violence. Second of all, the wrestling valet and game show host and his array of dimwits aren't in control of anything, the people who pay them are. The people who pay them are also the people who run silicon valley. If you hear that the government is coming down on somebody in silicon valley, it's because everybody else in silicon valley wanted him gone. "The Feds" are people with no interests, no money and no power. They are where they are to execute for American business (and as we've sold off America, that just means any rich guy), and it's literally all they've been doing since WWII.
- cyanydeez 1y agoeh, weird way to describe fascism.
- mindslight 1y agoHey now, you can't just call it "fascism" like that. It doesn't come from the Fascia region of Italy, and plus that word hurts people's feelings. Maybe try "sparkling autocratic authoritarianism" instead.
- nomdep 1y agoFascism comes from “fascio” (not from the small town of Fascia) that means “bundle”. The idea is that, like rods are fragile by themselves but strong as a bundle, an individual is either with the group (making it stronger) or an enemy of it. No room for discussion or disagreement
- chaps 1y agoWhy does it have to be either-or? It's more of a revolving door. One of the clearer modes of how this all looks can be seen when using public records laws to request information that was created through a government contract. On one side, trade secrecy is a legit thing. On the other hand, it's abused to the Nth degree such that just about anything is "trade secret". Government agencies will literally just ask the company's counsel if records in a records request can be released and they'll copy/paste the answer. For example: I took an uber from an East Chicago, IN restaurant to a Chicago, IL planned parenthood and then FOIA'd for the GPS records that the city legally requires Uber to provide for every trip [1]. In the request I included the trip identifier that I found on the city's open data portal [2]. For months and months they denied, denied, denied, even after a request for emails gave me the exact SQL query they wrote to identify my trip. Eventually when I narrowed the request down to the exact fields, they finally agreed that they have the records, but argued that the data (edit: just lat/lng of the start/end locations) showing me going to a planned parenthood was a trade secret. It would be trivial for Chicago's counsel to push back on that, but they seemed to have zero interest in reflecting on the risks of holding this category of data. [1] https://chicago.github.io/tnp-reporting-manual/trip/ https://chicago.github.io/tnp-reporting-manual/trip/ [2] https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Transportation-Network-Providers-Trips-2025-/6dvr-xwnh/data_preview https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Transportation...
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago[dead]
- jimt1234 1y agoI'm old enough to remember when Silicon Valley and politics were, for the most part, two separate worlds. The only thing I remember back in the 90's were the arguments about encryption strengths and export controls.
- janice1999 1y agoI think that's an anachronistic view of things - politics and Silicon Valley have always been linked in some way. In-Q-Tel has been funding startups since 1999. Other government programs also helped fund Google. Those political decisions to invest in mapping, data processing and surveillance technology etc helped create the Silicon Valley giants we have today. It also worked the other way, with the USA v Microsoft antitrust kicking off in the late 90s.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoEvgeny Morozov's books are the go-to on this. He's been warning about digital totalitarianism since 2011. The NSA has been trying - successfully, it seems - to put backdoors inside encryption since the mid-90s.
- nradov 1y agoSilicon Valley first became a technology center from the military-industrial complex that grew out of WWII.
- vram22 1y agoYou might not have yet read The Secret History of Silicon Valley by Steve Blank. He also has a YouTube video on the same subject. steveblank.com
- vram22 1y agohttps://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-valley/ https://steveblank.com/category/secret-history-of-silicon-va...
- AfterHIA 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Damocles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_of_Damocles
- nickff 1y agoAs the governments have grown more powerful and intrusive (in terms of introducing policies which only affect narrow groups), lobbying has grown in importance. I am not sure why anyone is surprised.
- Teever 1y agoIs the issue really lobbying or inordinate control over the government by big tech? And if that's the case how would a less powerful government resist the power of big tech as you seem to be implying?
- harimau777 1y agoHow would a weaker government help? However imperfect, governments are the closest thing that regular people have to a protector. At the very least people need a powerful government to play against powerful corporations in the hope that they weaken each other enough to minimize their ability to prey upon the rest of society. How are you envisioning people protecting themselves against corportations?
- arealaccount 1y agoIf you see government as a vehicle for corruption then you can say a weaker government is better than a more powerful government
- harimau777 1y agoDefinitely, but I don't see how that's any different from a corporation doing evil things.
- tgma 1y agoA corporation, without government, cannot imprison you or conduct violence so it is infinitely better in that scenario. If it’s not obvious to you, you have been extremely privileged to be part of the a few percentage who haven’t had to live under horrible governments and their worst experience is having to deal with Comcast.
- iancmceachern 1y agoIt's good to be on "the list" with you all
- grafmax 1y agoI think Silicon Valley is losing its edge (as evidenced by the widespread enshittification) so it needs to combine with the government to support its rent extraction (available to it as it has amassed so much money).
- throw-10-13 1y agoAuthoritarian tech ceo’s and the literal fascists running things in Washington have a lot in common.
- jschveibinz 1y agoThis is focused on California politics. But even so, energy, utilities, real estate, entertainment, agriculture, and healthcare have a lot of influence on California politics. Tech is most likely not the biggest if you look at lobbying data.
- pyuser583 1y agoNot to mention the movie industry.
- Cheer2171 1y agoYou mean the industry that has practically relocated to Vancouver, Toronto, and Georgia due to the aggressive tax breaks those governments give, which the governors and legislature have been refusing to do for a decade? Almost nothing is filmed in LA county anymore.
- jeisc 1y agoWe have become intoxicated by our devices and AI will make it even more so. Our future politicians will be launched using AI for a party platform and campaign strategy.