Oops, we did it again. I can't say that I'm terribly surprised, as Harris ran a center right campaign and tossed a mighty chunk of the coalition under

The AI/Fascism Nexus

submited by
Style Pass
2024-11-08 21:30:02

Oops, we did it again. I can't say that I'm terribly surprised, as Harris ran a center right campaign and tossed a mighty chunk of the coalition under the bus while courting Liz Cheney and her war criminal father.

Of course, the imbrication with the tech industry in this win runs deep. VP-elect JD Vance was famously formerly a principal at Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital and maintained a connection to the alt-right of the Valley. And while much of the attention has been at the top of the ticket, Bad Things are happening in San Francisco politics which reflect the national rightward turn spurred by tech money. Effective accelerationist and Y Combinator lead Garry Tan's GrowSF and venture capitalist Michael Moritz's TogetherSF contributed millions towards pro-business and anti-street encampment candidates and measures. Across the bridge, the effort to recall Oakland mayor Sheng Thao and DA Pamela Price look likely to succeed, bankrolled in part by tech venture capitalist Ron Conway and hedge fund manager Philip Dreyfuss. Other than the influx of VC money nationally and locally, crypto spending in the election paid off in a big way, including unseating incumbent Democratic senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio.

Tech money came through in a big way, although this post isn't (primarily) about that. It's about how AI and authoritarian go hand-in-hand, and how the big tech courting of Trump goes beyond a simplistic capitalist calculation that is anti-regulation (bye bye Lina Khan and the National Labor Relations Board) and economically laissez faire. A central requirement of generative AI, despite the overtures around "democratization", is the accumulation of economic power, data, and compute into the hands of the few. Although the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have openly embraced the president-elect, the rest of the AI cadre--OpenAI, Anthropic, and others--are likely to follow suit.

Leave a Comment