Welcome to the age of Hard Tech
+ LA's secret celebrity tunnel, Truth Social's porn king, Silicon Valley's techno-religion, plasticmaxxing, Marth Stewart's skincare line, and the 24-year-old flooding X w/ anti-Zohran misinfo
Mike Isaac has a really great piece out in The New York Times on the vibe shift in Silicon Valley. I think his piece is great to read alongside this Palladium Mag piece on Cluely and the rise of “economic nihilism.”
It’s undeniable that Silicon Valley and the broader tech world has taken a darker turn in recent years. As Mike writes, “As a more right-leaning crowd of tech elite and terminally online Gen-Z founders emerged, they turned against politics in the workplace and globalism.” This has dovetailed with a pivot toward defense tech and surveillance software. It feels like no one is even pretending they’re about bettering the world anymore.
Here’s more from Mike’s story: (the entire piece is really good and worth reading!)
[2010s] Silicon Valley is now mostly ancient history. Today, the tech has become harder, the perks are fewer and the mood has turned more serious. The nation’s tech capital has shifted into its artificial intelligence age — some call it the “hard tech” era — and the signs are everywhere.
In office conference rooms, hacker houses, third-wave coffee houses or over Zoom meetings, knowledge of terms like neural network, large language model and graphical processing unit has become mandatory. Stacked up against ChatGPT’s ability to instantly transform any image into a Studio Ghibli cartoon, Instagram’s photo filters are practically Paleolithic. And the chatter is about not how you built your app with the HTML5 coding language, but how many H100 graphics cards — the highly coveted hardware for running A.I. programs — you can get your hands on.
The tech epicenter has moved from the traditional cradle of Silicon Valley — the towns of San Jose, Mountain View, Menlo Park and Palo Alto — 40 miles north to San Francisco, the home of the A.I. start-ups OpenAI and Anthropic. Tech giants like Google are no longer hiring in droves as they once did. And those with jobs at those behemoths are met by the watchful eyes of managers looking to cut dead weight rather than coddle employees.
The region, long known for its capital-L Liberal politics, is no longer a political monoculture. A contingent of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs have spurred a rightward shift, leading to the rise of the “Liberaltarian” — a term coined by two Stanford political economists to describe the tech industry’s proclivity toward trumpeting liberalism in some social issues but maintaining antigovernment posturing in regulating businesses. Alongside that change, industries that were once politically incorrect among techies — like defense and weapons development — have become a chic category for investment.
If Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 era was defined by founders playing God on their computers by creating social networks and other services, the new era is about founders angling to create ‘superintelligent’ computers that may one day surpass humans and become a kind of ‘God’ in the machine.
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What I’m reading
Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley. Now It's the new religion.
Believers like Garry Tan are flipping the script in the venture capital world, making faith matter just as much as the ability to turn a fortune. Says one entrepreneur, “There are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.” - Vanity Fair
Capitalists Love This Podcast. So Do Their Critics.
“Odd Lots” goes deep on lentils in Saskatchewan, the global tractor supply and trucking markets. Is it the skeleton key to understanding this strange economic moment? - The New York Times
Is Beehiiv the Next Billion-Dollar Newsletter Startup?
Can the Substack competitor be the next billion-dollar newsletter startup? - The Information
The Tech Mogul Behind Trump’s Truth Social Used To Own Porn Domains
Before he helped run Truth Social, Chris Pavlovski owned porn domains. Now, he’s allied with a political movement that wants to ban pornography. - Forbes
Clankers, Grokkers and bot-lickers: AI slurs are here to stay
We’re becoming increasingly dependent on robots, but a wave of new insults speaks to a growing backlash... or are people just really desperate to say slurs?- DAZED
The AI Revolution Is a Heist
Behind the promises of progress lies a simple play: take what others built, offer nothing back, and call it innovation. - The Walrus
The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion
The Rationalists, a community focused on the risks of artificial intelligence, regularly gather with tech figures and other like-minded people in a complex that covers much of a city block. - NY Times
The Publicist on Call for Controversy
Mitchell Jackson was fired from a high-profile journalism job at 25. Now he represents some of the most divisive figures in America, including the right-wing podcaster Candace Owens. - The New York Times
How to Live Forever and Get Rich Doing It
As researchers work to make death optional, investors see a chance for huge returns. But has the human body already reached its limits? - New Yorker
The ‘Troublemaker’ Behind Netflix’s Biggest Gamble
Brandon Riegg pushed the streaming service to invest in live shows and sports, transforming Netflix into something more like a traditional TV network. - NY Times
You Are Contaminated
There is plastic in your saliva, and almost certainly in your blood. Plastic has been found in human hearts and kidneys and other organs, in the breast milk expressed by new mothers and on both sides of their placentas. And because plastic has been found in ovarian follicular fluid and testicular tissue and in the majority of sampled human sperm, it is already embedded in not just the yet-to-be-born but the yet-to-be-conceived. - NY Times