#pmarca endorses #AI uncritically as of June 2023, blaming AI safety concerns on “Baptists” (the true believers) and “bootleggers” (who just want barriers to entry to increase their profits), and rebutting some. #toread
on 02026-01-06#news from June about how #Elmu had, and #pmarca has, a lot of influence on #USA #politics via #Trump, following #cryptocurrency clashes with #Biden
on 02026-01-06criticism of #pmarca for investing in bad things
on 02025-11-11#Scott-Alexander on #USA #politics: how #pmarca bought both political parties (with “Fairshake”) and how #AI companies are doing it too (with “Leading The Future”). #news
on 02025-10-21#video of #pmarca saying it’s “morning again” in #USA #politics due to #Trump, 74 minutes. I didn’t realize Al Gore sponsored the legislation that created NSFNET; I thought his advocacy started with the com-priv era.
He mentions the end of Chevron deference, which he argues means that executive agencies should abandon their quasi-legislative functions. He also questions the idea of “independent agencies” in the executive branch, like the FTC and NRC. The interviewer, the Hoover Institution’s Peter Robinson, argues that the CFPB's director not being fireable by the president is “unconstitutional on the face of it”, prefiguring the Slaughter verdict (I’m writing these notes in 02026).
Cites #Yarvin approvingly at 25'54" saying that we’re 80 years into FDR’s personal monarchy.
Also mentions #Elmu has been “living at” Mar-a-Lago.
Also mentions the #history of Nixon’s “Project Independence”, which I hadn’t heard of, to build 1000 #nuclear #energy power stations in the US, which turns out to be at best a very incomplete description of Project Independence.
Describes #Anduril’s original business plan as “We have to invest in this company, and his business plan is to hunt Mexicans at the southern border in 2016. And we’re just like, oh, God, we just basically have a heart attack.” So Andreessen Horowitz didn’t invest, and Trump didn’t want Anduril to do it, so they switched to military systems, which became accepted in Silicon Valley with the tragedy in #Ukraine.
Robinson claims that the US’s “only sustainable advantage over the Chinese is going to be technological innovation”, since they’re more numerous and richer, which doesn't make sense to me — how are they richer if they’re dumber, as he’s implying? Pmarca doesn’t disagree, citing the Pentagon’s new COO, Steve Feinberg, as someone who can make this happen.
At 56'40" he says the Ukrainian sea drones are built out of commercial jetskis.
At 60'40" pmarca makes the very reasonable points that productivity growth in the US has been low since about 01970, and that low growth creates zero-sum economics, which creates zero-sum politics, “where the only way for anybody to get anything is to take it away from somebody else.”
on 02025-01-29Marc Andreessen #pmarca vehemently opposing ‘the creation of multifamily overlay zones in Atherton’ #NIMBY
on 02024-09-18#pmarca #interview on #AI
on 02016-10-06