We've been measuring the wrong things.
We measure GDP and call it flourishing. We measure attention and call it joy. We measure data and call it consent. What gets measured gets funded.
Our rebuttal to the Palantir Manifesto.
Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible.
The engineering elite has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.
Smuggled premise · the argument assumes "America" is the relevant unit. It isn't.
The debt is owed to America, and to the world Silicon Valley depended on.
Chips: Taiwan. Lithography: Netherlands. Engineers: India. Cobalt: Congo. The Valley's stack came from the world. The debt does too.
Build for everyone, or do not build
We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps.
The iPhone is our crowning achievement. The object now limits and constrains our sense of the possible.
Self-contradiction · the iPhone is both the crown and the tyrant.
The iPhone is not our crowning achievement.
The iPhone is probably the largest destruction of IQ points in the history of the world. An iPhone in the room reduces working memory. Workplace attention dropped from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds in two decades (Mark). Adolescent mental health collapsed alongside iPhone and short-form video adoption (Haidt).
Measure what helps, not what holds attention
Free email is not enough.
Decadence will be forgiven only if the culture delivers economic growth and security for the public.
Consequentialist alibi · "we delivered growth" used as a moral shield against criticism.
Growth does not redeem decay. It accelerates it.
Culture and security aren't measured in terms of economic growth. The Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission found household work alone is worth ~30% of GDP, and valuing leisure adds another ~80%... Justice, leisure, social connection, life, liberty, happiness, when measured properly, dwarf GDP.
Measure economic growth in terms of what people actually value
The limits of soft power have been exposed. Hard power, built on software, is what wins.
Free societies prevail with force. Rhetoric alone is decoration.
False dichotomy · only hard or soft power. There was always a third option.
Hard power decays. Earned trust compounds.
Cultures of fear are footnotes. Cultures others want to copy are still here.
Predict. Do not project force.
The question is not whether AI weapons will be built. It is who will build them.
Adversaries will not pause for theatrical debate. They will proceed.
Inevitabilism · the argument behind every weapon ever made.
That an adversary will commit a wrong is not an argument for committing it.
The same intelligence that targets a person can target a tumor, predict a drug response, find an early-stage cancer, model a climate intervention, decode a child's reading disability. Target what saves lives, not what ends them.
Refuse, even alone
National service should be a universal duty. End the all-volunteer force.
We should only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.
Fairness as cover · shared sacrifice used to legitimize the next war.
Yes to National service. No to national conscription into killing.
Anyone calling for a mandatory draft into killing probably doesn't have children. Care, teaching, repair, restoration are national services that reduce risks.
Conscript care, not killing
If a Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it. The same goes for software.
Be unflinching in our commitment to those we asked to step into harm's way.
Equivocation · loyalty to the soldier conflated with loyalty to the war.
Do not conflate commitment to the soldier with commitment to the war.
Build them homes, healthcare, exit ramps.
Bring them home. Or do not send them.
Public servants need not be our priests.
Any business that compensated employees the way the federal government does would struggle to survive.
Category error · a calling priced like a commodity.
Public service produces value the market doesn't price.
A teacher shapes a generation. A scientist cures the next disease. None of that lives in business compensation.
Pay the calling. Stop pretending the salary is the value.
Show far more grace toward those in public life.
The eradication of forgiveness leaves us with a cast of characters we will grow to regret.
Special pleading · mercy for the powerful, scrutiny for the rest.
When the powerful ask for grace, they are asking for impunity.
Mercy is offered by the people who got hurt, not demanded by the people who did the hurting.
Mercy from the harmed, not the harming
The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray.
Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul will be left disappointed.
Strawman · attacks "soul-nourishment from politics," a position no one holds.
A politics that ignores the inner life produces leaders without conscience.
People who haven't examined themselves should not run anything larger than themselves.
Examined leaders, or none
Society has grown too eager at the demise of its enemies. Pause, then vanquish.
The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.
Begging the question · assumes "enemy" as a category before proving it.
The category "enemy" is the original error.
Call someone an enemy, and you have already chosen conflict.
Refuse the category
The atomic age is ending. A new era of deterrence built on AI is set to begin.
Mutually assured restraint, enforced by intelligent weapons.
False analogy · AI deterrence will work like nuclear deterrence.
The only safe AI weapon is the one we refuse to build.
"Deterrence" borrows the word from nuclear strategy and discards what made it survivable: the human pause, the recall, the chance to think again. AI weapons decide in milliseconds. We don't want systems that choose nuclear war in 95% of cases.
Stop building AI for war
No country has advanced progressive values more than this one.
It is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists here for those who are not hereditary elites.
Cherry-picked metric · pick a different metric and the ranking inverts.
By progressive values, or by Life, Liberty, and Happiness, many countries are more advanced.
| Life | Life expectancy, 2023: ~40th globally. Maternal mortality, 2024: highest of high-income countries. |
|---|---|
| Liberty | Incarceration rate, 2024: among the highest in the world (531 per 100,000). |
| Happiness | World Happiness Report 2024: 23rd. |
Drop the scoreboard. Do the accounting.
American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace.
Three generations have never known a world war.
Survivorship bias · the peace was peaceful only for those whose deaths were not counted.
The "long peace" wasn't peaceful for the tens of millions who died in it.
Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Gaza. Calling that peace is survivor bias.
Count every body
The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone.
The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection. Japanese pacifism threatens the balance of power in Asia.
False generalization · "pacifism = weakness" ignores Germany and Japan.
Pacifism imposed on Germany and Japan was one of the few unambiguous goods of the twentieth century.
Top-five economies. Universal healthcare. Lower inequality. Safer streets. The countries with invasion engines should be studying them, not the reverse.
Teach the lesson. Do not undo it.
Applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act.
The culture snickers at Musk's interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to stay in their lane.
Hero worship · the grand narrative is taken as evidence, not evaluated as theater.
The market doesn't snicker at vision. It snickers at unawareness.
The signal is honest. Take it seriously.
Distribute the build
Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime.
Politicians have shrugged at violent crime, abandoning serious efforts to save lives.
Solutionism · software answer to a structural problem.
Treating violent crime as a software problem mistakes the symptom for the disease.
Root causes of violent crime: poverty, trauma, lead exposure, housing. Surveillance monetizes suffering, inefficiently.
Treat the conditions, not the symptoms
The ruthless exposure of public figures drives talent away from government.
The shallow assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves leave us with empty vessels.
Self-serving bias · the powerful asking for less scrutiny of the powerful.
People who can't withstand exposure should not seek power over others.
Power over millions earns scrutiny by millions.
Exposure is the price
The caution we encourage in public life is corrosive.
Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
Equivocation · restraint conflated with vacancy.
Restraint is not cowardice. Caution in speech is the sign of someone thinking.
A culture that punishes silence and rewards certainty gets governed by people most willing to be wrong in public.
Reward thinking, not volume
The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted.
The elite's intolerance of religion is a sign that its political project is less open than it claims.
Selective indignation · defends one priesthood, ignores the others.
The most dangerous religious project of our time is the sacralization of the state, the market, and the founder.
Skepticism toward priesthoods is healthy. It should be applied evenly.
Question every robe
Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive.
All cultures are now treated as equal. This dogma glosses over the fact that some have produced wonders, others harm.
Circular reasoning · the criteria for "vital" are set by the ranker.
Cultures that rank cultures usually put themselves on top.
Pick what "vital" means before you rank, or you are just describing your own culture in flattering terms. Every culture has produced wonder and harm.
Refuse the ranking
We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.
The West has resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?
Loaded question · "inclusion into what?" assumes the answer.
Pluralism is the daily, difficult practice of treating strangers as kin.
"That's here. That's home. That's us. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot.
Inclusion is the practice
Twenty-two refusals are not enough. Here is what we are building instead.
Every year of life expectancy is a year more with the people who love you. Start with maternal and child mortality. World Bank.
Liberty is measured by who is not behind bars. The US imprisons more people per capita than almost any country. World Prison Brief.
Already measurable. 150+ countries, scored every year, since 2012. World Happiness Report.
A planet you can breathe on, drink from, and live on. 180 countries scored on 40 indicators. Yale Environmental Performance Index.
Democracy that works. Liberal Democracy Index covers 200 polities across two centuries. V-Dem Institute.
Of speech, of press, of assembly, of belief. 195 countries scored on political and civil liberties. Freedom House.
Whether ordinary people get a fair shake. 142 countries scored across 8 dimensions of rule of law. World Justice Project.
Help us measure what makes life worth living. See what we're building.