It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.
These are two very popular slogans in the technology industry, and pretty much a reflection of how that world thinks. I know this because I worked for quite a while in the technology world, at first for an Internet startup in the late 90s-early 00s, and then for a university promoting educational technology.
To be clear, the educational technology world is a lot more benevolent. Whatever work is done there is meant for good, to use technology tools like multimedia and even social media to teach. But as for the enterprise tech world, the moment we are in has been in the making for a while now.
If you paid any attention to technology since about 2010, you might have noticed an evolution in both their goals and their message. At one time, the tech industry was all about changing the world for the better. Sure, sometimes this would be a bit on the silly side: “Changing the world for the better” would often mean “my app that tells you where the best pad thai is in a five-mile radius of your current location shall change everything. I had multiple discussions with people I worked with about Steve Jobs and Apple, and they would tell me that Apple is more than just about profits, it’s a company whose first goal is to change the world.
All of that is silly, of course. An app that finds great Thai food is certainly useful but not a major global game-changer, and while I like Apple products they were, like any company, a profits-first enterprise.
Somewhere along the line, they became much darker. The first instance that I recall noticing was the movement within Silicon Valley to build artificial islands in international waters to create their own nations. The idea behind this was to avoid taxes and regulations.
The Silicon Valley ethos of moving fast and breaking things does not like regulations or any potential pushback for that matter. It’s an extremely arrogant view of the world, something endemic with tech bros. We know best how to do just about anything, and silly things like experts telling us we’re doing something wrong because since we did a company that was successful that makes us experts on everything.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work out if you apply this philosophy to something other than a restaurant app. A perfect example of this is the CEO of Oceangate, Stockton Rush, who once said ““I think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules you break,” Rush said in a video interview in 2022. “And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
If that name sounds familiar, he is the guy who died in the Titan submarine implosion tragedy in 2023. He also was scornful of safety regulations. FAFO, as the kids say.
So, now we have this same philosophy that sent five people to a watery grave being applied to our government. Taking out the government and removing it as an obstacle to increasingly unhinged ideas was something that Silicon Valley has been quite open about for years. They told us this was what they were going to do. Their increasingly close relationship with the far right, as exemplified by people like Peter Thiel and JD Vance, and with Project 2025, were big huge waving red flags.
These people want the world exactly the way they want it to be, and that means they completely control everything. So far, the lack of freakout about this is a little surprising and totally terrifying. The idea of Elon Musk having control of the average person’s personal information at the Treasury should have people very upset, but then again we are talking about the same people who will rant about Internet privacy and yet share on Facebook their child’s elementary school and post photos from a vacation while they are still away from home.
He even told us that this would all be unpleasant for the average American. And yet, here we are, after voting in this nightmare.
So, “move fast and break things” is fine for a company developing an app. Not so much when human lives are at stake.
The last word goes to St. Vincent.
