"There’s no denying the threat posed by the tech industry’s embrace of far-right politics. After decades of being praised as genius future-makers, they didn’t like when it was time to answer for the harms caused by their “move fast and break things” approach. But by the time the delayed accountability came, they’d accumulated enough power and wealth to make a serious effort to evade it. They propeled Trump back to the White House hoping he would save them — a bet that isn’t working out exactly as they planned.
Yet that doesn’t mean these politics aren’t still dangerous, whichever one ultimately comes out on top. Lonsdale and Srinivasan each imagine a more authoritarian world in their own way, where the powerful can do as they wish and everyone else has to suffer the consequences. One tries to realize a tech-infused version of an Ayn Randian fever dream, while the other intends to accelerate an escalating arms race to serve his sector’s bottom line — while cloaking it in the language of geopolitical rivalry and American superiority.
Drawing a distinction between the new military industry complex and the Network State movement isn’t to root for one over the other. They’re both efforts to try to push as far as possible toward a political reorientation that serves their interests. We could even see one as a hedge against the failure of the other: if the effort to capture the US government fails, then tech plutocrats could still decamp to their semi-autonomous zones where they rule with an iron fist and can do as they please. They must both be stopped, as they have horrible implications for our collective future."
https://www.disconnect.blog/p/the-ideological-rift-on-the-tech
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