Dana Blankenhorn

The Big Tech Conspiracy That Wasn’t

Once you show you like something, I offer you more of it.

Is this a conspiracy?

Not unless I’m a scaled Web site. Because this is at the heart of the charge against “Big Tech,” the companies I call Cloud Czars.

• Show a preference for certain videos on YouTube and YouTube offers you more videos like them.
• “Like” things on Facebook or Instagram, and you will get more things like them.
• Follow certain celebrities on Twitter, you’re offered more like them.
• The same with Amazon Kindle books. When you buy something from Amazon, you’ll be followed for days by ads offering the same thing.

The algorithms follow human nature. Chances are that if you like a book about 12^th century monks who solve murders, you might like another one. If you like Henry Winkler, you’ll probably like Ron Howard.

The problem is that if you like crazy conspiracy theories on Instagram, or videos describing the terrors of the Illuminati on YouTube, you’ll get more of them. Like those, you’ll get more. And more and more.

The Enemy is Religious Nationalism

The 2022 election mostly put Trumpism into the rear-view mirror.

What it revealed was the larger political battle of this decade, between secular democracy and religious extremism.

I’m not against God. But there are two problems with religious nationalism.

First, it’s intolerant. Wherever one religion rules, its adherents outlaw any faith but their own. This is true for Hindus in India, for the Russian Orthodox, even for Buddhists in Burma. It’s true for Jews in Israel and for fundamentalist protestants in the United States.

This remains true despite every great religious teacher, from Gautama to Vishnu to Confucius, from Moses to Jesus to Mohammed, all the way to Joseph Smith, teaching first the way of tolerance. Love your neighbor. Care for the less fortunate. Seek the enlightenment of faith for yourself.

It’s the leaders of these faiths, the Popes and the Mullahs, the Rabbis, and the Brahmins, who twist it into something else. There is a reason for this. Those faiths that adhered to tolerance were, over time, wiped out by leaders of the intolerant. This is the true original sin.

The Coup Succeeded

January 6 wasn’t THE coup. It was a coup, an attempted coup, a failed coup.

But there is a coup that succeeded, that toppled American democracy, possibly for all time.

This was the McConnell coup. By succeeding, during the course of 4 years, in getting three unqualified political hacks onto the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell won the power to redefine the Constitution and destroy American democracy.

That work has barely begun.

Is This The End of Crypto?

I wrote about cryptocurrency a lot, late in the last decade.

I finally decided it was trash.

There’s no there, there. I can find no blockchain applications superior to what you can do in other ways. Bitcoin and Ethereum claim they’re better than other coins, but the market remains crooked and opaque.

All this came crowding in this week when FTX collapsed. FTX was the creation of a 20-something (now 30) named Sam Bankman-Fried, whom my son now calls Bank Man Fried, as in French fries.

Lies Unmet Become Truth

In politics, lies that are not met with truth become the playing field.

There are some huge ones this year.

The Economy

We’re told, and assume, that the economy is terrible. It’s not.

There is inflation, but full employment and pay raises means the impact on most families is modest. The U.S. GDP rose 2.6%, on an annual rate, in the last quarter. Thanks to the government, millions of families have savings, a cushion against hard times, to see them through, at least for a while.

But this year has sucked for one group of people. Investors. Especially rich investors.

The men who control the Cloud Czars have lost trillions of dollars in market cap this year. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have each lost $100 billion of their fortunes. But these losses are dwarfed, in impact, by the trillions more lost by smaller investors, and speculators, in SPACs, in crypto, in stocks and in bonds.

We don’t live on our investments. We’re not supposed to. Those who are near retirement, like me, are supposed to move into cash and interest-bearing accounts for living expenses. Those who have done so are doing OK. For the first time in decades, we can get a return on our money. The return is guaranteed when you buy I-Bonds, government paper whose interest rate is indexed to inflation.

But the rich are “suffering” and they are busy convincing the middle class they must make up the difference, and that until the poor truly suffer the Fed can’t be expected to ease off. Remember, the rich demanded the Fed fight inflation, last year. The Fed has and they haven’t responded. It’s their own fault.

The Strength of Autocracy

The strength of autocracy lies in its ability to deny reality and get people to embrace lies.

Putin is losing in Ukraine, but he’s not losing his mandate. Among those Russians who remain in the country, and who feel free to express an opinion, his support remains strong.

Xi Jinping is losing his economy, but he’s not losing his mandate either. Stocks are falling, real estate is collapsing, manufacturing jobs are running off to East Asia and his best minds are fleeing Hong Kong. But his rule faces no threat.

Wall Street Revolt

What’s most distinguishing about the 2022 economy is how capital is taking the hit.

We all know about the bear market in stocks, down over 20% from their peak. Bond investors are also down over 15%. Real estate is rolling over. This is where capital gets its money.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are doing OK. It’s true that inflation is outpacing wage gains, but there are wage gains. Jobs remain plentiful. Last year’s stimulus was mainly aimed at firming incomes. More relief is coming from the Inflation Reduction Act.

This has created pure fury on Wall Street. I follow financial Twitter for my job, and the anger is palpable. Investors are predicting the imminent downfall of the whole economy. They’re demanding that the poor pay the penalty for their mistakes with money. They really can’t get their heads around the current situation.

Nuclear Impunity

I wrote about the concept of impunity back in August.

I was talking in terms of American politics, but there’s a bigger kind of impunity, nuclear impunity, which Russia is now attempting to deploy.

The idea is that once you have a nuclear weapon you are immune to criticism. You can do whatever you want, kill whomever you want, because if you’re pushed to the brink, you can destroy the world.

North Korea is well known for this. The Kim dynasty can destroy their economy, starve their people, commit all kinds of crimes but South Korea writes it off because they have nukes. North Koreans are now several inches shorter than the people to their south. They suffer from chronic malnutrition. They live in a geographic prison, and no one will help them escape, because the Kims have nukes.

We can’t have effective nuclear non-proliferation with this kind of impunity. It’s too tempting. We know Israel has nukes. We just don’t say so. We know India and Pakistan both have nukes. We’re scared of Iran getting nukes because they might use them against Israel.

Revenge of the Norms

For months liberals have been screaming at Merrick Garland to DO SOMETHING about Donald Trump.

For months liberals have been expressing disappointment with Joe Biden over a lack of action on his agenda.

Whether you’re of the left or the right, the democratic and societal norms that restrict action are frustrating. I’ve been unhappy about it too.

This week, the norms struck back. Garland approved the search at Mar-a-Lago and offered to justify it with court documents. Biden got at least part of his agenda passed.

The Oh Noes

Thanks to technology the U.S. economy works well.

We dominate the world. Our gross domestic product is 25% higher than China’s, with just one-fourth as many people. Half the world’s cloud data centers are located right here. Scaled software lets us adjust to change faster than any economic rival.

Most of the time, these adjustments are minor. Some of us are retiring and want trips. Others are just entering the workforce. Some of us are saving for homes, while others are eating out or seeing shows.

The last two years have been different. We’ve all been doing the same thing. We were all locked inside during the worst of the pandemic fear. We all opened-up together, then we all sought to take trips together. Now we’re all watching a war together.

Phishing Expedition

If this can happen to me, after nearly 40 years online, it can happen to you.

All our money is at risk.

My story starts Friday night, with an e-mail claiming to be from service@paypal.com. The e-mail claimed it had an invoice it would pay the next day. It was a transaction I had not made.

There was a phone number attached so, stupidly, I called it. The person who answered had an Indian accent but was very sympathetic and insisted he didn’t want any personal information. After 10 minutes, he offered to switch me to a supervisor.

I was already suspicious. I became more so when the “supervisor” made a key mistake. He said the invoice came from Baretta, a gun maker. The invoice in the e-mail, however, said Barrett. There was a second tell, his overly enthusiastic sympathy, identical to the first rep. It was when he suggested I download a file to fix things that I got scared. But I downloaded it anyway.