All the news that’s fit to print. A few weeks back, at the end of 2023, the more reliably idiotic elements of our tech press published a torrent of eulogies for Twitter. The app was dead, the Twitter-addicted political activists once again tweeted on the app that “was dead.” The sentiment followed a year of similar declarations themselves catalyzed by an initial onslaught of baseless, activist-concocted F.U.D. Here, just as when this all began, we were told there were many reasons for Twitter’s death, but none so significant as Elon’s failure to adequately “moderate” content. In other words, he suspended the artificial boosting of state sock puppets from NBC and the Washington Post, and stopped doing aggressive political censorship at the request of actual state operatives. But is Twitter really over? 

Well, yes.

“Twitter,” as defined as the state’s favored platform for controlling the American political narrative, is — at this point obviously! — gone. Like, totally dead. Sacked, scorched, salted. And nothing better illustrates this fact than the end of Claudine Gay, Harvard University’s now-disgraced former President, embodiment of all the radically leftist, racist, anti-meritocratic values we were forced to publicly celebrate just a couple years ago. This week, after six new plagiarism allegations were levied against the woman on New Year’s Day, she finally resigned (here’s her resignation letter). It was, for this DEI bureaucrat from Hell turned de facto leader of American academia, an incredible accomplishment: Gay now holds the record for shortest tenure of any president in Harvard’s 387-year history. Slay, queen. 

Critics of Christopher Rufo, probably the loudest public voice opposing Gay, as well as the Free Beacon, where stories pertaining to the serial plagiarism that led to Gay’s “resignation” first surfaced, argue all parties opposed to Gay are activists. These are right wing, anti-DEI people, many of them furious over Claudine’s yay Hamas shit at her last (and final, I’d like to believe) performance before Congress (though why do I get the feeling she’ll be running for office?). But the notion that Rufo and the Beacon boys are all activists is, of course… okay I mean it’s totally true. Are people denying this? Don’t deny this, you will look like an idiot. They’re activists.

Journalists at the Free Beacon are totally punching for the political right, which, along with the entire American middle, is completely at odds with the systemic sexism and racism central to DEI bureaucracy. And Christopher Rufo? Yes, he is definitely an activist. Together, all of these people followed their bias, which led them to real examples of incredible malfeasance on the part of Claudine Gay, which itself led to real-world change. In other words, these are journalists. This is how journalism works. This particular breed of journalism only feels alien because now, unlike several years ago, there’s equality on Twitter. Today, every real scandal, regardless of political impact, is amplified in keeping with standard algorithmic law. Stories that most people find interesting are amplified, which attracts more attention, which in turn drives further virality. For better or worse.

Had Elon not taken Twitter private, it is highly likely every major story driven by the political right would still be suppressed, Rufo himself would be banned from the platform, and Claudine Gay would still be President of Harvard. Despite her tremendous, obvious, serial plagiarism. But since last December, the playing field has evened, and a changing of the cultural guards was inevitable. My sense is the shift started years ago, even despite the Twitter blockade, as was evidenced on both the briefly free and popular chat app Clubhouse, and among the most dominant voices on Substack. But by early last year the vibe shift was obvious across the most important platform for ideological distribution. I wrote about this ten months ago (a week before a separate viral story sparked the meme). I wrote about it again at the end of 2023. This is not the beginning, but the end of a cultural shift. The ramifications in tech have been significant.

Last night, following weeks of Elon’s public comments pertaining to the fundamentally immoral nature of DEI practices, Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong came out strongly opposed to hiring based on sex or race. This is huge. It also doesn’t necessarily mean DEI is over. Untangling ourselves from the death grip of the prior political order will take tremendous work.

Claudine Gay, albeit incredibly powerful, only represented one nodule in a vast, sprawling DEI cancer that has overtaken every industry, and every edifice of power in the country, from our startup ecosystem to the military. She is also, by the way, still employed by Harvard, where she will be making close to $1 million a year, and likely still maintains incredible influence and power at the university. The vibe shift does not mean DEI is over, it simply means we are now allowed to honestly discuss DEI, along with every other racist, sexist, morally inverted tenet of the prior order. But discussion is the easy part. Now we have to cut away the rot wherever possible, while building, and defending, new institutions in keeping with the values of freedom, ambition, and merit. 

Happy New Year. It’s time to work.

THE FIFTH ESTATE

NOTABLE INDUSTRY TRENDS

GUNDO. The hardware scene in Southern California (which has been home to Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, SpaceX Anduril, ABL Space Systems, Varda, and many many more), continues to heat up. On the heels of Founders Fund partner Scott Nolan’s great piece for Pirate Wires (required reading), John Coogan broke down El Segundo’s history and present-day impact in a 16-minute deep dive for followers on Twitter / X.

Acceleration, optimism, and nuclear reactors. More than a hardware mecca, my fascination with this place has at least as much to do with its spirit, which feels something in exuberance and positivity like what I felt in San Francisco at the beginning of the last historical run. No ego, no career chasers, just a lot of idealists genuinely excited about the things they’re building. It is however important to keep in mind, as noted by Coogan, this isn’t a war between American cities. San Francisco can thrive along with LA, Austin, NYC, Boston, Miami and the rest. The important thing is just we’re doing shit again — in America — and celebrating people who do shit. Which feels great.

The Salton Sea plays a central role in Coogan’s video above. I had my own meaningful experience there a handful of years ago, which I wrote about in my 2020 piece “Terraforming Terra Prima.” Check it out and lmk what you think about flooding our deserts. 

Sex and robots. Last week, a slew of AI influencer news items hit the timeline. First, OnlyFans star Riley Reid created an AI chatbot replica called Clona (the premium version costs $30 a month). Then Amouranth, another OF star and Kick streamer, released an “influencer AI” for sexting (the AI can send texts, spontaneous pics based on “endless role-play scenarios,” and spontaneous voice clips). And now celebrities are entering the market: Queen Latifah is partnering with Lenovo to offer an AI avatar of herself for marketing purposes. Her take on AI: “I think it’s inevitable… It’s a bell we can’t un-ring.” (Fortune)

The stories blowing up at the intersection of sex and AI generally vindicate work the Pirate Wires crew published a year ago. Back then, Brandon’s explainer on the deepfake controversy that ended a Twitch streamer’s career, his and River’s interview with OF creators about the phenomena, and River’s dispatch from the depths of his Twitter mentions on the subject of AI porn drove a handful of our readers to furious lamentations. My recent hires, they emailed constantly, were “obsessed with porn.” Well, yes, that is true. They were kind of obsessed with porn! But the obsession was also work. We were working. You’re welcome! 

INDUSTRY LINKS

Swampland revelations (thank you, Elon). In an important item related to our lead this week, intrepid independent journalist Lee Fang reported on documents uncovered during his late-2022 investigation of the Twitter Files. Turns out Twitter paid a lobbying firm to secure questions they’d be asked at their congressional hearings in advance. This is an apparently standard practice in the swamp, and yet another thing we’d never know were the prior order still in power. Read Lee’s full explosive (and depressing) report on his Substack.

MORE IN TECH:

• Kicking off the new year, YC chief Garry Tan shared a little insight into the organization’s selection process (takeaway: always be building, nothing else matters). (Twitter)

• Intel announced plans to open up a $25 billion semiconductor factory in Israel, with the help of $3.2 billion in subsidies from the country’s government. (Semafor)

• A late-December NYT piece detailed a “revolving door” between former Pentagon officials and venture capital, having identified “at least 50 former Pentagon and national security officials, most of whom left the federal government in the last five years, who are now working in defense-related venture capital or private equity as executives or advisers.” Oh god no anything but people who care about the nation’s defense participating in the startup ecosystem. How will we survive? (NYT)

• Reddit has fallen short of its ad targets, adding pressure as the company seeks to go public this year. IPO investors remain skittish, given that the company wasn’t profitable for the first nine months of 2023. (The Information)

• Shein is building an army of lobbyists ahead of its go-public attempt. David Dreier, a key architect of NAFTA, and Frances Townsend, a former Bush aide, are among the advisors. (The Information)

• Longevity influencer Bryan Johnson plans to make his nutrition and lifestyle program Blueprint “cost competitive w/ fast food,” then scale it globally. 

• A NYT headline: “Apple Is Doing Its Part to End Green Bubble Shaming. It’s Our Turn.” FWIW, the Pirate Wires team will continue to harass staff writer River Page until he ditches his Android. He keeps saying things like “I’d have to get a Macbook too,” I guess implying he wants me to buy one for him. (Lmao).

• A new pre-print out of China claims to demonstrate nearly room-temperature superconductivity. When this happened last summer (read an explainer over on White Pill), no one could replicate the results, and — racked by some internal scandal as well — the researchers' claims fell apart. We'll see where this one goes — Andrew Cote has a great early analysis to catch you up to speed. (@mattparlmer)

$$$:

• Anthropic is targeting at least $850 million in annualized revenue by the end of the year. (The Information)

• OpenAI’s annualized revenue has broken $1.6 billion, up from $1.3 billion in mid-October. (What coup?) (The Information)

• Canva will sell more than $1 billion in stock to new investors, giving long-time employees and investors a liquidity event. (The Information) As more tech firms delay going public in 2024, expect to see more of these.

• Fidelity slashed its valuation of X again, now showing a 72% markdown since Elon’s acquisition. Over half of this is explained by the industry-wide correction that immediately followed the sale, and preceded Elon’s actual takeover, but the rest is likely due to ongoing ad-based ideological warfare. Elon continues to insist traffic is hitting all time highs, but who knows. (Bloomberg)

• Tesla delivered more Model S and X vehicles in Q4 2023 than any year previous for the past five years. The company’s overall vehicle deliveries increased 38% YoY in 2023, while production increased 35%. (Tesla)

Litigation and regulation:

• As we head into 2024, WSJ took a look at the Biden admin antitrust lawsuits expected to come to a ruling this year: the DoJ case alleging Google’s search product is an illegal monopoly, another DoJ v. Google case expected to start early this year that accuses the company of monopolizing the ad tech market, and the FTC’s case against Meta for its acquisitions of Instagram and Whatsapp (brought to the courts in the final weeks of the Trump admin, to be fair to Biden). (WSJ)

• In a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, NYT alleges ChatGPT is trained on millions of its articles, and is a competitor to the company. The lawsuit says “the defendants should be held responsible for ‘billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages,’” and that OpenAI/Microsoft should “destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.” (NYT) Events market Kalshi gives the suit a 27% chance of winning at time of writing. But here’s the really fascinating thing about the case: reporting on stories broken elsewhere, and building upon those stories, is a foundational element of nearly all journalism. If the NYT wins, it will effectively mean their own reporting riffing on news aggregated from other media companies (a persistent annoyance among journalists, in all directions) will itself constitute copyright violation, placing the NYT (along with the Pirate Kingdom, sadly) at risk of endless litigation. Very stupid annoying lawsuit!

• Michael Cohen admitted in a sworn statement he used Google Bard to find case law to support a legal argument, after the court found that the cases referenced were actually chatbot hallucinations. (Business Insider)

• An internal memo from the San Francisco Police Chief reveals the city won’t be issuing citations for moving violations made by autonomous cars, due to a loophole in California law. (Business Insider) Question: wut?

AI:

• Apple’s iPhone design lead is departing, and will be joining Jony Ive’s design firm, which will work on an “early stage” AI device that uses OpenAI software. (Bloomberg)

• Chief Justice John Roberts briefly touched on AI’s relevance to law in the court’s 2023 Year End Review with a somewhat ambivalent passage describing the risks and benefits of AI to the legal profession, and the need to approach AI with “caution and humility.” (Reuters) I personally can not wait for enormous disruption to the legal profession, which continues to be a monstrous grift that has all but guaranteed a system of justice based in significant part on one’s ability to pay exorbitant sums of money to white collar workers.

Crypto:

• Crypto advocacy group Coin Center is sounding the alarm about a new law that went into effect this week requiring anyone who receives “$10,000 or more in cryptocurrency in the course of their trade or business to make a report to the IRS about that transaction.” Their explainer goes into detail about how and why the law “is not only unconstitutional but also virtually impossible to comply with.” Read it here.

• The Bitcoin ETF approval window approaches: between January 5th and 10th, the SEC is set to approve or deny BTC spot ETF applications from firms including Blackrock and Greyscale. The SEC could also extend its decision deadline, but people watching the process closely say odds for approval have “never been better.” (Decrypt)

• Crypto wallet company Ledger will reimburse victims of a phishing attack that cost users around $600,000. (Bloomberg)

• Early Tuesday morning, Jim Cramer shaved off 7% of BTC’s market cap with one comment indicating he liked BTC. Imagine that kind of power.

Trade war:

• A new study finds TikTok content that opposes the interests of the CCP doesn’t show up nearly as frequently as it does on Instagram. (Business Insider) We’re shocked.

• The Netherlands has blocked ASML’s exports of some lithography systems to China. (WSJ)

• China-based Xiaomi has announced their first electric vehicle. CEO Lei Jun says their goal is to “make a dream car that is as good as Porsche and Tesla,” and – you guessed it – looks exactly like a Porsche. The vehicle will be using “giga” manufacturing methods pioneered by Tesla. (Bloomberg)

This newsletter was compiled with a great deal of assistance from Brandon Gorrell and other staff.