Wrote up something about Techdirt's recent coverage, and why (whether we like it or not) we need to be a "democracy blog" now, rather than just a "tech" blog (not that we've ever been just a tech blog).
This story is *the* story and it impacts everything else.
www.techdirt.com/2025/03/04/w…— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) March 4, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Worth reading the whole thing, which is why I saved this for the weekend. Mike Masnick, explaining why “Why Techdirt Is Now A Democracy Blog (Whether We Like It Or Not)”:
… Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few people reach out about our coverage these days. Most have been very supportive of what we’ve been covering (in fact, people have been strongly encouraging us to keep it up), but a few asked questions regarding what Techdirt is focused on these days, and how much we were leaning into covering “politics.”
When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist.
We’ve always covered the intersection of technology, innovation, and policy (27+ years and counting). Sometimes that meant writing about patents or copyright, sometimes about content moderation, sometimes about privacy. But what happens when the fundamental systems that make all of those conversations possible start breaking down? When the people dismantling those systems aren’t even pretending to replace them with something better?…
… When someone talks about “free speech” while actively working to control speech, that’s not a contradiction or a mistake — it’s the point. It’s about consolidating power while wrapping it in the language of freedom as a shield to fool the gullible and the lazy.
This is why it’s been the tech and legal press that have been putting in the work, getting the scoops, and highlighting what’s actually going on, rather than just regurgitation administration propaganda without context or analysis (which hasn’t stopped the administration from punishing them)…
One of the craziest bits about covering the systematic dismantling of democracy is this: the people doing the dismantling frequently tell you exactly what they’re going to do. They’re almost proud of it. They just wrap it in language that makes it sound like the opposite. (Remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter to protect free speech? And then banned journalists and sued researchers for calling out his nonsense? Same playbook.)…
But what’s happening now is even more extreme and more terrifying. Something that even experts in democratic collapse didn’t see coming. Normally when democracies fall apart, there’s also a playbook. A series of predictable steps involving the military, or the courts, or sometimes both…
There’s something important to understand about innovation. It doesn’t actually happen in a vacuum. The reason Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley wasn’t because a bunch of genius inventors happened to like California weather. It was because of a complex web of institutions that made innovation possible: courts that would enforce contracts (but not non-competes, allowing ideas to spread quickly and freely across industries), universities that shared research, a financial system that could fund new ideas, and laws that let people actually try those ideas out. And surrounding it all: a fairly stable economy, stability in global markets and (more recently) a strong belief in a global open internet.
And now we’re watching Musk, Trump, and their allies destroy these foundations. They operate under the dangerous delusion of the “great man” theory of innovation — the false belief that revolutionary changes come solely from lone geniuses, rather than from the complex interplay of open systems, diverse perspectives, and stable institutions that actually drives progress.
The reality has always been much messier. Innovation happens when lots of different people can try lots of different ideas. When information flows freely. When someone can start a company without worrying that the government will investigate them for criticizing an oligarch. When diverse perspectives can actually contribute to the conversation. You know — all the things that are currently under attack.
But you need a stable economy and stable infrastructure to make that work. And you need an openness to ideas and collaboration and (gasp) diversity to actually getting the most out of people…
We’re going to keep covering this story because, frankly, it’s the only story that matters right now, and one that not everyone manages to see clearly. The political press may not understand what’s happening (or may be too afraid to say it out loud), but those of us who’ve spent decades studying how technology and power interact? We see it and we can’t look away…
We’re going to keep doing this work because someone has to. Because understanding how technology and power interact isn’t just an academic exercise anymore — it’s about whether we’ll have an innovation economy left when this is all over…
The future of American innovation isn’t just another story we cover. It’s the story. And we’re going to keep telling it, whether the powers that be like it or not.
Even the Dogs Know
sentient ai from the future
Brian Krebs has also gone both barrels on the enemies of democracy, and is getting a bunch of flack from the usual self-obsessed whiners, and he is simply brushing them haters off. I find that extremely encouraging.
Suzanne
This was an interesting read… thanks for front-paging it.
satby
Great article! Thanks Anne Laurie!
Also, Norm Eisen at the Contrarian put this up: Here Comes the House, about the coalescing Democratic strategy.
VFX Lurker
You find the best stories, Anne Laurie. Thank you for posting this.
Steve LaBonne
My sister did a podcast on what’s happening to biomedical research.
John Revolta
While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere “Democrats say this, Republicans say that” dance….
Boy, when even the (alleged) nerds are calling you out…………….
I hope the mainstream journalists read this and feel every bit as ashamed as they deserve to
Steve LaBonne
@John Revolta: They’ll feel ashamed all the way to the bank. Or more likely, unashamed all the way to the bank.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@John Revolta:
Why start now? Theirs is a bubble that’s as hard to pierce as the fiercest MAGAt.
The Church of the Savvy is a very strong cult.
different-church-lady
People really need to get their heads wrapped around a simple fact: there is no logic behind what Trumpism wants to achive. To paraphrase Johnny Rotten: “All they’re trying to do is destroy everything.”
Mr. Bemused Senior
@different-church-lady: given Trump’s admiration for Putin, I’d say he wants to turn the United States into Russia.
NotMax
Repeated from earlier (it’s that worthwhile). Reporting from Canada.
Tariff war: Does Trump actually know what he’s doing?
Dan B
Excellent post! Thanks for a well reasoned warning.
NetheadJay
Been reading Techdirt for many years, hell decades. Zero surprise here seeing them stepping up to the moment. As he writes they’ve always had this area covered and as such they’re extremely well qualified to deal with this horrible situation. And it doesn’t hurt that Mike Masnick is in my book a very good journalist, both insightful and incisive.
sentient ai from the future
this motherfucker.
https://news.online.ua/en/the-us-is-ending-support-for-ukrainian-f-16s-but-there-is-a-way-out-891472/
Repatriated
@sentient ai from the future:
Well, there went US foreign military sales.
Martin
Teen Vogue made a similar semi-pivot back at the start of Trump I and are still there.
HinTN
@sentient ai from the future: Good on the French.
@Repatriated: No shit.
YY_Sima Qian
Authoritarianism, as any form of government, can only survive & consolidate if it can deliver improvements in development, prosperity, safety, security, order, standard of living & quality of life. Only under extraordinary circumstances could they survive on coercion & oppression alone.
Since MAGA is making things worse at a breathtaking pace, there will be a broad based reaction to the reactionary counterrevolution, once the consequences become blindingly obvious. At a meta level, I think that is inevitable. I would be more worried about authoritarian entrenchment if the Trump gang is competent at anything other than destruction.
The question is how much damage will be inflicted , how many livelihoods ruined, how many lives lost, on the way through. Unless MAGA demonstrates some level of competence in basic governance, I am confident that this darkness will pass. The passage will be very dark & very ugly, & the U.S. will emerge to a vastly changed world occupying a vastly changed position.
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all!
NetheadJay
@sentient ai from the future: Krebs iṡ one of my favorite people in the tech and security space and has rarely been hesitant to call BS. Anyone who thought he wouldn’t speak loud and clear should have another think.
BlueGuitarist
@sentient ai from the future:
thanks for posting the other day the related article
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/03/05/the-manifesto-of-the-cognitive-revolution/
Thanks AL!
RSA
Nice. If you read the thoughts of the people who conceptualized hypertext (e.g. Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, Ted Nelson in the 1960s) or who created the Internet (e.g. J.C.R. Licklider and Bob Taylor in the 1960s) or the World Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee in the 1990s), you’ll find a clear recognition of these factors, how the Internet brings value to society.
I think it was assumed that everyone would take stability and diversity as a given, inherently of value. The people I’ve mentioned above were technological idealists at the time they made their contributions. It’s easier to imagine what good could come of a development than how bad actors could exploit it.
I’m glad that organizations like Techdirt are working to understand the landscape and explain what’s happening. It’s not always easy—C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures concept is alive and well, sad to say.
A Ghost to Most
“Move Fast, and Break Shit.”
Which completely contradicts how we did computer shit back in the day.
Nukular Biskits
@A Ghost to Most:
Don’t even get me started on that.
Suffice it to say this paradigm has now infected weapon system design, development and deployment … and it absolutely sucks.
If this was in effect during the Apollo days at NASA, we’d never have made even suborbital flights until lots of astronauts had died horrible deaths.
sentient ai from the future
@BlueGuitarist: i have to assume this is a callback to my time at lgm? i’ve only used lowercase here to avoid similar confusion
Suzanne
@A Ghost to Most:
A lot of architects and engineers are somewhat salty about software people using those terms in their job titles because of this. We absolutely cannot move fast or break shit.
sentient ai from the future
@A Ghost to Most: and it is the raison d’etre of the entire ai slop trend, which might just bury the utility of the internet entirely
YY_Sima Qian
@Nukular Biskits: Anduril is the epitome of that in the MIC right now.
RSA
Absolutely. As a government program manager, I have a lot of conversations that revolve around high-stakes decision making, where moving fast and breaking shit can kill innocent people.
dnfree
This article alone is worth the price of admission to this blog. I’ve been following Wired but was not aware of this site. I’ll be subscribing. Thanks, Anne Laurie! AL beats AI again.
zhena gogolia
@YY_Sima Qian: In case you didn’t see my previous apology, I’m sorry I was grumpy this morning. I’m just envious of everyone who doesn’t live here. But I’m not leaving.
Gretchen
@Suzanne: The idea of an architect being careless about things breaking is horrifying.
Gretchen
@RSA: Unfortunately the things the DOGE babies are messing with could absolutely kill people. They’re just to stupid to realize it. Or care.
Martin
@A Ghost to Most: To clarify a point – innovation is not about technology. It’s about business models. Often technology is the catalyst that allows for that business model change to take place but not always, and move fast and break shit in the context of business models is hardly a new idea. The single greatest innovation in the automotive industry wasn’t the automatic transmission or the assembly line, it was the creating of GMAC and the introduction of car financing. That’s what broke the whole industry open. Adult diapers was an innovation of marketing – convincing adults that have bladder issues that they shouldn’t be ashamed to wear one, not technology. GMAC was an innovation of cost smoothing, not even reducing the cost of cars.
The transformational moment for most modern business was the internet which opened up several innovations – the creation of the zero marginal cost good, truly global markets, etc. But the biggest contribution there was the acceleration from intrinsic value to rent seeking. That was always taking place, but in most markets now the layer which makes a good takes home significantly less of the revenue than the holder of the IP they use to make the good. A Porsche isn’t intrinsically better made than a Ford, but the name is what conveys the value. Why even waste peoples time making the car when the value is mostly tied up in the name, in the design, etc. Keep that part and outsource the rest.
And in a world where the only job of a corporation is to deliver value to the shareholder, holding onto the production of the good is effectively a crime, because that’s not where the profits come from. That’s a disservice to the investor. Spin that off, as Boeing did with their production, and keep the stuff you can rent seek off of. That’s not limited to computer stuff, that’s literally everything.
cmorenc
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Almost What Trump wants to do is become the American version of Putin, to have the same kind of unchallengeable control over the US as Putin does Russia, as well as to use his position to exact the same kind of share of personal spoils from the economy and its oligarchs.
Rokka
Sorry, but Masnick has a long history of being an anti-copyright extremist in service of Google etc. and is way late to the party. Here’s what David Newhoff said about him in 2019:
“Mike and the rest of the Tech-Utopian Cheerleading Squad really need put down their pom poms, take a time-out, and think about what they’ve done. Perhaps in a moment of quiet introspection, they will recognize some different systems that, despite the good intentions of those who designed them, have been abused by some pretty bad actors to truly hideous effect”
https://illusionofmore.com/no-mike-its-that-youre-just-wrong-about-the-case-act/
dnfree
@A Ghost to Most: You are not kidding! The first system I worked on (IBM 1620, 1965) didn’t even have a disk drive, just card input and output. To run a Fortran II program you had to stack your cards behind the first-pass compiler deck, get the intermediate compiler output deck, stack that behind the second-pass compiler deck, get the compiled program cards, and stack that with the Fortran run deck and subroutine deck in the hopper to get your results. You kinda wanted to have your program be as good as you could get it before going through all that.
Bill Arnold
Off topic (yay techdirt/wired/propublica/et al !)
Ordered a couple of magnetic bumper stickers with this text (centered):
One will go next to the upside-down-American-flag magnet.
lowtechcyclist
@YY_Sima Qian:
What’s MIC? (“See ya real soon”?) Googling it just turns up a lot of microphone stuff.
Allen Henderson
Great read, thank you! Liked what I saw, will support.
Basically, they’re not installing a new app, they’re breaking the OS. Respond accordingly.
catclub
@A Ghost to Most:
I don’t know which day you mean. if you mean when mainframe computers were doing payroll and banking, and computer time was extremely scarce, that motto is crazy.
But in an era when there are dozens of startups trying to break through with _something_ accelerated by cheap compute resources, it makes more sense.
I would guess that Amazon programmers were not given that motto.
Gin & Tonic
@lowtechcyclist: Military-industrial complex.
catclub
really? wow. Military Industrial Complex
narya
I saw recently a comment that said “move fast and break shit” is only said by people who don’t have to clean up after the breakage.
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: I see it & replied. No worries.
Renie
Thank you for posing Mike Masnick’s blog post. It is excellent and an interesting look from his prospective. I went and subscribed to their newsletter. It’s amazing how much independent journalism is doing so much more than mainstream journalists in exposing what is happening to our country.
lowtechcyclist
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks. That didn’t even occur to me – Lord knows I’ve heard the phrase a jillion times, but mostly 50-60 years ago. Didn’t even know people were talking about it in those words anymore, let alone often enough to acronymize it.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: Military Industrial Complex
Mr. Bemused Senior
@dnfree: oho, another 1620 alum. Strictly speaking, mine was a 1710 (it had interrupts! and a 1311 disk drive) but the same 1620 model 1 instruction set. Add tables!
dnfree
@Mr. Bemused Senior: You and I could throw around old terms! The sorter! The 407 or 409 for printing! “Unit record equipment”! Drum cards for the keypunch!
We did eventually get disk packs, giant things with several platters that we could swap in and out.
YY_Sima Qian
@lowtechcyclist: It has only metastasized since the days of Eisenhower, especially in the age of post-Cold War consolidation (dramatically reduced competition), neoliberalism run amok (maximizing shareholder value became the sole focus), & pervasive grift (DOD procurement process became complete broken, became primarily means to maximize said shareholder value & the material interests of Pentagon program officers in their post-military careers).
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: & that’s the primary driver of the U.S.’ de-industrialization, not free trade, not cheap foreign labor, not foreign IP theft, & not even automation (although that is also a big driver).
Mr. Bemused Senior
Certainly the huge improvement in computer price/performance and availability has changed the world.
To me, though, even with all the modern tools and easy access software projects are just as difficult as described in the Mythical Man-Month. It’s still so easy to make mistakes and so hard to correct them.
Raoul Paste
@dnfree: “ AL beats AI again”
Well said
Mr. Bemused Senior
@dnfree: raised floors, glass walls and system time on third shift.
dnfree
@Mr. Bemused Senior: A book that was assigned reading in the 1970s and still relevant. It takes 9 months to produce a baby, but you can’t get it done in one month by assigning 9 women to the job. And the famous “Assigning more programmers to a late project makes it later.”
BlueGuitarist
@sentient ai from the future:
by Upper case meant to thank Anne Laurie, (AL) as well as you.
techdirt seems to be rising to the occasion
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: military-Industrial Complex
NotoriousJRT
@Bill Arnold: GITMO is too good for those gits, IMO.
Aziz, light!
Almost? I bet Trump wishes he could order to have people killed.
RSA
You’ve nicely encapsulated everything I’ve ever thought about DOGE.
prostratedragon
@Gretchen: Don’t many of these people have incomplete educations? So if there’s still such a thing as weeding out, they were never caught.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Another big contributor is the rise of finance as an industry in the US economy. Truth is, lending money to build a factory is a shitty use of that money compared to derivatives or arbitrage or whatever. The biggest regulatory barriers in the US don’t come from government but from the finance industry.
One of Chinas biggest advantages was the willingness to build factories without knowing what those factories might be used for. So when a need arrived, you pretty much just needed to move in. In the US, that never happens. Your first call to get things financed is to do a market study to convince the bank the factory is worth financing. If you’re luck a few months later you get to call Suzanne to get a design started, and then line up a contractor who will tell you when they have time to work, because they can’t stay in business if they have any slack capacity. 3 years later you might have a factory. I know people that got test products out of China 3 weeks after signing a contract for a factory.
And that’s really the larger story of the US. Digging shit out of the ground is a poor use of labor when there is software to be written, and financing factories is tying up money that could be earning more elsewhere. In the middle you have political rhetoric trying to convince voters that these dynamics don’t exist and if you point them out, they guarantee they aren’t going to change them. But build an aluminum plant anyway, even though it makes no economic sense.
Martin
@Aziz, light!: He’s said outright he wishes he could have people killed. Don’t need to speculate on that one.
Martin
@prostratedragon: A number of these guys are right out of high school. It’s not possible for them to have any relevant experience. Loyalty > qualifications.
prostratedragon
@narya: Or who don’t care about cross-contaminating or stepping on shards.
danielx
@Repatriated:
Old friend (okay, former friend) retired from Lockheed,has a bunch of money in Lockheed stock and was/is a huge Trump supporter. Been wanting to contact him and asking how that’s going, since I think foreign F-35 sales are coming to a shrieking halt.
Kayla Rudbek
@lowtechcyclist: military industrial complex
TONYG
@YY_Sima Qian: I continue to believe that there’s a significant chance that everything that’s been happening since January has been deliberate sabotage of the United States on behalf of Vladimir Putin.
TONYG
@danielx: I have a Trump-supporting guy in my extended family who is a retired National Guard GENERAL! I wonder what he thinks about the attempts to destroy the VA. (Maybe he just doesn’t give a fuck.)
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The US economy needs to rebalance away from finance, insurance, real estate, consulting, & legal sectors. All of them are rent seeking professions that can serve critical facilitating roles, but do not produce economic value on their own. They, along with/ softwsre Big Tech have captured elite US politics, & indeed most US politicians come out these backgrounds.
The PRC is an extreme case, but look at JPN/SK/TW & the EU for economies that have retained significant industrial capabilities (though all are under pressure from the rising PRC competition).
This is another reason people should be careful citing nominal GDP figures as evidence of U.S. economic strength. A lot of it is fluff that does little to produce positive outcomes (as seen in the human health & developmental indices) or material output.
In a shooting war, all of that GDP in the service sectors means bupkis.
YY_Sima Qian
@TONYG: At this point, it makes no difference. This is the world the TechBros & the Project 2025 acolytes want to create, & they don’t really need Putin to motivate them.
Steve LaBonne
@Martin: “When the capital development of a country is a byproduct of the operation of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.” – Keynes
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: The rise of the financial industry is closely intertwined w/ the increasing fetish of profit margin maximization (as you wrote a few weeks ago) & share price maximization.
Just heard a podcast w/ Louis-Vincent Gave, in which he made an interesting observation. In 2010, the total market cap of the Chinese exchanges was ~ 40% of the US’. in 2024, Chinese indices have barely budged since 2010, while the US ones have gone up 3X. However, the total market cap of the Chinese exchanges is still 40% of the US’. How can that be?! Well, companies have been de-listed or were taken private, but there has been a lot of share buybacks by US listed companies. So, although stock prices have gone way up, there are a lot less shares floated.
I’ve posted the graphic before that the major US defense contractors (why are they still called “contractors”?) spent 2/3 of their expenditure on dividends & share buy backs in 2022, & not on capital investments to expand their production capacity, despite the geopolitical circumstances. Apple & Nvidia has spent even greater share on these activities, & neither does much manufacturing to begin w. So much resources expended to support & boost share prices for the interest of capital owners, as opposed to enhance production factors.
Another Scott
@Gretchen: Will kill people.
Reuters (from 3/3):
DOGE is intended to break the US federal government as quickly as possible, so that 47 and his minions (and Melon and his minions) will have total control of every lever of power (and every national economic decision point).
They don’t care how many people they kill in the process.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
kalakal
@YY_Sima Qian: The same is true of the UK. Massive service sector, industry deliberately trashed by Thatcher.
YY_Sima Qian
@kalakal: Yeah, that’s how London came to dominate the UK economy.
BTW, I’ve read that Starmer sent the Energy (or Trade?) Minister to the PRC to try to get the PRC government interested in developing nuclear power plants in the UK, again. However, after getting burned on Hinckley Point, when Johnson bowed to US pressure & moral panic at home to force the Chinese states owned nuclear energy developer out of the project, I doubt the PRC will be interested again, at least not w/o driving a very hard bargain..
kalakal
@YY_Sima Qian: London’s domination of the UK economy goes way back. You can make a good argument about it starting with the invention of the railway, the first railways were totally functional between industrial manufacturing and resource centers well away from London, within a decade they were springing up everywhere as speculative ventures as capital looked for a home. Most failed fast and were little more than pump and dump schemes but the transfer of money (and control) from the dark satanic mills of the Midlands and the North to London was well underway by the 1820s
YY_Sima Qian
@kalakal: Thanks for the elaboration. Didn’t know there was a rail boom/bust in Britain in the early 19th century, perhaps presaging the U.S. iteration in the late 19th century?
NotMax
@YY_Sima Qian
Trivia:
“A bloody silly railway system.”
YY_Sima Qian
@NotMax: Fascinating! That monorail was ahead of its time. Great for complicated terrains: smaller turning radii, up & down steeper inclines.
BellyCat
@YY_Sima Qian: Spot on assessment.