The toxic giants of Silicon Valley

"This is about love gone wrong," says Kara Swisher, reflecting on a life spent studying the tech giants. “I saw the possibility of technology becoming the savior of humanity - or at the very least, truly helping people, in terms of community, knowledge and education. Instead, you know…”.

She pauses and sighs tiredly. “It's like: They promised us jetpacks and we got this? Are you kidding me?” However, she adds: “The problem is not technology. Already people”.

Svisherova is actually a journalist who covers the economy, but her specialty is people and what they do with their wealth and power. She has been following Silicon Valley for about three decades - writing fearlessly and informedly for the "Washington Post", "Wall Street Journal" and "New York Times", the technology information portal "Rikoud", and has several podcasts. Now, however, her iconoclastic spirit has triumphed, unleashed in an eminently readable autobiography, Burn Book.

He says the title was inspired by the 2004 film "Dangerous Girls," in which the main characters share a journal full of gossip about other students. In addition to Swisher's telling her own story, the book also deals with portraits of people - mostly men - whom she watched closely as their wealth and influence grew enormously: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Sergey Brin. and Larry Page, founders of Google.

A few of them become fulfilled, deeply thinking people who at least understand the vast issues of power that surround them. Others, on the contrary, are portrayed more harshly - as "young weirdos that I mostly cheered for" and who ended up making the author feel like a parent whose offspring have become, well, jerks.

Swisher is speaking to me via video link from her home in Washington, but she still has a house in San Francisco and says she spends as much time there as possible. And he insists, again and again, that he still believes in the liberating educational potential of technology. “I still believe that. When it comes to artificial intelligence, for example, I talked to several doctors who said that it can completely change the circumstances in the fight against cancer. Or with climatologists who say: now we can really start to understand the solutions to this”.

He also says he remains a believer in what he calls "the most laudable parts of the American experience": the American system of democracy and the idea that anyone can become successful ("It's a lot of hypocrisy, and it's very true at the same time"). But in her book, these two pillars of faith were put to a serious test in a moment she uses to symbolize the spectacular decline of technology: December 14, 2016, when many of the CEOs and founders of the companies she had on speed dial met with the president-elect. on the 25th floor of Trump Tower, in New York.

Even today, she talks about it as a painful experience like someone remembering eating rotten food: it was a very significant moment, in the worst possible way. "If you believe me, my problem wasn't Trump," she says. "I understand him. He is easy to read. He's a racist, he's a homophobe - he's everything that's wrong with the United States. I have a problem with people in the tech sector who are smarter than that, who don't like him, but they wanted the money. More money. They wanted less regulation and the ability to grow without limits. They knew he was bad. He's extremely anti-immigrant, and it's an industry built on immigration. All I wanted was for them to say something publicly, like: “We're going, but let me tell you, Mr. President-elect, we will do everything to oppose you on immigration. They could have done something. But they snuck in. Indeed they are”.

She then mentions the supposed corporate ethics motto that is still part of Google's code of conduct: "Don't be mean." "Well, evil is sitting in front of you. Maybe you should say something," Svisherova says resignedly.

At 61, she's a bit older than most of the tech characters she's covered so much. She grew up on Long Island, which seems to have tempered her embrace of Californian optimism with a typically Northeastern kind of sarcasm and skepticism. In a world still dominated by straight white men, her gender and sexuality also set her apart. Her initial ambition, she says, was to follow the example of her father, who served in the US Navy, and work as a strategic analyst for the military or the CIA. However, as he says, "fighting the anti-gay wave was almost impossible at the time, and the hunt against homosexuals in the military continued for more than a decade."

If you believe me, my problem is not Trump. I understand him. He is easy to read. He's a racist, he's a homophobe - he's everything that's wrong with America. I have a problem with people in the tech sector who are smarter than that, who don't like him, but they wanted the money. More money. They wanted less regulation and the ability to grow without limits. They knew he was bad. They could have done something. But they snuck in. Indeed they are, said Kara Swisher

She started working in journalism. By 1996, she was devotedly reporting on the new world taking shape in Northern California, and what she called “extremely strange but attractive people”.

"Like for example the people from Google - they always had unusual clothes, they would say something strange to you and just walk away," she says. “They had a strange and silly seat. A lot of toys, which for me was a kind of signal, and not a good one. I was thinking: What are they doing? They liked the idea of ​​being childish - they loved it. Their clothes were childish. So is the food. There was a lot of graffiti on the walls, but paid graffiti. And ping pong tables".

In the book, these regressive tendencies reach their startling climax at a 2008 baby shower for Google co-founder Brin and his wife. Guests, as Svisherova describes, could wear "a diaper with an oversized comic double needle", "a crooked baby hat that came with a rattle" or "adult pajamas with legs in which were a toy bear and a pacifier". She rejected all these fashion options, but soon met Wendy Deng - then the wife of Rupert Murdoch, whom Swisher calls "Uncle Satan" - wearing "leather pants and heels under giant Pampers diapers".

All this weirdness, according to Swisher, was there, consciously or unconsciously, to soften the fact that the new tech industry is not the big-hearted humanitarian project its founders often talk about, but something much simpler: the latest version of predatory capitalism.

"I thought it was all a show. in style: Aren't we different, and I thought: "You're not that different at all. I was annoyed by that show. You know, everything is soft and gooey, but inside it's tough as nails. And those people are just like that, aren't they? They were always killers. Every single one of them”.

We come to the second big theme in her book. If such people gain any degree of power, it will be a situation for which they are not equal - which in all likelihood applies especially to Mark Zuckerberg. When she met the then head of Facebook for the first time, she was struck by the fact that he looked "like a newborn, with doe-like eyes and a wide forehead", painfully socially awkward.

But he also "craved for power and historical importance from the very beginning."

When asked if she thinks he ever feels intimidated by the enormous responsibility that comes with what he's built, she replies empathetically, "Yeah, I think you see at times that he knows he's in over his head." She mentions an interview she did with Zuckerberg in 2018 for her podcast, in which he expressed the somewhat startling view that not only should Facebook (which has since grown into a giant company Zuckerberg called Meta) be content posted by Holocaust deniers , but also that these people "don't do it on purpose".

"He was beyond his capacity, and you could see that he was somewhat aware of that," she said. “But he kind of went into it in the sense of: I'll manage. I said, "You can't deal with hundreds of years of anti-Semitism." I'm telling you you can't. You need real experience". And that was the problem for me: someone who is so unprepared makes decisions that affect all kinds of people and release a huge amount of toxic waste”.

All this weirdness was there, knowingly or unknowingly, to soften the fact that the new tech industry is not the big-hearted humanitarian project its founders often talk about, but something much simpler: the latest version of rapacious capitalism.

She describes his recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was attended by parents whose children committed suicide after horrific online experiences. “They were there and they had pictures of their children. They carried them, those photographs. I saw him watching the whole group. And you could see he was thinking, Oh God. But he couldn't bring himself to apologize directly to them. He said: I am sorry for what was done to you. That's not an apology. I don't know what it is," she says and pauses. "It is an acknowledgment of pain".

What does that say about him? "He says he can still take responsibility. You could see it in his eyes. He saw the consequences. But he couldn't say: I'm sorry. They were saying: What you did directly, the decisions you made, helped kill my child. And he couldn't deal with it. It is so passive”.

We must not forget that the president of Meta for global affairs is former Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg. “Nick. Smoothie Nick. I never did an interview with him. He doesn't want to give me an interview because he's smart. Sometimes I wonder if he believes anything he says. I do not know".

In the book, Swisherova says Zuckerberg is "the man from technology who has done the most damage": by contrast, Elon Musk is characterized as "the biggest disappointment", reflecting the long period during which Swisherova thought the founder of Tesla and SpaceX was one of the most promising sons technological industry. In 2016, she contacted him before a big meeting with Trump, warning him that the president-elect would "screw him"; two years later, Musk told her she was right. Despite all that, she seems to have believed he was operating at a higher level than most of his colleagues.

"Here's someone who really did serious things," she says. “There are a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are always working on dry cleaning applications. He thought about everything from cars to space to solar panels. Even ridiculous things like (his imagined rapid transit system) Hyperloop. An interesting idea". He also mentions Neuralink, a venture working on computer interfaces that can be implanted in human brains. “How could we improve our intelligence? It's a big, fascinating problem."

In the book, Swisherova says that Zuckerberg is "the man from technology who has caused the most damage": in contrast, Elon Musk is characterized as "the biggest disappointment"

At first, she thought it was good that he became an X owner: “He used that product and he understood it. And he is a man who gets things done."

But then there was a break: In October 2022, she tweeted about a Washington Post article disputing his work on the Starlink satellite Internet system, and he sent her an email saying, "You're a jerk." Soon after, he started opening up X to all kinds of extreme right-wing voices that were banned, and dabbling in conspiracy theories - and as she says, he "went completely off the rails".

She says it made her sad. "The drug that harms Elon Musk is his drug addicts. And his need to be adored. It kills”. She watched it happen, tweet by tweet: “You could see it getting more and more radical. He suddenly became possessed by the virus of the woke movement, whatever the hell that was, and he was constantly angry."

Given the huge financial problems, does she think X will eventually buckle? "Why would I? He is the richest man in the world. It's like having a megayacht: it's expensive, but he has the money to maintain it. And they will give him loans... so they will fail only when he decides to stop paying”.

Does he think that will happen. "No," answers Svisherova. “I think he loves it. He is in desperate need of attention. Trump is running for president because, among other things, he desperately needs attention. Mask really needs attention too. As an X owner, he is much more interesting to people around the world."

Which brings us to the biggest question of all. As the meeting with the tech titans showed, Trump may even be the quintessential internet-age politician. Whether Musk explicitly endorses him or not, reshaping X into something of a right-wing cave will certainly be a significant help to his re-election campaign. Does Swisher think he will win?

“No. No. In that regard, I believe in the American people. There is an angry thread about that American experience that has never left us. We are an angry people, in many ways. But we are also full of hope. And people have had enough of him, especially women. They are fed up with being touched inappropriately. They are tired of being cheated on. They are tired of noisemakers. Biden is not an ideal candidate, but he is a decent man and has done a lot. That will be enough to get rid of Trump".

Svisherova didn't mince words: He could end up in prison, and I hope that will happen," she says. "I hope they close it and throw away the key".

The text is taken from "The Guardian"

Prepared by: N. Bogetić