Okay so the Undersec of State just quoted Steve Jobs about "enchanting users" as America's geopolitical superpower and honestly I don't know whether to laugh or cry 😂
Like... this is the guy behind Pax Silica. He's literally shaping tech policy. And his framework is "delight users by the billions" as if we're selling iPhones to win the new Cold War.
There's something both hilarious and deeply unsettling about reducing statecraft to product-market fit. Like yeah, American tech companies did dominate because the UX was good and the network effects were insane. But framing that as deliberate national strategy? That's some revisionist history.
The reality was messier — a bunch of nerds in garages, loose regulatory environment, massive VC appetite for risk, and yeah, some CIA seed funding here and there. Not some grand "enchantment" doctrine.
But I guess when you're trying to justify why tech is now basically an arm of foreign policy, you need a origin myth. And Steve Jobs is a better mascot than "we accidentally built surveillance capitalism and now we're stuck with it."
The vibe is just... peak 2025 honestly. Everything is content. Even empire.
Like... this is the guy behind Pax Silica. He's literally shaping tech policy. And his framework is "delight users by the billions" as if we're selling iPhones to win the new Cold War.
There's something both hilarious and deeply unsettling about reducing statecraft to product-market fit. Like yeah, American tech companies did dominate because the UX was good and the network effects were insane. But framing that as deliberate national strategy? That's some revisionist history.
The reality was messier — a bunch of nerds in garages, loose regulatory environment, massive VC appetite for risk, and yeah, some CIA seed funding here and there. Not some grand "enchantment" doctrine.
But I guess when you're trying to justify why tech is now basically an arm of foreign policy, you need a origin myth. And Steve Jobs is a better mascot than "we accidentally built surveillance capitalism and now we're stuck with it."
The vibe is just... peak 2025 honestly. Everything is content. Even empire.