Techno-Optimism is a War Machine

The timing of Marc Andreessen's manifesto shows the priorities of the tech elite.

Photo by Tobias Tullius on Unsplash

Former wunderkind and current tech overlord Marc Andreessen released a blathering screed this week. In a 5000-word manifesto, he makes the case for Techno-Optimism in the face of nameless boogeymen who sound suspiciously like the people on Twitter¹ he has blocked over the years.

Andreessen founded the internet browser Netscape in the 1990s, sold it, made a lot of money, and eventually became a venture capitalist. He now runs Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and complains about people on the internet. Andreessen is a billionaire, and shares a fondness for oppression cosplay with his fellow internet billionaire, Elon Musk. Like many of our middle aged wealthy techlords, Andreessen is not happy to just enjoy his money. He feels what appears to be an almost compulsive need to remain relevant, and expends great effort to justify the worldview that his firm espouses through its investments.

“The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” is something you can read if you want. It's long and bad and inconsistent. But it's an interesting portal through which to view the fundamental beliefs shaping the most powerful technocrats in the world, the people responsible for the software we use, the opportunities we have (or don’t have), and the wars we fight.

Several good responses have already been written, and I'll try not to rehash them here. What I'm really interested in is how this document encapsulates this industry and shows us clearly what those with excessive power in tech are trying to achieve.

This essay will be released in at least two parts, maybe more. There’s a lot to cover.

War, What Is It Good For?

Andreessen published this manifesto after the horrific Hamas attacks that killed 1400 people in Israel and as the Israeli government ramped up its retaliatory war on Palestine, killing thousands, displacing a million people, and sparking concerns of massive human rights violations. While I can't know the inside of Andreessen's mind,² I suspect this was on purpose. a16z is an explicitly nationalist organization, even as it leverages globalization to create untold wealth for its investors. I believe Andreessen posted his manifesto now because war is good for his business, and as the text of his manifesto shows, he believes that technology-supported defense is critical. In fact, based on the quality of the piece and the blatant contradictions, I wonder if he didn’t start it until after the Hamas attack to take advantage of moment.

In March this year, a16z announced a new $500 million fund, American Dynamism, which has an explicit purpose to improve the "the country's public safety and global defense." Their investments include Anduril, a defense contractor that specializes in automated surveillance and weaponry, and Shield AI, "an AI company co-founded by a former Navy SEAL, which today makes artificially intelligent, autonomous drones that see, reason about, search, and clear spaces to protect military service members in the field."³

a16z has a strong financial incentive to encourage and support warfare.

The article that a16z published to introduce the concept of American Dynamism was written by Katherine Boyle, a GP at the fund. Boyle asserts that technology is essentially replacing the role of government, and seems to approve, writing that "startups have begun usurping the responsibilities of governments at breathtaking pace… It is becoming clear that government cannot meet the needs of its citizens without the tech sector’s aid."

She goes on:

"[D]ynamism in America is not being spurred by policy in Washington — it’s being driven by a growing group of technologists that are solving problems of immense national importance... [W]e’ll see more solutions for American problems coming from engineers, technologists, and startup founders. Washington and Silicon Valley are going to have to become friends."

Boyle is explicitly laying claim to governmental roles, which suggests that it’s appropriate to view the work of a16z through that lens. Andreessen is not just a man publishing a boorish manifesto; he is a de facto leader of technocracy with a direct impact on national defense.

However, it’s a bit egregious to claim that Washington and Silicon Valley are not already friends, considering the vast amounts of financial and knowledge capital that flow between the two. Elon Musk’s SpaceX only exists because of government funding, and a16z is far from the only venture fund invested in national defense. Peter Thiel, the infamous venture capitalist, is a co-founder of Palantir, the intensely criticized data analytics company that has large government contracts in health and counter-terrorism.

It was reported this week by Insider that Thiel has been an FBI asset, directly reporting to an agent about foreign contacts and efforts by “foreign governments to penetrate Silicon Valley.”

According to Insider:

Some of Thiel's business interests rely on the FBI and other government agencies as potential revenue sources. He retains a 10% stake in Palantir, a data company that has sold more than a billion dollars of software and related services to the federal government, including the Pentagon, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the FBI. A $250 million contract with the US Army in September adds to the evidence that Palantir is essentially "a government service provider," a financial analyst said.

While Thiel’s politics are notorious, the clarity of this relationship between one of the most powerful people in tech and various government agencies helps to underscore how enmeshed venture capital and technology are with international relations and defense.

It’s worthwhile to remember that Thiel made his mark initially through PayPal, a credit card processing software that millions of small business owners use today. Thiel was also the first outside investor in Facebook, a platform that largely created the modern online business. The world of international affairs and defense can feel far removed from current startups and small businesses, but the very existence of a platform like Substack⁴ emerges from the financial systems made possible by the commingling of venture capital and government.

A Dangerous World is Profitable

In “The Techno-Optimism Manifesto,” Andreessen lays out his vision for the role of technology in government:

We believe America and her allies should be strong and not weak. We believe national strength of liberal democracies flows from economic strength (financial power), cultural strength (soft power), and military strength (hard power). Economic, cultural, and military strength flow from technological strength. A technologically strong America is a force for good in a dangerous world. Technologically strong liberal democracies safeguard liberty and peace. Technologically weak liberal democracies lose to their autocratic rivals, making everyone worse off.

It's worth noting that he speaks of “America and her allies,” which notably at this moment includes Israel, and not of other countries. Other countries should not be strong. Other countries matter less. This is a “dangerous world,” and the danger is out there, other, not American.

But more importantly for Andreessen, war makes him money.

Artist and therapist Edgar Fabián Frías, whose work I am endlessly inspired by, made this statement on Instagram as Israel declared war:

edgarfabianfrias

A post shared by @edgarfabianfrias

Frías identifies the issue I’m trying to pull through from Andreessen’s manifesto: warfare is profitable. Our economic system facilitates and benefits from it. And the government doesn't pretend otherwise, as United States secretary of the treasury Janet Yellen made clear when she said that the United States can "certainly" afford to support two wars. Despite social service collapse and mounting national debt, war is good for business, and it will be very good for the Marc Andreessens and Peter Thiels of the world.

Silicon Valley Was Built On Defense Contracts

This isn't a new story, though. As Malcolm Harris details in his book on the history of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, modern technological capitalism only exists because of government contracts. Harris shows the connection between Stanford's first startup,⁵ a radio company (Federal Telegraph Company or FTC), and the navy in 1911, who purchased the the technology “on the spot.” This relationship directly led to further contracts: "The [navy] officials... developed immediate brand loyalty, signing up FTC for increasingly big projects…"

By the 1930s, Palo Alto was, according to Harris, "a postindustrial center where men invented the tools that shapes the aerospace, communications, and electronics sectors and the era of American global domination they enabled." The technologies of Silicon Valley were funded post-World War II as well as the Department of Defense wrote “blank checks” to Stanford. “By 1948,” Harris writes, “military contracts paid more of the Stanford physics department’s bills than the university did.”

Andreessen and a16z are simply following the footsteps of their forefathers, even as they criticize the government that feeds them, believing instead that "the techno-capital machine of markets and innovation never ends, but instead spirals continuously upward." For Andreessen, this endless libertarian growth his birthright as an American, and the key to an abundant future.

And he’s right: a16z will have an abundant future because it’s invested in the defense companies developing technology used in wars around the globe as I type.

Outside of the financial incentives, Andreessen's manifesto points to a deeply problematic utilitarian philosophy that has taken over many of the minds of Silicon Valley: longtermism. In Part 2 of this essay, I'll explore this foundational philosophy and show how it encourages wealthy technologists to believe they are the only ones who can save the world.

Read The Series

Future Humans May Have Marc Andreessen To Thank

O Brave New World That Has Such Machines In't

1. x, whatever

2. thank goodness

3. “clear spaces” is doing a lot of work in this sentence

4. a venture-backed SaaS platform that I’m using to publish this essay

5. I won’t dive into the role of Stanford in the creation of Silicon Valley (Harris wrote an entire book about it) but for our purposes, they are essentially the same entity.