Technology Tribalism

Though this article starts with a personal observation that you may find uninteresting, it frames a policy recommendation for our defence and intelligence research futures.

The personal framing is that after physically settling in Australia, I am preparing my role for perhaps the next decade in service to the nation. I will join hundreds of thousands of others who will justify their lives in applying what talents and energies we have to make Australia better. For that we have to hold what it is about Australia that is worth some sacrifice to preserve.

I am buffeted by four related trends in tribalism, but will only dig into the fourth one here.

The first is the no vote on the voice. This is being reported in the US and elsewhere as ‘lies feed racism’ and I see privileged no voters strutting a victory over ‘wokeness’. I’ll just mention that as a US citizen for a full life, I find this as destructive a force as the others on the list, but the only one eagerly self-inflicted. Social justice is hard. It is worth serving as the core of a nation. We failed ourselves this time.

The second is climate change. Australia isn’t the only player in this game of doom, but we are surely one of the most vulnerable.

The third is global tribalism, now supporting two large wars, with the more pernicious trend in Turkey, Hungary, and India as well as the US. Identity by vilification is too easy. It is winning and very likely to drag us into armed conflict. Something has to change for us to escape this.

The fourth may surprise you, but I see it as sibling of the others. It appears on the list of concerns because it is the relatively small sandbox I hope to build in, and I see it as a matter of tribalism related to the others.

Mark Andreessan just issued a ‘manifesto’ written in a declarative prose that is likely to seem important, and be used by many as a powerful statement against wokeness. This matters as much as the others because Mark is a member of a club that finances politicians well enough to control them — as a side business to funding profitable companies.

This manifesto hits me hard. It is the technical financier’s version of NO, the monied excuse for de facto royalty. I find it repulsive on its face; I knew Mark when he was a boy. He coded something that ten thousand folks in that era could have, and not particularly well. I helped move him from the backwaters of the midwest to ‘silicon valley’ where he was groomed by smart marketers. Now he is rich because he surfed a money wave. He should be humble, but he had a sunny day and because of that he thinks he understands weather.

His manifesto is a response to sometimes panicky talk about technology, and particularly AI that looks at the obvious damage to society we see by the very internet Andreessan rode to fame. Those folks are worried that corporations cannot be trusted and that emerging AI could turn out to be really harmful. Some folks that raise the warnings probably overstate the danger; I myself see the technology as stupider than advertised. But the general truth is that corporate spying, information war, and several 'technology divides' are clearly hurting society. Some bad actors want to destroy us, others twist the truth for their goals, and some just get a kick out of disruption. Information warfare is real and worthy of concern. Here is where I may become a warrior.

Pish posh, says Mark. that’s all wokeness by folks that don’t understand technology and the miracles it has brought us.

No need to read it, as it makes two points. The first is that technology is inherently good; all the benefits of what we have are from technology the way he defines it. The second is that market forces as we have them in our liberal market economy are equally, inherently positive. We should therefore, he writes, move as fast as we wish (faster than now) and use default capital mechanisms to support innovation. That is, get the regulators out of the way and let him decide.

I’ll let others remark on the laughable suitability of letting market forces guide the future of the human race; we are on the brink of multiple disasters for that single reason. I’ll instead note his misunderstanding of ‘technology’. It makes sense that he would assume that technology matters, because that is how folks like him make money.

But there is an innovation pipeline that has a massive scientific component well before any instance of technology. In fact, we can even say that technology appears when someone takes the results of scientific insights and turns it into a product to sell. The value is not in the technology per se; that’s merely a quality that empowers commerce.

Look at it this way and you see that technology is the shadow, not the light. Technology products are 'thingness' not goodness, where goodness is the understanding that science conveys. And science isn’t even the beginning of this food chain; that’s from the imagination of largely unsung and never rich mathematicians. They give us the novel abstractions to understand how things work. Only later in the food chain can sellers package it up.

What’s this got to do with tribalism you ask, and my personal angst?

Technologists have power because of the structure of the economic system. They are becoming the new ruling class. You can map your own view of history from hegemonies of the past to what is emerging now. It won’t be rich white European men any more as a class who pull the levers; it will be technology merchants. (They currently happen to often be white men because we are in a transition).

It matters to me because I need to fight for an innovation economy in Australia; that will be my job if I can find it. For people like me and others who want us to thrive, we should be allowed to get on with it. But instead we’ll end up fighting technology tribalists like our example, and they will play dirty. Mark is using the same language and arguments that other bad tribal actors use, down to specific catchphrases and dogwhistles.

Want to be leaders in quantum and don’t have a lot of money to spend? Where we should be focusing is on next generation science and math because that’s where the revolutions will be. Our efforts should be simply in making the case for funding and enfranchisement, then inventing. But you know where 95% of our attention goes? Competing with the tribe that has something to show (and sell).

It is that way for every sector I advise. Defence capability is something you grow; you don’t ‘acquire’ it. Active cyber and information warfare capabilities only matter if you are ahead of the curve. We should be building that and not fighting multinational sales teams who have mature (read: old) technology.

So take this as a position statement. I’m not qualified to write a manifesto. But I am qualified to warn against letting technology tribalism co-opt our future. It could be the one out of the four tribalisms we can avoid.