https://twitter.com/deanwball/article/2028464782622195992
From Dean Ball
I tend to agree with the direction where-we-are and where-we-are-headed that this piece is offering:
“At some point during my lifetime—I am not sure when—the American republic as we know it began to die. Like most natural deaths, the causes are numerous and interwoven. No one incident, emergency, attack, president, political party, law, idea, person, corporation, technology, mistake, betrayal, failure, misconception, or foreign adversary “caused” death to begin, though all those things and more contributed. I don’t know where we are in the death process, but I know we are in the hospice room. I’ve known it for a while, though I have sometimes been in denial, as all mourners are wont to do. I don’t like to talk about it; I am at the stage where talking about it usually only inflicts pain.”
The Anthropic-Department of War fight last week was quite something. This piece is probably all one need read to understand the implications of it rather than get so bogged down in every detail of “what actually happened.”
The best thing this piece does is ground it in something bigger than this political story in the midst of all the other political stories. The Anthropic-DoW story is about liberty and whether we have it.
“Even if Secretary Hegseth backs down and narrows his extremely broad threat against Anthropic, great damage has been done. Even in the narrowest supply-chain risk designation, the government has still said that they will treat you like a foreign adversary—indeed, they will treat you in some ways worse than a foreign adversary—simply for refusing to capitulate to their terms of business. Simply for having different ideas, expressing those ideas in speech, and actualizing that speech in decisions about how to deploy and not deploy one’s property. Each of these things is fundamental to our republic, and each was assaulted—not anything like for the first time but nonetheless in novel ways—by the Department of War last week. Most corporations, political actors, and others will have to operate under the assumption that the logic of the tribe will now reign.”
“Over the coming years and decades, I expect that our liberty will be in greater peril than many of us comprehend.”
“Before you get to all that, though, take a moment to mourn the republic that was.”