I am unsure about both the veracity and the spin on this story but it fits with some previous observations, links below.
From The Guardian, November 29:
At a time when distrust of big tech is high, Silicon Valley is embracing an alternative ecosystem where every CEO is a star
A montage of Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, and waving US flags set to a remix of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck blasts out as the intro for the tech billionaire’s interview with Sourcery, a YouTube show presented by the digital finance platform Brex. Over the course of a friendly walk through the company offices, Karp fields no questions about Palantir’s controversial ties to ICE but instead extolls the company’s virtues, brandishes a sword and discusses how he exhumed the remains of his childhood dog Rosita to rebury them near his current home.
“That’s really sweet,” host Molly O’Shea tells Karp.
If you are looking to hear from some of tech’s most powerful people, you will increasingly find them on a constellation of shows and podcasts like Sourcery that provide a safe space for an industry that is wary, if not openly hostile, towards critical media outlets. Some of the new media outlets are created by the companies themselves. Others just occupy a specific niche that has found a friendly ear among the tech billionaire class like a remora on a fast-moving shark. The heads of tech’s largest companies, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Satya Nadella and more, have all sat for long, cozy interviews in recent months, while firms like Palantir and Andreessen Horowitz have branched out this year into creating their own media ventures.
At a time when the majority of Americans distrust big tech and believe artificial intelligence will harm society, Silicon Valley has built its own network of alternative media where CEOs, founders and investors are the unchallenged and beloved stars. What was once the province of a few fawning podcasters has grown into a fully fledged ecosystem of publications and shows supported by some of the tech industry’s most powerful.
While pro-tech influencers like podcast host Lex Fridman have for years formed a symbiotic relationship with tech elites like Elon Musk, some firms have decided this year to cut out the middleman entirely. In September, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced that it had launched an a16z blog on Substack. One of its prominent writers, investor Katherine Boyle, has a longstanding friendship with JD Vance. Its podcast has meanwhile grown to more than 220,000 subscribers on YouTube, and last month hosted OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, who counts Andreessen Horowitz as a major investor.
“What if the future of media isn’t controlled by algorithms or legacy institutions, but by independent voices building directly with their audiences?” the firm wrote in its Substack announcement. The firm once invested $50m in the digital media upstart BuzzFeed with a similar vision, only to see it fall into penny stock territory.
The a16z Substack also announced this month that the firm was launching an eight-week new media fellowship for “operators, creators, and storytellers shaping the future of media”. The fellowship includes collaborating with a16z’s new media operation, which it describes as being made up of “online legends” creating a “single place where founders acquire the legitimacy, taste, brandbuilding, expertise, and momentum they need to win the narrative battle online”.
In addition to a16z’s media effort, Palantir launched a digital and print publication earlier this year called the Republic that mimics academic journals and thinktank-style magazines like Foreign Affairs. The journal is funded by the Palantir Foundation for Defense Policy and International Affairs, a non-profit of which Karp is the chair, though he only works there 0.01 hours per week, according to 2023 tax filings.
“Far too many people who should not have a platform do. And there are far too many people who should have a platform but do not,” states the Republic, which has an editorial team made up of senior Palantir executives.
A sampling of the articles the Republic has published includes an essay arguing that US copyright law restrictions will prevent US AI dominance and another from two Palantir employees on how Silicon Valley working with the military is good for society, a point Karp has himself made many times.
The Republic joins a burgeoning set of pro-tech publications like Arena magazine, which was founded late last year by the Austin-based venture capitalist Max Meyer. The outlet takes its motto, “The New Needs Friends”, from Disney’s film Ratatouille.
“At Arena, we don’t cover ‘the news.’ We cover The New,” a letter from the editors stated in its inaugural issue. “Our mission at Arena is to cheer on the people who are, slowly but surely – and sometimes very quickly! – bringing the future into the present.”....
....MUCH MORE
Media and Tech: "The Unauthorized Story of Andreessen Horowitz"
...Following on the three stories immediately below:
- How Media Aided and Abetted The Rise of FTX and Bankman-Fried
- "Andreessen passed on FTX, and made a killing selling tokens"
- "The Dubrovnik Interviews: Marc Andreessen - Interviewed by a Retard"
here is the first of three flashbacks, this one originally linked in January 2021.
Nov. 29
Marc Andreessen Speaks: "Flying cars are closer than you think"
And speaks, and speaks...
You know how he is....
May, 2015
Marc Andreessen In the New Yorker:
13,000+ words.
Oct. 2014
New York Magazine's Million Word Interview With Mark Andreessen
It's not really a million words but man-o-mandingo the guy likes to talk.
Turning the microscope the other way:
Here's Tablet Magazine's description of Bankman-Fried's direct efforts to influence media:
.....Over the past two years, Bankman-Fried cultivated the media lavishly, if not carefully. Drawing on what then seemed like an unlimited pool of cash, SBF (as we’ll call the mythologized version of the real person) dispersed investments, advertising dollars, sponsorships, and donations to key news outlets—including ProPublica, Vox, Semafor, and The Intercept—with extraordinary effectiveness.....
Finally, from March 2023:
"A fake news frenzy: why ChatGPT could be disastrous for truth in journalism"
The Guardian is concerned about Truth In Journalism.
*****
....The most worrying fact to be reiterated is that ChatGPT has no commitment to the truth. As the MIT Technology Review puts it, large language model chatbots are “notorious bullshitters”. Disinformation, grifting and criminality don’t generally require a commitment to truth either. Visit the forums of blackhatworld.com, where those involved in murky practices trade ideas for making money out of fake content, and ChatGPT is heralded as a gamechanger for generating better fake reviews, or comments, or convincing profiles....
*****
It was at this point I started laughing.
That line "...has no commitment to the truth." followed by “notorious bullshitters” reminded me of a story in the Guardian in 2018.
They employ someone called
Luke Harding who [co-]wrote a story that ran in the paper on Tue 27 Nov
2018 09.23 EST. Going on five years ago:
Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign, the Guardian has been told.
Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016 – during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.
In a statement, Manafort denied meeting Assange. He said: “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.” It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia....
....MUCH MORE
The thing to remember, for our readers who were going on about their lives rather than trying to figure-out a money-making angle in that day's headlines, was that what Harding, his editors and the Guardian claimed was impossible.
At the time the story was published the Ecuadoran Embassy in London was the most surveilled building in the world. The British had it staked out, both MI5 and MI6 were keeping tabs on who was coming and going, the Australians were down the block, the Americans had a plan for a CIA assassination team to supplant the watchers [Yahoo broke that story], Russia was there, I'm guessing Israel and maybe China too. The spooks were tripping over each other there were so many different groups.
And none of them saw what Harding reported.
Julian Assange's three-year stay in Ecuadorean embassy has cost taxpayer £11.1m
Three years ago the WikiLeaks founder fled bail and sought asylum in Ecuador - resulting in millions being spent on policing the embassy
