FIRST, AN ANNOUNCEMENT: Come hang out with the Pirate Wires crew tonight in San Francisco — well, me, Brandon, and Commander Button (no byline, quietly runs the place, serious nicotine addiction). We’ll be at the Emporium Arcade Bar, 616 Divisadero Street, at 6:30PM.

If you’re in Miami or NYC sit tight, more meetups to come. Now, onto this week’s newsletter.


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A Glitch in the Matrix

While America was entirely captured by the main event (and sit tight for my coverage of the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories, which I’ll be publishing over the days to come), the only notable element of Sunday’s Super Bowl halftime show was Alicia Keys’ voice crack, or whatever it was — an unflattering noise where there was meant to be a gorgeous note — which everyone in the country heard. Here, it’s not the issue of the note I’d like to raise, but the fact that it has since been scrubbed completely from the internet, and replaced with a fundamentally fictitious record of our history.

Listen to the difference here:

That the official record has not only been altered, but the original has been erased, with copies of the original legally pursued!, is no small thing. Sure, the voice crack itself is trivial, but the alteration represents another example of a dangerous trend: history in the information age is malleable in a manner, and to a degree, none of us saw coming. We have no way to litigate a common sense of reality, among the largest population in history, if we can’t even agree on what just happened — which we not only saw, but saw recorded — on Sunday. I’ve written about the danger of our collapsing history in the information age for years (Fire in the Sky, Variant Xi, Encyclopedia Titanica, and a guest post from Kat Rosenfield called Gaslight). The problem of too much information, with tribal groups fashioning entire alternate, niche realities, is increasingly paired with the problem of total rewrites of the human story, most of which now exists entirely online, which is to say there’s no more hardcover encyclopedia left to even check against the digital. What is real, now? What really happened? And how do you build a future while unmoored completely from your past?

My friends in crypto often hint at a solution to the problem of our malleable information in the blockchain, and indeed I do think people working in this space are closest to cracking the code. But they better build fast, because every day passed is another day erased, and at this rate the 90s will be the last decade anyone remembers.

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Industry Links

Deepfakes? Bad. TikTok? Umm… *checks polling with younger voters*. Succumbing to pressure from the Biden administration, leading AI companies have signed an “accord” limiting AI-generated content that may deceive voters ahead of this year’s elections. Critically, the accord doesn’t include an outright ban on deceptive AI political content. Minor steps here include Midjourney’s consideration of a ban on images of Trump and Biden, and the banning of AI-generated robocalls after potentially misleading voters in the New Hampshire primary. Meanwhile, Europeans are of course drafting their own, far more draconian plans for handling AI, a technology they aren’t building, and its intersection with elections, the outcomes of which have not mattered on that continent for about eight decades.

In some fun related news, the Biden administration just joined America’s favorite spy app TikTok in a bid to reach younger voters, releasing their video during the Super Bowl and immediately drawing bipartisan backlash. Will this be enough pressure to divert the attention of US lawmakers from dismantling US industry to banning the foreign information weapon, however? Lol. Lmao, even.

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From the pod this week

Yes, we are building an Olympics for people on steroids (interview with Christian Angermayer, an investor and project lead), “shrankflation,” and Kara Swisher’s war on ‘the evil tech bro media’ (me). Watch it here.

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More Industry News:

• OpenAI is on pace to surpass $2B in annual revenue. Altman thinks they’ll double that in 2025. (FT)

• Shares of Palantir jumped 31%, the company’s sharpest increase since 2020. (Bloomberg)

• Shares of Lyft skyrocketed — briefly — after a typo on its earnings report accidentally 10x’d its EBITDA margin expansion (oops). (@dee_bosa)

• Nvidia’s market value is now $1.83T, surpassing both Amazon and Google. (Forbes)

• According to a company filing, Jeff Bezos sold 12 million shares of Amazon for a $2 billion payday. He remains Amazon’s largest shareholder, with around 9% of the $1.7 trillion company tucked safely away in his back pocket. (The Information)

• Reminder: a latina gf will change a white boy

• If Intuitive Machines successfully completes their planned lunar mission later this month, it will be the first U.S. moon landing since the Apollo missions, and the first ever for a commercial spacecraft. (Washington Post)

• Reminder: Moon should be a state.

• Bluesky — Dorsey’s decentralized social media platform, and competitor to X — is now open to the public. (Bloomberg)

• Ukraine says Russia is using Starlink on the frontlines. Elon denies the claim, arguing Starlink can’t even connect in Russia.

• Amazon is working on new safety features for their Flex drivers after several were “shot at or threatened with guns.” (The Information)

• Meanwhile, a Waymo robotaxi was set aflame by a mob in SF’s Chinatown, in a crazy display caught on video here (autonomous weapons system when?).

• Great interview with Founders Fund’s Brian Singerman on the venture landscape in This Week in Startups (@jason).

• Pete Buttigieg: ‘Please don’t wear the Apple Vision Pro while driving’ (mind your own business, Pete Buttibitch) (The Hill)

$$$:

• Sam Altman’s chipbuilding venture is seeking $5T to $7T, talking to investors such as UAE’s government. (WSJ)

• The Joe Rogan Experience is no longer Spotify exclusive. While Rogan renewed his $250M deal with the company, the show will now be available across all podcasting platforms. (The Verge)

• Ezra — a startup that provides full-body MRIs, with Bryan Johnson’s stamp of approval — just raised $21M in venture funding. (If you haven’t already, check out my full interview with Bryan here)

AI:

• Microsoft is teaming up with Semafor to help create stories using an AI chatbot. (FT)

• Meta has announced they’ll be applying specific labels on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads for posts including AI-generated images. The Taylor Effect. (Axios)

• Google also followed suit with a similar move. (NYT)

• California’s Scott Wiener, unbothered by his state’s endemic crime or crash course economy, introduced his “landmark” AI legislation that would require tech companies to test AI models for “unsafe” behavior (saying things Scott Weiner doesn’t like) before releasing them. (Washington Post)
  

• From the Guardian, a characteristically untrue story:

God, I wish.

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Check out more from the Pirate Wires extended universe

The Executive Physical: Behind the Velvet Rope of Healthcare for the 1%: inside the intensive, three-day, no-expenses-spared medical check-ups catering solely to the ultra-rich and selective. By Will Manidis. Read it here.

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How San Francisco's DEI Industrial Complex Works: for years, mayor breed has presided over massive budget increases to a now-$100 million a year DEI clientelism scheme. By Sanjana Friedman. Read it here.

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Legalizing Chaos: How Activists Are Changing Laws Around the Country: activists groups are suing police departments across the country to effectively legalize blocking major transit routes and other destructive forms of protest. By Sanjana Friedman. Read it here.

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Litigation and regulation:

Elon vs. Disney’s DEI Gestapo. Gina Carano’s lawsuit against Disney and Lucasfilm over her 2021 firing has secured the financial support of X Corporation, with Elon himself trumpeting the move after previously stating he would stand by those who faced unfair treatment from employers over their activity on the platform.

• A federal judge is blocking an Ohio law that would require social media companies to receive permission from parents before allowing kids on their apps. (Reuters)

• Apple and chip startup Rivos settled after the former accused the latter of stealing trade secrets. (The Information)

• Thorough breakdown of Figma’s aborted $20B deal with Adobe — a disaster architected by our “allies” in the United Kingdom. Trade retaliation when?

Human resources:

• In more TikTok news, a former executive claims she was fired for lacking “docility and meekness.” Behold: the most Chinese company of all time. (FT)

• BlackBerry is cutting staff in its cybersecurity division to net millions in savings. (WSJ)

• Amazon is cutting “a few hundred” jobs in its medical division. (SF Chronicle)

• Snap is cutting its global workforce by about 10%. (The Hill)

• Cisco is gearing up to lay off thousands as part of a reorganization effort. (SF Chronicle)

• Now, some good news: Adam Neumann wants to buy back WeWork — and Elon’s lawyer (forged under what is probably the greatest legal pressure in American history, I think) is involved.

Trade war:

• The EU AI Act was overwhelmingly endorsed by parliamentary committees this week ahead of a full parliament vote, with AI companies worldwide set to be affected (just as they were following new EU rules mandating changes to the App Store). (TechCrunch)

• More EU regulations on tech company mergers. (Axios)

• Temu’s attempt to win over US consumers? Super Bowl commercials, obviously. The Chinese ecomm app likely shelled out tens of millions for six ad slots during the Big Game in an effort to reverse a slowdown in growth and become a household name in America. (Bloomberg)

• Some perspective, though: Temu spent a cool $1.2 billion on Meta ads in 2023 (ModernRetail). Marketing probably didn’t even check with Finance about this one.

• Finally, TikTok vs. EU regulators. Parent company ByteDance is set to be investigated by the European Commission over content moderation rules, under threat of heavy fines. Natural question here that follows: who to root for? (An asteroid, of course) (Bloomberg)

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This newsletter was compiled with a great deal of assistance from Riley Nork.