He bought twitter because he was forced to. He got it at twice any valuation (based on fake usage stats) and at least 4x what it was worth. Criticism of him was not "shut down" either off or on twitter.
I don't think they passed on the 4.5 billion. They still raised it in 2023 with investors like Alphabet etc. They turned Nvidia *earlier this year* for the $7 billion valuation deal. It makes sense if they were angling for an acquisition.
You must live in a bubble; 16% of Americans think AI is making their lives better, the remainder are evenly split between not knowing and disliking it.
It's still inevitable, but people aren't dumb, and they know that it's only going to help those who manage to escape the permanent underclass.
It'll eliminate the toil of thinking, but that also means that the people who make a living selling their thinking will end up replaced. Educators especially -- because, once we've automated thinking, it becomes economically worthless. Strength used to be very important, until the industrial revolution replaced muscle with steam and steel. AI will do the same for brains, and thinking will become a sport, similar to weight lifting; most people simply won't bother. Some people will win in this world, lots are going to lose.
We're obviously not there yet, but if you think to where we were two years ago, we're probably only a few breakthroughs and improvements away.
The idea that the layer above your own is trivial to build (e.g. biology is just chemistry, or chemistry is just applied physics)
At some point I built a little 2d game engine, but the same amount of time would have been better served actually building a game in Unity. Eventually I solo developed a full 3d VR app for the MetaQuest.
Maybe this is horse trading: SpaceX pays an insane price in stock for a vibe coding app, Trump will help Terafab and Starlink in any way possible. There are probably other Cursor investors among the Trump clan.
Sergey's out spending $100 million to lobby against the billionaire tax in California. Lest his net worth shrink from roughly $250 billion to $237 billion. Can't become a pleb now! [0]
> The OpenClaw owner, Andrew Bird, published a now-deleted blog post about it on his company’s website on April 10, according to a copy still visible on the Internet Archive.
> Even Deepseek at its absurd prices is a very healthy business. Regarding their return on capex multiple, their CEO said they make a six-fold profit on their compute capex with 10 month recuperation.
That's "theoretical profit" - in some imaginary world where the free subscribers would pay the top tier cost.
> The two companies reportedly signed an agreement last year stating OpenAI has only achieved AGI when it develops AI systems that can generate at least $100 billion in profits.
That was necessary because of the deal they had from a while ago where Microsoft would lose access to OpenAI's technology once OpenAI achieved AGI.
> Revenue share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft continue through 2030, independent of OpenAI’s technology progress, at the same percentage but subject to a total cap.
I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though.
I would speculate that the answer is simplier:
DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act.
Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3].
The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad.
If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us.
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[1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a
“fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system...
As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway.
https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec...https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an...
So even when xAI (which is now Tesla? Or SpaceX maybe?) was "operating dozens of unregulated gas turbines that worsen the air quality in one of the most polluted parts of the country"[0] this didn't place them above this new Amazon not-even-built-yet data center? Are they competing who can destroy the earth the fastest or what's going on?
Objection (objection.ai), which proposes to apply AI to “adjudicate the truth of journalism.” Pay $2,000 to contest allegations in a published story or various social media sources.
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In a 2024 speech, Luckey said "Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." ( https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-countr... ). He's said in a Bloomberg interview that "there are actually things I would like to build that the DoD would not use and would not deploy, that they do think are beyond the pale" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLFpYha6Wc ), and he's said in an Axios interview that he would be willing to build nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons "in a specific vertical". He then elaborates by saying that it's a huge mistake that the US military isn't allowed to use tear gas in combat. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg ) I'm having trouble believing that someone like this is inherently peaceful and should be getting multi-billion dollar contracts to manufacture drones that autonomously kill people. Maybe it's better to buy a Nintendo game from someone who doesn't think that the US is being held back by war crime treaties.
The whole point of Anduril is to create autonomous weapon systems that can kill people autonomously without human involvement. When you look at interviews and speeches that Palmer Luckey has given, they are always deeply unsettling. In a 2024 speech, he said "Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." ( https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-countr... ). He's said in a Bloomberg interview that "there are actually things I would like to build that the DoD would not use and would not deploy, that they do think are beyond the pale" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItLFpYha6Wc ), and he's said in an Axios interview that he would be willing to build nuclear weapons, as well as chemical weapons "in a specific vertical". He elaborates by saying that it's a huge mistake that the US military isn't allowed to use tear gas in combat. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZfW3YTJ5Eg )
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https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/12/elon-musk-admits-he-only-b...