Welcome to The Tech Bubble. This week, enjoy Part 1.5 of the Silicon Valley Consensus, which revisits my framework for understanding the AI bubble and examines a few more actors central to sustaining it.

My series of essays on Artificial Intelligence thus far:

• AI, life engineering, and digital hygiene - On artificial intelligence as an attack vector for eugenics & political shock therapy.

• AI, slavery, surveillance, and capitalism - On artificial intelligence for The Labor Question & the limits of surveillance capitalism and techno-feudalism.

• The Silicon Valley Consensus & AI Capex (Part 1) - On overbuilding AI infrastructure and its energy supply.

• AI, indulgences, and the false promise of salvation - On (some of) the moral externalities in the economy behind artificial intelligence.

Here are also a few other essays on AI that you could probably fit in there:

• Does OpenAI’s latest marketing stunt matter? - On distractions, intentions, aesthetics, and fascism.

• The phony comforts of useful idiots - On Casey Newton and the shallowness of (AI) anti-skepticism.

• Trapped in the Maw of a Stillborn God - On Vegas as a laboratory for surveillance and social control, the explosion of gambling as a sign of a degenerate culture seized by despair, AI delusions at CES, and the future.

• This Silicon Valley Stuff’ll Get You Killed - On ritual sacrifice in the 21st century.

If these essays sound interesting or if you’ve found them insightful, I’m happy to tell you that you can help make more of this work possible with a subscription. Your support allows me to keep my main essays free for everyone (and supports me as I make the newsletter sustainable). Consider supporting The Tech Bubble (me) with a subscription: $7 a month (the price of a few hard ciders at your local bodega) or $70 a year (a copy of METAL GEAR SOLID Δ: SNAKE EATER Tactical Edition). Not that much, huh?

Silicon Valley Consensus & The Limits of an “AI Economy”

The “AI economy” is less a story of productivity or innovation, then an attempt to graft a new political-economic order—let’s call it the Silicon Valley Consensus—that is ostensibly concerned with building our stillborn God. A coalition of hyperscalers, venture capitalists, fossil fuel firms, conservatives, and reactionaries are engaged in a frenzy of overbuilding, overvaluing, and overinvesting in compute infrastructure. Their goal is not to realize AGI or radically improve life for ...