Much of the wealth in this new boom was blood money. The shiny new instruments of technology that bloomed here sprang from the Defense Department’s need to identify the enemy, track the enemy and destroy as many of them as possible. Even vaporize entire civilian populations if necessary. It was the Cold War. We were told that we were locked in a fight to the finish with a ruthless foe. There was little moral reflection in the research labs of Silicon Valley or Stanford in those days. As Dylan sang, “We learned to accept it, accept it with pride – for you don’t count the dead, when God’s on your side.”
Back then, you didn’t want to examine too closely the political views of these new gods — these masters of innovation and progress. Highlighting the symbiotic connection between Silicon Valley and the war machine, David Packard would become Secretary of Defense for President Nixon, helping to manage the genocidal war in Vietnam. And Shockley would feel free to vent his master-race views on eugenics and call for the voluntary sterilization of inferior peoples.
From Shockley’s fascist eccentricity to the selfish libertarianism of today’s baby tech moguls, the lords of Silicon Valley have long felt it was their right and duty to impose their views on the rest of us, no matter how noxious they are. And although their greed-based politics don’t usually play well with the voting public – since their ideas are born in the tech bubbles that only they inhabit – these supremely self-confident men and women keep running for high office. Considering the untold wealth at its disposal, sooner of later Silicon Valley will elect one of its own to the executive mansions in Sacramento and to Washington. And resistance will be futile.
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