Palmer Luckey Will Never Be Successful

I Didn’t Make the Attention Economy, I Just Live in It. Do Read On, It's The Last Post For A While

In the unlikely event you haven’t heard of Palmer Luckey, please look him up now; simply reading the resume he’s managed to put together before turning 30 on his Wikipedia page is surely more exciting than the humble contents of this Substack. He’s been nothing short of a furnace of success; yet if his core motivation behind Anduril is to defend the United States and the Americans that dwell within it, that furnace will soon run cold, no matter how spectacularly successful the products that Anduril produces end up being or how much they improve the overall capability of our military.

The Civ-Stack

To very briefly step back a bit, I’d frequently find myself daydreaming in high school about how to solve the Thucydides Trap. Knowing that (despite pompous assertions otherwise) order in the world ultimately comes down to the capacity to successfully implement violence, I primarily viewed this problem from the perspective of hard (i.e. military) power and for the most part, I felt pretty comfortable with our ability to handle things. However- as is always the case with young minds- I had many of my assumptions challenged by life experience; namely, the Crash of 2008. The newfound (to me) salience of the economy reminded me that the economic layer is what military strength rested on. After hundreds of hours of autistically researching everything I could on the American and Chinese economies, I felt somewhat decent about that layer too- as long as we didn’t fuck things up too badly. That last condition made me realize that the economic layer rested on our political layer, which in turn relied on the baseline functionality of civic society.

I’ve learned much about what composes that last level since then (as have we all), but no matter how wrong I may be about the precise variables and the interplay between them, one fact will remain an inexorable constant: no matter what wizardry Mr. Luckey and others like him are capable of performing, once the cumulative effects of endemic corruption, malice, and incompetence of the ruling decision makers in this country crosses a certain threshold, the entire edifice supporting that wizardry will collapse, destroying both the ability to deploy wizardry and the society that wizardry was meant to protect. Mr. Luckey is executing one half of a dual-pronged strategy incredibly (perhaps peerlessly) well, but neglecting that other prong will render it useless.

Great Cards, Shitty Card Players

One of the most frequent sayings about Vladimir Putin over the years is that he plays a bad hand very skillfully; the exact opposite can be said of our “poker players”.  We’ve been holding the best hand for at least 75 years and year in and year out our leadership continues to find new ways of playing it poorly. The United States emerged from the Cold War with such historically uncontested hegemony they had to invent a new word “Hyperpower” to describe it. Depending on how things turn out, the mismanagement of the country in the three decades since then will be remembered as an unfathomable failure of similarly unprecedented magnitude. Maybe they’ll have to invent a new term for it too, like “Über-fuckup”.

Any of the shiny new cards Anduril provides will be squandered by the people in charge of playing them. They go all in when they should fold, and fold when they should go all in; if it were blackjack, they’d hit when they had twenty and stay when they had five.

Above: Composite image of National Security Advisors from 1991-Present

The elite in this country is historically inept, getting worse, and therefore more dangerous to other countries as well as their own. They ruined the economy, they can’t win wars, and their inability and disinterest in seeing anyone else’s points of view turns the entire world and most of its own population (including yours truly) against them. The objective quality of their skills is degrading, the ideology they follow only accelerates that process, and in the absence of talent, they revert to increasingly blunt tools of oppression which further accelerates the decomposition of the factors that provide us with a good hand in the first place. Making the best weapons in the world for the US in 2022 is like creating cutting-edge nanofibers for a football uniform, putting it on a guy who rode the bench on his JV team and expecting your brilliance to make him dominate the NFL.

To use a prominent active example, if we were to defeat or significantly weaken the Russian military in the field in Ukraine (an increasingly questionable outcome, but let’s assume the best) that’s all well and good, but we still seem to have deliberately chosen a more severe long-term strategic problem by assuring an alliance between them and China that was far from inevitable as well as creating short-term problems where there weren’t any by triggering cascading system failures in the short-term. The most immediately obvious problem is a severe energy crisis aggravating the (already sanction-impacted) economic downturn in Europe, coupled with the disruption of Russian grain and fertilizer exports destroying the food supply across a swath of fragile states. That will create multiple humanitarian crises, potentially followed by fresh refugee crises that will fuel civil strife among the countries that take them at a time they can least afford it, especially considering the patience and compassion of their citizenries were already exhausted before being hit with the worst economic downturn in a generation.

Without changing our decision-makers, the most powerful military won’t cut it. They pissed away our strategic positioning during a window of dominance where errors could be absorbed by the sheer gap in capacity between us and everyone else. How do you think they’re going to handle the emergent multi-polar order when the margin for error is a fraction as wide and the consequences of missing them are an order of magnitude worse? By the way, you know how our Cold War strategy was to hold the USSR at bay until they collapsed under the weight of the shitty ideology they chose to base their society around? Well, it looks like the shoe is on the other foot. The outcome of the first Cold War was determined by each participant’s relative domestic stability and who could hold out the longest - not a missile gap, a basic functionality gap - and the outcome of the new one will work the same way. An Anduril to combat external threats is great; an Anduril to combat internal threats would be even better.

An Anduril for Civil Health

What Would an Anduril for Civil Health Look Like?

• It would award status to those aspiring to virtuous representation at the expense of those using theirs to practice hostile parasitism.

• As I mentioned in the last entry, significant political change is precluded by the public’s lack of insurance against financial aggression. Therefore, it would incentivize truth and challenge the regime’s monopoly on determining the price of dissenting against it.

• It would de-atomize and remoralize the populace by providing them with a cooperative enterprise towards the positive end of bringing their rogue institutions to heel without bloodshed.

• It would provide Americans with the ability to restore their full rights under the 1st amendment instead of crossing their fingers that they won’t be trampled further.

• It would facilitate conditions that would enable Americans who aren’t as financially secure as Mr. Luckey to nonetheless exercise their rights to free speech as he has by decoupling the ability to say fuck you from the possession of fuck you money.

• It would free people’s minds from a state of constant terror inflicted upon them through coordinating components of the government, universities, and media with the voluntary assistance of Current Thing Americans.

• It would begin to accomplish much of the above by allowing the majority of Americans to safely subsidize the risks of the few willing to publicly dissent on their behalf from afar.

While the health of a nation and the flourishing of its people are self-evident goods unto themselves, they don’t even necessarily need to be separated from the “War with China” angle. As Mr. Luckey surely knows but others may not, China has an Unrestricted Warfare doctrine that attacks all foundations of a rival nation-state’s power, not just its military. Therefore it only makes sense to have an opposing effort to repel that degradation of capacities and restore them back to health. That’s an admittedly abstract and complex proposal, so to use a very simple, direct example, a precondition to addressing the China-fueled opiate crises is taking steps to make sure the people capable of addressing that crisis give a fuck that the populations they represent are getting ravaged by opiates. Now realize this precondition applies to and encompasses nearly everything: in order to solve the American people’s problems, you need an elite that is both interested in and capable of doing so. Which brings us back to the recurring theme of engineering a Circulation of the Elite. I don’t want to just regurgitate what I’ve already said on the subject, so here’s an establishment of my baseline thoughts to get caught up if you aren’t already.

Fortifying the Ascendance of a Counter-Elite

Our elites use the institutions they control to manipulate the market of ideas by rewarding people and upregulating ideas that benefit themselves while punishing people and downregulating ideas that may threaten them through a system of incentives rigged in their favor. The parts of the country crushed underneath this system must be able to counter the forces being applied to this market by inverting this incentive structure to reward people and upregulate ideas that would finally benefit them for a change. The majority of Americans are suffering under a Regime maintained via decentralized coordination across government bureaucracies, universities, and media (popularly known as “The Cathedral”) at the top. These forces are operating in tandem with Current Thing Americans to enforce their will from below (Friendly Fact: Current Thing Americans also appear to be greater in number than they actually are because it’s easier to spot a uniform). An anti-Cathedral force would be structured in a similar fashion by achieving sufficient coordination between two populations that can further their mutual interests by each addressing the needs of the other: potential Counter-Elites need to be more insulated from the risks that come with challenging the current elite, and the masses need their interests represented against a ruling class that hates them. Those following a certain discourse may have recently heard these respective groups labeled as “Dark Elves” and “Hobbits”. 

A fitting start to selecting and promoting Counter-Elites would be providing the citizenry the ability to protect them against attacks from the current ones. Potential elites interacting with the Regime in a manner where protection is needed and conducting themselves in a matter that elicits the willingness of citizens to provide it rewards individuals who embody the virtues a people desire and deserve from an elite. While that may sound like an inversion of the classic client-patron political relationship dynamic, the intended effect of this proposal is more nuanced than that. It would be more accurate to say the system I have been teasing will ultimately lead to the creation of an alternative patronage network that emboldens an array of actions to serve as glue for the cohesion of the opposition and solvent for the cohesion of the ruling class.

Any Counter-Elite will be split between people who challenge the institutional order in a relatively direct manner out in the open, and those who choose to exercise power more indirectly via financial support or social influence. While this is an oversimplification, for conceptual clarity, I am labeling the first group Public Dissidents and the second group Disaffected Financiers, both of which are political allies with segments of the population who desire significant change in the composition of our Ruling Elite. Between the intellectual and creative vision provided by the Public Dissidents, the financial muscle and social influence provided by the Disaffected Financiers, and the additional resources and democratic energy provided by a simmering and sympathetic public, these three groups can generate the immense power required to unseat a class of people whose depth of derangement is exceeded only by that of their entrenchment. It is simply a matter of engineering the requisite level of coordination between them.

The energy is unmistakably there, it just flares out in acute bursts before dissipating; usually a waste of time for the people expressing it at best… or life-alteringly bad at worst. Right now, Americans' rage is just electricity that ends up shocking them, because that’s what electricity without circuitry to animate does. It is up to us to build the appropriate circuitry to capture the energy that’s escaping and channel it back into a self-reinforcing system in the form of financial transactions to sufficiently alter the sociopolitical incentive landscape. These incentives will align in favor of an elite willing to challenge the regime in a manner that encourages disgruntled Americans to think tactically and coordinate with their fellow citizens to develop the adaptive capacity to outcompete that which seeks to subjugate them.

If the aspirations of a circulation seem crazy, it’s worth noting this is already happening naturally as people follow emerging Counter-Elites on the internet while spurning outlets and figures favored by the Regime regardless of the bottomless resources it sinks into efforts to make them appealing.

Perhaps the most crucial point I’ve already elaborated upon elsewhere is if you fix the Canceling issue among this group, you win. Part of the motivation behind cancellations is to defeat counter elites while intimidating potential counter elites, and if ruling elites can’t do that they lose. CNN attacks Joe Rogan with cheap tricks because they don’t have the capability of being better. Replicate this situation across every field while stopping Cancellations and see how long the current Powers That Be retain that title. 

How Hard Can It Be?

Okay, obviously yes it can be very, very, hard. But Jesus Christ, are you telling me this is an invincible adversary?

No caption needed

Paul Krugman’s intellect is sufficient to make his position infinitely secure? Really?

The Oracle of Oligarchy strikes again

Or let’s take Twitter’s favorite punching bag and poster boy for the laughingstock academia has become, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University Jason Stanley. I have a Bachelor’s from a SUNY school, don’t remember my GPA, and could run circles around this man every day of the week and twice on Sunday if I got blackout drunk on Saturday and you had to shake me out of a stupor at 6am to do it. I don’t feel cool or tough saying so- it’s like saying I could beat up Steve Rodgers before he got the super serum. I’m 5’10’ 165, I don’t claim to be a bodybuilder, it just is what it is. Just for kicks, I’ll surpass his contributions on combating fascism in a single sentence: Hey Jason - the best way to stop fascism is to stop promoting communism. I’m not a genius, it’s just something people- the vast majority of whom have lower social status than you- already know. I’m sure the rest of us would let you pass off that insight as your own without credit on the condition you spare the world another book.

In his defense, if I occupied his position with an 1150 SAT, I might see threats around every corner and under my mattress too- that’s the problem, many of our elites’ neurotic hostility towards everyone around them stems from the fact they’re surrounded by an ocean of people more talented than themselves whose anger is steadily rising as a result of their repeated fuckups. The fear they have is all projection. “If we’re ever forced out of power, they’ll oppress us”. No, in a functional society I don’t have to ever think about you to keep you beneath me. Right now, you need to keep me nailed to the fucking ground and pray that I don’t escape to keep me beneath you. Again, I’m not even that smart - I think I have an interesting thought process, but am almost positive the majority of my readership has higher IQs- I’m just not an abject buffoon. The bar ain’t that high to clear, guys - I’m on record as being pro-delusions of grandeur, but you don’t need any to believe you can win, just a baseline level of self-respect.

The fact someone like Palmer Luckey finds himself on the outside of the Ruling Class looking in is not only a self-evident indictment of how absurd the current paradigm is, but also the feasibility of overturning it. Founding multiple unicorns is impressive enough, but as far as I can tell, more people founded unicorns last year than openly confronted people in as high profile a fashion and in that direct a manner as he did at AIS the other month. Peter Thiel was indeed correct that courage is in far shorter supply than genius, so seeing them demonstrated in the same person is about as rare as spotting an actual unicorn. I’m not just kissing his ass to somehow ingratiate myself with him either - attempting to do so would be a strong negative signal that would absolutely have the opposite effect - that just incidentally happens to be what I believe. You’re telling me the people I mentioned before him are destined to be in a socially superior position in perpetuity?

Social engineering currently comes from the top down, there’s no reason why we can’t reverse it, especially considering the trends of the quality of the people at the top and the ones emerging from the middle & bottom, not to mention the fact the magnitude of the benefits that would come from replacing people at the top will repay the latter groups’ efforts many times over. Take the problem of Current Thing Americans - they’ll be a hostile force at first, but their malleability is their defining feature. Think about how thoroughly poisoned the minds of that population are, now think of what’s possible if people with even mild to medium amounts of virtue had access to the levers that generate the poison and could turn them into a tonic. The degree people can be programmed is sickening, but only because they’ve had sick people programming them - it’s interesting to consider how much they could change for the better if they had a nice debugging, and started to run prosocial code.

Getting to the Root of the Meta-Crisis

Whether you call it the Meta-Crisis or Perma-Crisis, the fact our civilization apparently no longer has the ability to solve problems at the rate they emerge and increasingly does so in ways that set more severe courses of events into motion is the preeminent problem of our time. It is both what brought (and will continue to bring) our series of crises into being and what prevents the emergence of their solutions. My best attempt at a meta-solution is to reduce the power of the people driving it while increasing the power of people capable of solving it. The core issue is our exponentially increasing power via tech with steady or decreasing wisdom when deciding how we use it. No one seriously thinks we can slow down the tech so unless you think you can make the current crop of decision-makers wiser, the only choice is to find a way to give people with more wisdom more power over decision-making at their expense. I suggest taking a few moments to try and think of a fourth to let the adamantine nature and existential importance of this option tree set in. 

If that’s too impersonal and abstract, I’ll pivot from the consequences of our leadership’s inability to adapt to changing conditions and remind you of the damage they’ve delivered to their own population directly. I feel like people aren’t properly absorbing the fact that since Covid was almost certainly a lab leak, even if the vaccines were 100% safe, they are directly responsible for every bad thing that happened to anyone as a result. Every death, every shuttered business, every suicide, every drug addiction, every stunted childhood development, every ruined relationship, every life thrown off course, every heart attack, and every twitching limb is the direct responsibility of the same people that demand my loyalty and unquestioned moral deference. That is not going to happen. I take pride in not being as domesticated as the average person, but am I that uncivilized and out of step with everyone else to feel the way I do?

No matter how many weapons Mr. Luckey builds, it won’t stop Americans from getting killed by the people paying him to build them. I’m not quite sure what the effects of this nitrogen thing are going to be yet, but whatever they are won’t be caused by Putin or the Chinese military, I’m sure about that much. Except at the end of the day, it’s not truly the fault of the government or the elite: 

“We didn't love freedom enough…We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Knowing what we know, and seeing what we see, every horrible thing we’re experiencing and will experience at the hands of our decision makers is our fault. I’m reminded of the famous Jordan Peterson bit of the costs of taking risks versus forgoing them - either you fail or are otherwise injured out in the world or you wither away in your mother’s basement. This is the situation we collectively find ourselves in, except the costs of inaction aren’t metaphysical or poetic like “a life unlived”, they’re as brutally tangible as it gets. It’s hard to describe without seeming melodramatic or histrionic, but idk what to tell you. Your parent’s quality of healthcare will be reduced and their pensions inflated away, you won’t retire at all, your kids will have direct experience with war and deprivation and you likely won’t have the opportunity to have grandkids. I do enjoy being hyperbolic but usually in the service of humor - I’m sorry, but when you add up the various interlinked existential risks, calculate the current trajectories, then imagine the same people being at the helm for all of it, that’s just how the math shakes out. While you can say this is technically hypothetical, it’s as certain as imagining a hypothetical ball sitting on a table, picking up one end and knowing it will roll off the other side, there are just more objects and forces at play. The purpose of this Substack is to communicate how I see those objects and forces so your math starts to match mine.

Let’s Get Down To Brass Tacks

This will likely be my last post for a while as I’m switching gears to go full fundraising/networking mode. My last post was jumping off of Balaji’s idea hot off his book and now I’m making clickbait headlines about Palmer Luckey, it should be pretty obvious what I’m going for here. It’s time to ask for other people’s money, but while all startups come with a degree of uncertainty, I’m quite comfortable with the offer I’m putting on the table: I’m monetizing dissatisfaction in an age saturated with misery, providing a way to profit off the demand for dissent in a time of totalitarianism (in tyrannical times, dissent is like diamond), and doing it all with complete sincerity which trades at a premium in an environment populated by duplicitous con artists who use every bathroom break to double-check if they have a handle sticking out of their backs before resuming whatever scam it is they’re running. Come to think of it, when I contemplate the consequences of this succeeding, I think it’s rather generous on my part to make sure anyone funding this turns a profit as opposed to just taking a lump sum payment to lay waste to their enemies like a mercenary.

It’s time to get this out into the world and it’s important we do it quickly. We’re facing multiple cascading failures throughout the web of complex systems we call civilization, the ones in charge only make it worse, and the only types of unorthodox people that can actually help are being persecuted. Some of them are even potentially dangerous, but not nearly as dangerous as having incompetent sociopaths holding the reins of power when the best we have to offer stays on the sidelines. Yes, I will personally benefit from any support I’m able to garner, but as I’ve said many times, I am in the incentive alignment business and I’ve deliberately aligned the incentives for my well-being with that of my civilization’s to the best of my ability. Not because I’m a great person; because it’s a useful way to prevent myself from bitching out and to stay on this path when I’m tempted to take an easier one.

Don’t help me save people from getting canceled because it’s the right thing to do morally, do it because it’s existentially important that we transfer power from the incompetent to the competent. Our mortality doesn’t absolve us of the fact that each choice we make is etched into the fabric of the universe for eternity. Every failure, every hesitation, every missed opportunity is recorded in the immutable ledger of space-time. The next few years are for all the marbles and regardless of our success or failure, I just need the record to state that I did my best. Now help me defeat the worst people in the world. It’ll be fun. I promise.