The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 42 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Boyle: Few Lessons From the Ukraine War Will Apply to Future Conflicts
“I actually think there's very few lessons from Ukraine that are going to be relevant in the future war, candidly.”
Catherine Boyle: Parents and Schools Face Systemic Incentives for ADHD Diagnoses
“The incentive systems around a lot of these things are, like, if you go to the doctor, parents, one, want these ADHD, you know, Want, want, want these diagnoses. And the reason the parents want them is because it gives you extra time, it gives you extra resour…”
Boyle: Substack was the only platform protecting free speech
“There was one platform that stood up and said, hey, we are protecting free speech. And that was Substack.”
Boyle: Elon Musk buying Twitter was most consequential free speech event
“I would argue that it's the most consequential moment in terms of Elon buying Twitter, kind of, you know, displacing the trust and safety team there and kind of, you know, changing, I would say, the kind of nature of free speech for a lot of the country with t…”
Andreessen Horowitz Is Actively Seeking Investments in Offensive Space Weapons
“And so I think anything to do with offensive space both on the software side and the hardware side, we're very excited about.”
Boyle: China Expanded Its Industrial Base Supplying Both Sides in Ukraine
“China has been supplying both sides of that war. When you look at sort of the drone warfare that is, that has come out of the trenches for the last three years, You know, China is a supplier in the same way that Russia is a supplier to its own side, but that m…”
Boyle: "Tropic Thunder" is the best Vietnam War film ever made
“It is by far the best Vietnam War film ever made and of course it incorporates every Vietnam War film ever made, including Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket you know, once or Born on the Fourth of July, Apocalypse Now, the best Vietnam War film ever made is Tropi…”
a16z made zero American Dynamism investments in San Francisco in 2023
“This year we haven't made a single American dynamism investment in San Francisco.”
Boyle: Foreign digital safety rules are petri dish for US lobbyists
“There's a lot of regulation abroad around digital safety and misinformation that's in some ways becoming the petri dish for lobbying groups and organizations in America to bring that here.”
Catherine Boyle: Work-from-home is the only policy intervention that increases birth rates
“There's now good research, actually, there's a study that came out maybe a month ago that showed that the only thing that's really moved the needle from a policy perspective on the birth rate Is actually work from home. It's like the one policy where if you ar…”
Boyle: Low Earth Orbit Infrastructure Will Be Critical in Future War
“I think that the future war, the infrastructure that we already have in low-earth orbit will be exceptionally important and we have to figure out ways to protect what we're building in low Earth orbit in particular.”
Boyle: Ukrainian Operators Unanimously Named Starlink Their Most Vital Tech
“Every time I talk to people on the ground and ask them, what's the most important piece of technology that you use, they all said Starlink.”
Boyle: $1,000 Drones Destroying Multi-Million-Dollar Systems Fundamentally Alters War Economics
“If you have an exquisite system that was hundreds of millions of dollars, and it can be taken out with a thousand dollar drone that changes the economics of war, and it particularly changes the economics of a war of mass.”
Boyle: Founders Without Military or Government Experience Struggle in Defense
“And it's very hard to understand the customer if you've never served, if you've never worked inside of government.”
Catherine Boyle: Tarantino Is Misunderstood as Making Violence Without Purpose
“Are we going in gruesome violence with no purpose, which I would argue Tarantino's always misunderstood in that way?”
Boyle: Societal fear of the Manson family empowered decades of serial killers
“Instead they were met with, these are the most evil, they're, you know, they're taken by the devil, right? Like they were met with fear. And to Mark's point, like that set off serial killers, like it gave power to this extraordinary evil for decades.”
Boyle: "Tropic Thunder" is the single best Hollywood film ever made
“It is the best Hollywood film ever made, even in the fact that they were able to successfully sway the Oscars.”
Boyle uploads all pregnancy diagnostic reports to ChatGPT for analysis
“I upload every single medical diagnostic, every blood report, everything to ChatGPT, and it gives me a ton of data. That the doctors don't have time to give me.”
Boyle: School boredom teaches children to navigate large systems
“Boredom's actually good. Like a lot of our life is pretty boring. Like it is important to learn how to work in big systems. Like it is important to kind of realize that, like, not everyone's gonna, like, entertain your weird rabbit hole. And so, there is somet…”
Boyle: Today's open media culture would not exist without Substack
“Where we are today would not be, like, we would not be where we are today without Substack.”
Boyle: Most content on algorithmic 'For You' feeds is now AI slop
“Like, I think there's this horrible meme, like we have, we're, podcasts are over, we have too much content, there's too much online, and it's like, actually, it's the opposite. If you look at any of the For You feeds, I mean, most of it is now AI slot.”
Boyle: Building tech exclusively for one nation was long considered taboo
“For decades, it was very taboo to say you were building only for one country. Tech was by its nature global.”
Boyle: American Dynamism targets any industry regulated by Washington departments
“If there's an executive department in Washington that exists to regulate or oversee an industry, that is likely American dynamism.”
Boyle: Silicon Valley funds operating in China were surprised by American Dynamism
“It was more of a surprise for the people in Silicon Valley, many of whom who still had funds that were operating in China. It was more of a surprise for them. And now I don't think it's a surprise for anyone. I think everyone's gets the thesis and is, is on bo…”
Boyle: a16z created American Dynamism fund due to unique government sales model
“The real fundamental reason why we built a fund and a practice is because these companies sell in very different ways than all of the other companies in our portfolio.”
Boyle: Washington understood a16z's thesis earlier than Silicon Valley did
“I often say D.C. Got what we were doing a lot earlier than the people in Silicon Valley, but now it's just sort of an obvious thing.”
Boyle: Belief that big government tech businesses cannot be built is false
“They were very wary of companies that had to go through the long procurement cycle to work with government, and so there was sort of this meme in Silicon Valley that you can't build a big government business, and if we've seen anything over the last 10 years t…”
Boyle: 'The Social Network' Was 2010s Tech's Most Defining Movie
“I've always said that I think the social network had probably the greatest influence of the twenty-tens in terms of being a defining movie of what technology means.”
Boyle: Apex Space Reached Orbit in Record 13 Months From Design
“We were one of the earliest investors in a company called Apex Space. I believe they are the fastest company to get from clean sheet design to orbit in 13 months in, in history which is pretty incredible.”
Boyle: Low Earth Orbit Faces a Critical Ground Station Shortage
“We do not have enough ground stations to get data back to Earth as quickly as we need to. And given that low Earth orbit has just been, I would say, you know, saturated by payloads in the last several years, particularly because the cost of launch has come dow…”
Boyle: SpaceX's Biggest Legacy Is Spreading Manufacturing Methodology Across Industry
“I do think that the legacy of SpaceX, yes, everything they've built and done is important, but the manufacturing processes that people have learned at SpaceX is going to be carrying America forward for generations. When you think how tens of thousands of peopl…”
Boyle: SpaceX and Palantir Sued the Government to Open Defense Procurement
“SpaceX and Palantir walked so that everyone else could run, and I, it's maybe unfair to say that they walked, but both of them had to sue the government.”
Boyle: A renaissance of tech leaders is entering public service
“We are seeing this, I would call it a renaissance, of people in the private sector, particularly people in tech with tech backgrounds, Wanting to serve their country, wanting to come into government.”
Boyle: Anduril wouldn't exist without Oculus and Palmer Luckey's gaming obsession
“Because Andrel would not have happened if not for Oculus. Oculus would not have happened if not for Palmer's obsession with gaming, right?”
Boyle: 23% of 17-Year-Old American Boys Have ADHD Diagnoses
“The New York Times expose that came out a couple months ago basically said that 17%, or no, no, 23% of all seventeen-year-old boys have been given an ADHD diagnosis.”
Boyle: a16z investment themes evolve from thesis to meme to product
“We always go from thesis to meme to product.”
Boyle: Flock Safety cameras tracked kidnapped baby across Georgia to rescue child
“He said shortly after the kidnapping, flock safety cameras in Atlanta picked up the car and was able to follow that car across multiple counties and find that baby unharmed a couple hours later and bring him back to his mother and bring the perpetrators to jus…”
Boyle: U.S. CS and engineering degrees will surpass liberal arts in 2023
“In 2010, if you looked at the number of degrees that were awarded, ah, across U.S. Colleges, there were four times as many liberal arts degrees awarded to students as there were engineering degrees or computer science. That is, there, in 20, or 23, that will f…”
Boyle: Nine of Top 10 Global Market Cap Companies Are US Tech
“25 years ago, if you looked at the market cap of the largest 10 companies in the world, 25 years ago three of the top 10 were American tech companies. Now that is nine of the top 10, 25 years later.”
Boyle: Audience enthusiasm for Tarantino film contradicted news media narratives
“It was a weird movie going experience in 2019 to be surrounded by people who were laughing, who loved it, you know, it kind of went against everything you were reading in the news, which is that, like, you know, No, no one agrees with sort of this alternative …”
a16z launched American Dynamism thesis three weeks before 2022 Ukraine invasion
“We launched the thesis three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in, in twenty-twenty-two.”
Boyle: Flock Safety began selling to HOAs before expanding to government
“Flock Safety, where they started out as a consumer business selling directly to homeowners associations, and they were having such success with the people in their communities that they were serving, That law enforcement officials started pulling them into gov…”