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Verdon: Big Tech ideological subversion stops government collaboration, helping adversaries

Guillaume Verdon · Ep 76: Accelerate or Die! Guillaume Verdon and the e/acc Movement · Joe Lonsdale · Jan 31, 2024 · at 10:34

Guillaume Verdon (founder of Extropic and e/acc, former Google X lead) discusses internal tech worker protests against U.S. defense contracts with host Joe Lonsdale.

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“What I saw with my own eyes was that a sort of cultural subversion within big tech more broadly was stopping a big tech from working with the government, right? Like basically ideologies that sort of were very pervasive within the middle layers of the organization, Basically made it so that whenever, let's say Alphabet or other organizations want to work with the government, there's a sort of, ah, you know, protest and so on. And how, how convenient is that, you know, for our adversaries that, you know, the ideologies that are pervasive in our most advanced technological firms are, you know, serve, serve our adversaries in, in that, you know, we don't deploy the best technologies to the government because of these protests.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

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Disclosure
Verdon: Started e/acc via anonymous Twitter alt at Google X
“I think I think I started it roughly when I was towards the tail end of my stint at Google X there, obviously the baseline is secrecy. I couldn't talk much and you know, about what I do and can't, couldn't say anything too controversial. And so, you know, I st…”
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