#DefenseTech Isn't Going To Make It and A Memo to Sequoia Capital
And what it might do differently
There are these times when, I think, it’s useful to take stock of where you are and where you might go.
And so it was when I attended The Hill and the Valley event on Wednesday.
To be honest it was surprising when I got the invite though perhaps not as surprising when you consider that I have several portfolio companies in Ukraine.
You’d think that I’d be a panelist but then you’d think wrong. My companies actually work.
The first part took place at the Congressional Auditorium — Capitol Visit Center — and the second was a dinner at the Library of Congress. I didn’t attend the dinner though I was invited to that, too, apparently.
Quite a number of the top venture capitalists were there. There was Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, Delian Asparouhov of Founders Fund, Joe Lonsdale of 8VC, and Jacob Helberg of Palantir (and Keith Rabois’s husband). We’ve covered a lot of these miscreants before here. I’ve even called for a criminal inquiry into Varda, Delian’s company.
There was a new addition: Roelof Botha of Sequoia was there, too. More on him in a moment. I think I might have been too quick to publish the other day. Botha was calm and careful.
Botha artfully dodged a question from the very Israeli Daniel Gross about spies in Silicon Valley when Senator Lindsey Graham discussed all the spying going on throughout our economy. He also had one of the best lines of the conference when he said he was more worried about “dumb people than smart machines.”
Rather shamefully all but one of the panelists were men. Senator Krysten Sinema represented the distaff sex though I suppose she has only ever really represented herself. There was Senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Rounds, Chuck Schumer, and Cory Booker and Speaker Mike Johnson and Congressmen Ken Calvert and Richie Torres and a few I’m leaving out because they weren’t altogether memorable.
There they were altogether human and frail without the protection of their Twitter avatars, without the adoration of CNBC, without the glamor of their investments.
A few of them I went up to and told how things actually are. If you want government contracts you have to submit to the Commerce Department’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), guys. You can’t bullshit (or bribe) your way to government contracts.
Let the indictment of Henry Cuellar, who is a big fan of the border security company Anduril, be your guide on what not to do.
A friend of mine and I were laughing about some of the presentations and how wild they seemed. I was reminded of that old saying, “these are the travelers and we’re the innkeepers.” One got the sense that most of these congresspeople are just shaking down the Silicon Valley types for campaign contributions. A fool and his money are easily parted, though we might ask if it really is the fool’s money when so many of these types are backed by foreign governments.
Oddly Lindsey Graham was the voice of reason, telling those assembled that they weren’t going to get the exemptions they previously enjoyed under the Section 230 regime and that AI was one election cycle away from being regulated very harshly.
Nobody was quite listening, though.
Is it really normal to have the CEO of Palantir going off on student protestors?
Here’s the mention and the clean up:
POLITICO’s Brendan Bordelon reported yesterday on remarks made by Palantir CEO Alex Karp at a Capitol Hill event meant to bridge the cultural gap between the Bay Area and Washington, in which Karp expressed his opposition to campus protests against Israel’s war efforts, joked about drone striking his business rivals, and warmed up the crowd for a surprise video appearance by former President Donald Trump.
Jacob Helberg, one of Karp’s advisers and a key player in the bill passed last week that could force TikTok’s sale, told Brendan that Karp “believes in working with the U.S. government regardless of who’s in office,” and that “It’s great for both sides to familiarize themselves with a little bit of West Coast humor.”
Don’t jokes have to be funny?
I sat in the Reserved Section (though I was not invited) and the press section (though I am not press).
I sat right behind Botha and mentioned, in passing, that my uncle had served with his grandfather, Pik, in South Africa. Pik Botha served as the foreign minister in the apartheid government and the mining minister in the Mandela one.
I expressed to Roelof that I was interested in buying 23andMe, where he is on the board. He told me that Ann wanted to take it private. I said that that wasn’t a good idea and that I suspected it wouldn’t be allowed.
He also told me that the firm was done with China. I said that he had other national security concerns at Sequoia. He said we’d talk and gave me his associate’s card. I reached out.
From what I understand Sequoia has been turned by the U.S., notwithstanding the efforts of Thiel and others to make life complicated for the venture fund in his reporting to the FBI.
The way I read the departure of Congressman Mike Gallagher from Capitol Hill is that Thiel and Palantir were realizing the limits of this “beat up Sequoia” approach.
Like Botha, I hold out hope that the U.S. and China might one day reconcile and perhaps a rapprochement is already taking place. The world’s first and second largest economies will always have more in common than would appear.
Unfortunately, it’s not wise of Sequoia to continue backing Elon Musk’s AI startup or X.com.
Nor is it a good idea to have rabid nonperforming Zionists like Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire applauding Ole Miss students calling protestors monkeys.
You're not thinking very hard about geopolitics if you don't understand why Binance founder CZ got 4 months and SBF — who was backed by Sequoia Capital — got 25 years in federal prison.
It’s nice to see that Sequoia Capital appears to have been turned.
I also talked to Vinod Khosla and informed him rather politely that I thought that Open AI was going to get into trouble with the U.S. authorities. We discussed his father, who was in the Indian Army, and shook hands.
I stepped out to take a phone call. Both I and the person I was talking to got hacked immediately thereafter. I’m told it was Indian intelligence, which has been on the march.
****
It seems rather vulgar to host a closed event at the People’s house though it was nice of them to allow in press and the students albeit at the last moment.
And, I thought, rather impermissibly at first, and then thrillingly, at last, that many of these guys aren’t going to make it.
There’s Joe Lonsdale, one of whose LPs is a chief of staff to Vladimir Putin. That’s not very attentive to details. Might Lonsdale pushing electronic weapons be a front for the Russian technology?
There was the Palantir guys who didn’t seem to realize that in taking the National Health Service contract that they had become wedded to Perfidious Albion’s whims, wishes, and wants.
I have come to believe that the entire Hill and Valley conference was an elaborate, intricate and altogether beautiful trap. My compliments to the chef.
Looking around at politician and VC partner alike, they are all but one scandal from it all coming down upon them.
Perhaps, thought I walking to Old Ebbit, that the Ukraine War funding could well prove their undoing.
Victory has defeated them by revealing them.