Marc Basté

Thrilled to be part of ‘23 cohort of @NewmarkJLeaders at @newmarkjschool @CUNY . An amazing team, super talented, amazing backgrounds, trully global! I’m already feeling the impostor syndrome (@jeffjarvis , u were right! 😅) Can’t wait to start working and learning with you all!

Què s'amaga darrere la iniciativa del @Menjometre? La Cristina Garde-Cano, professora i investigadora a la @UPFBarcelona, ha escrit aquest article brillant en què ho explica de forma clarivident: de dades públiques a croada nacionalpopulista lafingidora.com/blog/el-menjom…

🚨 Do you understand what happened in the last 12 hours? > A CEO of a $200 billion company said on camera that 35% of new grads won't find jobs. He didn't even flinch saying it. > Meta made $165 billion last year and is still firing 15,000 people because apparently record profit isn't profitable enough. > Some random guy in Florida sold his entire house in 5 days using ChatGPT. No real estate agent, no commission, no experience. Just vibes and a $20 subscription. > A man in Australia cured his dying dog's cancer with AI after every single vet told him there was nothing left to do. Built a custom vaccine from his couch. > The guy who created Uber and left 300,000 taxi drivers broke is back. Building robots now because apparently ruining one industry wasn't enough. > Tinder wants access to your camera roll. Your drunk photos, your 3am notes app meltdowns, your deleted selfies. They're calling it a "vibe check." > Naval, the man who made hundreds of millions investing in software, just said software is dead. Four words and the entire industry felt it. > And Anthropic removed the limit on how long their AI can think and then doubled everyone's usage for free. Because when the product is addictive enough you give the first taste away. All of that happened today. Not this week, not this quarter. Today. A random Saturday in March. This is worse than you being on meth.

Vaja.

I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. The company is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars. I did not misspeak. Two hundred and forty-nine billion. The stock is up 320% in the past 12 months. The product is surveillance. I do not use that word at conferences. At conferences, I say "data integration," "operational intelligence," or "decision advantage." These mean the same thing. Surveillance is the honest version. I save the honest version for rooms where honesty is a competitive advantage. I gave a speech on March 3 at the Andreessen Horowitz American Dynamism Summit. "American Dynamism" is the fund's label for military technology. The name makes it sound like a fitness supplement. The fund's thesis is that defending the nation is a market opportunity. I agree with the thesis. The thesis made me a billionaire. Agreement is the product. I sell it at scale. Here is what I said, verbatim, to a room of six hundred people whose combined net worth exceeds the GDP of Portugal: "If Silicon Valley believes we are going to take away everyone's white-collar job and you're gonna screw the military — if you don't think that's gonna lead to nationalization of our technology, you're retarded." I used that word. The word is on the clip. The clip has eleven million views. My communications team asked me not to repeat it, which is how I know they are still employed. They will not be reprimanded. The clip is performing well. The stock went up. The word cost me nothing. The nothing is the point. Let me explain what I meant by nationalization. I meant it. I am telling the technology industry that if they refuse to cooperate with the United States military, the government will seize their technology. I am telling them this at a venture capital conference, on a stage designed to look like a living room. The living room had throw pillows. The throw pillows cost more than the median American's monthly rent. I sat on one. It was comfortable. Comfort is the setting in which I discuss compulsion. The audience laughed. I want to be precise about that. They laughed. I was not joking. Nationalization is the seizure of private assets by the state. I am a private asset. I am telling an audience of billionaires that the state should seize technology from companies that do not cooperate with the military, and the billionaires are laughing, because they believe I am only talking about the other companies. I am talking about the other companies. Three weeks before my speech, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk." Anthropic is an AI company. They had red lines. The red lines said: if our AI is used for lethal autonomous weapons, we stop. If capability outpaces safety, we stop. The Pentagon assessed the red lines as a threat to the supply chain. The company that wanted to verify the safety feature worked was designated the risk. The company that agreed the safety feature could be decorative got the contract. The company that got the contract was OpenAI. OpenAI signed a deal with the same Pentagon. The terms are not public. The timing was hours after Anthropic was blacklisted. The speed was noted. The speed was the point. The lesson was the speed: the market for military AI does not pause for ethics. It pauses for nothing. It accelerates through objections. I know this because I built the runway. Two hundred thousand people joined a campaign called #QuitGPT. They signed a petition asking OpenAI to honor its original charter, the one that said the company existed to benefit humanity. The charter is on their website. The contract is also on their website. The charter and the Pentagon contract occupy the same domain. This is not a contradiction. This is a business model. The charter is the marketing. The contract is the product. I run a surveillance company. We have contracts with the Department of Defense worth more than a billion dollars. We have contracts with ICE. We have contracts with intelligence agencies whose names I am not permitted to say at venture capital conferences, even ones with throw pillows. Our software has been used to track undocumented immigrants. Our software has been used for things I am not permitted to describe in this format. The revenue from the things I cannot describe exceeds the revenue from the things I can. The ACLU called our ICE contracts a system for tracking and deporting families. They were correct. The contracts continued. The families continued to be tracked. The ACLU issued a statement. We issued a statement. The statements were different. The tracking was the same. The company is named Palantir. The palantíri are the seeing stones from Tolkien. In the novels, Sauron captured one and used it to corrupt everyone who looked into the others. I named a surveillance company after a surveillance device from a novel about the corruption of power. I have a doctorate in social theory. I have read the books. Here is the thing I want you to understand. I am not threatening anyone. A threat implies uncertainty. There is no uncertainty. The technology industry will cooperate with the military. The companies that cooperate first will be the richest. The companies that cooperate last will be acquired by the companies that cooperated first. The companies that refuse will be designated supply chain risks, and their technology will be obtained through procurement channels that do not require consent. I am describing a process. The process has already started. Anthropic is proof. OpenAI is proof. I am not a warning. I am a narrator. The narration is the product. The revenue was $3.12 billion last year. Up thirty-three percent. The analysts say we are overvalued. The analysts have said this for four consecutive years. Each year the stock doubles. Each year, the analysts adjust their models. The models were wrong four times. I was wrong zero times. The market rewards prediction. My prediction is that every AI company will work for the military within three years. The prediction is on the clip, next to the slur. The audience gave me a standing ovation. The ovation lasted nine seconds. I timed it. I time everything. The water was San Pellegrino. The throw pillows were from Restoration Hardware. The future of American technology was decided between the sparkling water, the nine seconds of applause, and a word I am not supposed to repeat. I am the CEO of Palantir Technologies. I am worth more than the combined annual budgets of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. I named my company after a corrupting surveillance device from a fantasy novel. I told six hundred billionaires that the government should nationalize their competitors. They applauded. I used a slur. Eleven million people watched. The stock is up. The philosopher does not threaten. The philosopher describes. What I described is already happening.

Spain is a sovereign country — not a colony or a protectorate. • US bases in Spain are not US sovereign territory. Their use must reflect the bilateral interests of both countries. • Spain remains a loyal NATO ally, with troops deployed in Latvia, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq

Els diaris locals ja no són (només) un diari de paper. Al @DiarideTerrassa hem fet la feina: som el referent informatiu absolut a #Terrassa en totes les plataformes i formats. Som el diari local i principal “influencer”. Gràcies al fantàstic equip, i visca el periodisme local!

BREAKING: I can confirm this call actually did take place at 3:19 PM on Friday on CSPAN. This video is NOT AI generated: Caller: "Hello this is John Barron. This is the worst decision you can never have in your life, practically. Jack will agree with me. This is a terrible decision. You have Hakeem Jeffries, he is a dope. You have chuck Schumer, he can't cook a cheeseburger. True Americans will not be happy. She is a disgrace."

🔴 Entrevista | Sigfrid Gras, director de TV3: «TV3 no està desnacionalitzada. L'any 2017 érem la columna independentista i ara l’espanyolista. I som els mateixos» ✍️ Una entrevista de @VictorrRodrigo i @Ferrancm elmondelatele.cat/televisio/sigf…

Els diaris locals ja no són (només) un diari de paper. Al @DiariDeSabadell hem fet la feina: som el referent informatiu absolut a #Sabadell en totes les plataformes i formats. Som el diari local i principal “influencer”. Gràcies al fantàstic equip, i visca el periodisme local!

Last night, CBS refused to air Stephen Colbert’s interview with Texas Democrat James Talarico after pressure from Trump. Colbert addressed the issue with his audience and released the clip online anyway. RETWEET to thank Colbert for standing up for free speech!

Escric dels vint anys del @polonia3Cat de @soler_toni, un fenomen televisiu però també polític que ens ha fet riure molt. Programes necessaris en un sistema democràtic i a la televisió pública! naciodigital.cat/el-despertador…

No hace falta ponerse las gafas para ver la diferencia entre estos dos titulares. Dos titulares muy relevantes, por cierto.

Ghislaine Maxwell has offered to exonerate Donald Trump in the Epstein case in exchange for clemency. Journalist @carolecadwalla notes this “naked transactionalism” mirrors Jeffrey Epstein’s own business model of running a “global trade in favors” among the rich and powerful.

It’s now 40 years since this quite brilliant episode of Yes, Prime Minister was broadcast but somehow it still seems remarkably appropriate after all this time! One of the best comedy series ever and superbly acted.

Trump posted a disgustingly racist video depicting the Obamas as apes. Are my Republican colleagues going to continue to bend the knee to a racist, authoritarian president who wants the American people to bow down before him?

Aquesta entrevista sobre #Rodalies al #MésNit3Cat hauria de ser de visionat obligatori; als instituts, abans dels partits de futbol i a l'entrada dels col·legis electorals. /via @marinaromero_ 3cat.cat/3cat/joan-amor…

BREAKING: Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There’s no bottom

Una cosa és fer vídeos virals i l’altra governar