Charlie Warzel

youtu.beThe Faith-Based Logic of Silicon ValleyYouTube video by The Atlantic

We turned my column this week (about Elizabeth Holmes, tech leaders, venture capitalists, and Silicon Valley as a 'faith-based' industry) into a video essay and Galaxy Brain's new video editor Lindsey Sitz really brought it to life. Was able to incorporate new stuff in too. Hope you like it!

youtu.beThe Faith-Based Logic of Silicon ValleyYouTube video by The Atlantic

we also made this into a (longer, more in-depth) video essay, which i'm proud of youtu.be/__Zm41nIGhU?...

Charlie Warzel@cwarzel.bsky.social

I wrote about watching You Can See Everything at a moment when the tech industry has really adopted a zealous, faith-based approach to the future and who’ll get us there. It’s about the cult of the builder, vc betting and the problem with ‘never wrong, just early’ www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

youtu.beThe Faith-Based Logic of Silicon ValleyYouTube video by The Atlantic

youtu.beThe Faith-Based Logic of Silicon ValleyYouTube video by The Atlantic

link here too bc bsky cut it off youtu.be/__Zm41nIGhU?...

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk’s flying car have in common?

And here's the column if that's your thing! www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

a nontrivial portion the ai and cybersecurity people on X are doing the ‘time to take out money and have food water and medication on hand in case everything goes dark’ stuff and i for one don’t love that

youtu.beThe Zealousness of the New Tech RightYouTube video by The Atlantic

IT'S TECH OLIGARCH END TIMES WEEK ON GALAXY BRAIN feat. @naomiaklein.bsky.social & @astra.bsky.social. Tried to have a big conversation about elite impunity and the way SV built tools that they argued would bring people together/get rid of gatekeepers. but consolidated power/control for them.

theatlantic.comThe Armageddon EconomyTech leaders have escape plans. What about everybody else?

gift link to transcript/audio formats! www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/202...

Charlie Warzel reposted

Ana Marie Cox

@anamariecox.com

Enormous news. A melanoma vaccine, one of the most deadly cancers out there. Science is good and helpful and there should be more of it. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

washingtonpost.comBreakthrough vaccine for the deadliest skin cancer cut risk by almost halfThe skin cancer vaccine is based on mRNA technology that helped end the coronavirus pandemic.

Charlie Warzel reposted

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

70 percent of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

intracranial aneurysm (spooky, scary)

this is the kinda image that makes me want to write a book just so it can be the cover

Reuters Pictures@pictures.reuters.com

Lights are reflected off a bulletproof screen as President Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina. More photos of the week: reut.rs/4yGkBNh 📷 Evan Vucci

Charlie Warzel reposted

@chemotaxis.bsky.social

holy shit this guy rocks and maybe is the patron saint of Operations

Charlie Warzel@cwarzel.bsky.social

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

Charlie Warzel reposted

Micah

@rincewind.run

literally this comic except he apparently lives in Czechia instead of Nebraska

Charlie Warzel@cwarzel.bsky.social

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

theatlantic.comThe Man Who Saved the Internet YesterdayOndřej Surý was a relatively anonymous volunteer working on PHP security. Then the internet exploded.

theverge.comTrump says Sundar Pichai talked him out of renaming the Atlantic OceanPichai allegedly said, “Oceans are different, sir.”

you're just going about your day and you now get to read stuff like "Trump says Sundar Pichai talked him out of renaming the Atlantic Ocean" and you just have to nod and move on with your day. “Oceans are different, sir.” lmao www.theverge.com/policy/10167...

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

this kind of arms race btwn personal agents and institutions without systems to handle em is what we tried to poke at in our Chaos Agents piece last week www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social

Most/all of this seems to be users giving Muse/Dot/whatever AI agent they're running access to their bank accounts, and then not knowing what those agents are doing / banks not being able to detect authorized vs unauthorized stuff. what could go wrong? www.axios.com/2026/10/22/a...

axios.comScoop: Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accountsBanks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others are racing to contain agent risks.

theatlantic.comThe AI-Hacking Apocalypse Began Last NightWebsites across the internet are going dark to protect themselves against a newly discovered vulnerability.

Nice, easy to understand (and sobering) 'internet is broken' explainer from @matteowong.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

And finally this one from the summer about two DOGE employees who are trying to do it in the private sector and fully adopting the 'builder' moniker. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

The through-line of all of this stuff is *not* that everyone's a con artist or that Musk is doing Theranos or that AI isn't a powerful technological force. Obviously! It's an argument about the culture and structure (venture capital is a big part) of Silicon Valley that is speculative and reckless.

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

Another, from 2022...about the FOMO bullies pushing Web3 as inevitable w/ some good posts and comments from the current crop of AI boosters www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

theatlantic.comAI Has Become a Technology of FaithSam Altman and Arianna Huffington told me that they believe generative AI can help millions of suffering people. I’m not so sure.

This one, from '24 where I interviewed Sam Altman and Ariana Huffington about their (at that time) non-existent AI health app (which still seems to be in beta; there hasn't been an update on their website for years) about AI as a technology of faith www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

This peice felt like an extension of a few other things I've written over the last four or five years. So I wanted to throw out some gift links to those. 1st is an old newsletter about 'builder brain' and what it overlooks www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

Charlie Warzel reposted

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

Charlie Warzel reposted

Alex Shephard

@alexshephard.bsky.social

A lot of Republicans think that the best way to imitate Trump is to be carelessly cruel on a spectacular scale and I just don't think that's what most people want www.axios.com/2026/10/21/r...

axios.comExclusive: Ramaswamy doubles down on explosive ad featuring rival's mother, despite backlashRamaswamy is gambling that the deeply personal attack by Amy Acton's mother will resonate with voters.

Silicon Valley is a faith-based industry www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comYou Can Believe EverythingWhat do Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk's flying car have in common?

This is not to say that the whole industry is built around Theranos-like frauds, but that the structure and culture of it makes it incredibly difficult to understand what’s real and what’s vaporware and who is operating in bad faith

modest of spoilers i should say but not crazy

chat,,, is it a good thing if you cannot believe anything you encounter without embarking on a forensic mission?

alix e. harrow@alixeharrow.bsky.social

it took four hours and emails across three agencies to determine if a simple, polite email invitation was legitimate, in case you're wondering whether AI has improved efficiency in my field

404media.co‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AIDecompiled, cloned, and modified software is going viral and might slopify everything.

hardslop

Jason Koebler@jasonkoebler.bsky.social

The AI 'Reverse Engineer Anything' craze is going to further sloppify the real world & put insecure buggy stuff on all sorts of hardware. It is also going to liberate a bunch of internet of shit devices that have been needlessly bricked by their manufacturers www.404media.co/reverse-engi...

frontofficesports.comPolymarket, Athlete Endorsers Under Fire Over Cornell 7 Market“This case, and sexual assault on college campuses more broadly, are deeply important issues,” a Polymarket spokesperson tells FOS.

genuinely what are we doing

Joon Lee@joon.bsky.social

Polymarket is taking bets on whether the seven Cornell students accused of raping a student will receive a felony sex crime charge. Among the athletes endorsing Polymarket: LeBron James, Derek Jeter, Eli Manning, Sue Bird, Reggie Bush and Richard Sherman. frontofficesports.com/article/poly...

about to test whether 10:30a is too early to see this documentary

i feel not well equipped to reenter reality now

Charlie Warzel reposted

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

Humans need friction. So does the economy. Wrote about Musing Ourselves to Death & what a future where the internet transforms into a place for AI assistants to perfect commerce. Spoiler: We talked to some smart ppl & it would be chaos! w/ @matteowong.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

theatlantic.comWill the New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Be a Weapon in the Culture Wars?It’s not just stealing cars and running from cops anymore.

It's @plante.bsky.social WEEK on Galaxy Brain. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT GRAND THEFT AUTO 6. The history of the franchise, the controversy, how it's going to slot into the culture wars, whether you can make a game for everyone in 2026, and some really great stuff about how it explains America

youtu.beWill the New ‘Grand Theft Auto’ Be a Weapon in the Culture Wars?YouTube video by The Atlantic

YT LINK youtu.be/mnqns2jkdWw?...

this commenter sums it up nicely

nytimes.comKatie Zacharia, Trump’s New Press Secretary, Is Fired After 5 Days (Gift Article)The ouster came as Ms. Zacharia was shadowed by questions about how she had presented her legal career and handled her first press briefing.

honestly p legendary run

Ben Collins@bencollins.bsky.social

There it is!

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

you don’t want everyone pulling money out of a bank at the exact same time because a competitor has a marginally better interest rate, you don’t want your hospital and insurer to dynamically coordinate to adjust visit prices up on an hourly basis

But the bigger thing is that retailers and the companies providing the agents (Meta, OpenAI, Instinct) are going to strike deals and create protocols. This means preferential treatment, negotiating limits to prices and discounts) these contracts will rarely be visible to consumers.

theatlantic.comImagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper TowelsAI agents are doing our shopping for us, and wreaking havoc on the internet.

the comp that really got me, from Wharton’s Rory Van Loo is this idea that agents would bring stock market volatility to basically every consumer market/ good because they can theoretically pay perfect attention and a lot of the economy is based around ppl being inattentive

genuinely think that chartbeat and real-time audience traffic insight dashboards are one of the worst things to happen to the media industry. it found out what people read and wanted and public trust has pretty much only sharply declined since then

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there's another aspect to all this: audiences—after a while, maybe even subconsciously—respect you less when they realize you're just giving them what they want. i think a result of many years on the algorithmic internet is a lot of ppl are exhausted of having themselves mirrored back all the time

and the post below offers a smart wrinkle to people being tired of getting fed 'what they want' ... because revealed preferences don't always match the real ones! bsky.app/profile/tone...

Toneloaf@toneloaf.bsky.social

I don't actually dispute this but I think in a world run by algorithms, "revealed preferences" don't tell us as much about people's actual preferences as the idea implies.

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remember talking to a reporter who covered the auto industry in the 90s and early 2000s who was like, yep, one day it became clear how many people were reading my beat reporting & i got moved away from covering the nuts and bolts of it which made it harder for the reporting to provide accountability

anyone got a good recommendation for a solid plain t-shirt brand? not too thin, not too structured. something with a collar that doesn't like immediately sag. my t-shirt house needs to get in order and i'm looking for help!

nytimes.comRising Costs Push Necessities Out of Reach for Nearly Half of Americans (Gift Article)Inflation has made basic goods hard to afford and attitudes toward inequality have changed, studies from the Pew Research Center showed.

this sure sounds like an alarm bell to me www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/b...

Charlie Warzel reposted

Colin

@colin-fraser.net

*putting a bomb in a car* cars will soon be able to explode

mr. TIM@timkellogg.me

small models will soon be able to self-replicate Anthropic finds that 30B models can currently do most of the tasks required, but not end-to-end. they think models as small as 9B (9-18 GB) may be able to do it on edge hardware, like IoT devices, within months www.anthropic.com/research/sel...

anthropic.comAI models may be capable of self-replicating without access to a datacenterSmall AI models may be only months away from being able to self-replicate across cheap IoT devices like Android TV boxes, with no datacenter needed.