State-sponsored evil

JD Vance’s speech at Munich is worth watching in full. It’s a much more nuanced and broadly reasonable argument than I think Europeans are used to hearing from the American right.

Personal update: I broke up with France and just moved to San Francisco 🇫🇷💔🇺🇸 After 2.5 years building Gigi from Paris, it was about time. We did what we could there, built the foundations, proved the vision, and recently raised a new round with Khosla after a full product pivot. But at some point, you outgrow the place that raised you. France is that charming ex who says they love your fire… but keeps asking you to lower your voice at dinner. And I can’t. I tried. When you build something ambitious, you realize geography isn’t neutral. It either multiplies your luck or quietly kills your momentum. I chose to go where luck compounds. - Where working until 2 am with your team isn’t seen as toxic, it’s just called building. - Where being outspoken, weird or “too much” is celebrated. - Where telling a story about something that doesn’t exist yet doesn’t make you sound stupid, it makes them text 3 friends saying “you need to meet her.” - And where the density of talent and energy dares you to raise your own f****** bar every single day. So here I am. Surrounded by creepy AI billboards. New city. New chapter. Same mission: building an AI that turns everything you’ve done, and everyone you know, into the opportunities you were always meant to have. I don’t usually make a wishlist, but this move feels like a big one. Here's what I’m looking for as I settle in: 1) A founding CTO who’s built before and wants to go all in with me. 2) Founder friends who wanna hang out, b**** about their investors, compare retention curves, and become early Gigi testers. 3) A flat to share with my favorite human, @HugoAmsellem 4) Share this tweet. Much love 💛 SF, I’m here. I’m a pain in the ass, but a fun one to be around I promise. Hit me up!

@andreasklinger @euacchq IT BEGINS! Austrian Notary association is clearly in denial that they repel investment and are the main cause of painful bureaucracy

Surreal that some Brits are more upset at Elon for tweeting about this tragedy than they are at their politicians, bureaucrats, police, academics, judiciary, past and present Prime Ministers, etc. who covered it up. People of the UK, you should be enraged at your government.

In which I get very depressed that nothing has changed in 20 years. piped.video/watch?v=cBIvSGLk…

Folks in the tech industry are tempted to think that the U.S. economy is doing bad because software had a big bust over the last two years. But the broader U.S. economy seems to basically ignore what happens in Silicon Valley. noahpinion.blog/p/the-us-eco…

China 🇨🇳 emits more carbon than the U.S. 🇺🇸 and Europe 🇪🇺 combined. India 🇮🇳 is rapidly catching up 📈

Station F after 6 pm or on weekends is a ghost town. A handful of motivated entrepreneurs show up, but the rest? Subsidized startups and a PR facade. @Xavier75 has dropped by several times at night to check on the 42 crew and startups, he’s been disappointed to see so few people in @joinstationf . Culture matters

Mario Draghi calls on the EU to deregulate in order to foster innovation and help tech companies thrive. 🇪🇺🫡

Historic! The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI 🇪🇺 The #AIAct is much more than a rulebook — it's a launchpad for EU startups and researchers to lead the global AI race. The best is yet to come! 👍

The title says it all. Germany is willing to PAY $16 billion in order to use new (imported, polluting, CO2-emitting) gas generation, in place of clean domestic nuclear generation (i.e., simply restarting existing nuclear plants). Article link in reply. The article goes onto say that, whereas Germany was starting to consider restarting nuclear plants as an alternative to *coal*, it reaffirmed its plan to keep nuclear closed because they were able to secure gas supplies. Germany and other nations will now shift from coal to gas. That's arguably good news, although the indefensible closing of existing nuclear remains very bad news. The article also goes on to describe how this all shows that solar and wind generation require significant amounts of fossil (gas) capacity as backup. The rest of the article seems to be a little bit to pro-gas. It seems to suggest that German public/political support for keeping nuclear plants running was only because they would be replaced with coal, instead of gas, and that if gas supplies can be assured, politicans and the public would support keeping the nuclear plants closed. Or that's what the German government thought, at least. The article then appears to suggest that gas is not viewed as a "dirty, carbon heavy fuel". Only coal is. Basically that it's clean and not even a "fossil fuel." That view is mostly at odds with the facts, and is probably an inaccurate characterization of public views.

The great contemporary mystery playing out in France👇 ⁦@TheEconomist⁩

🇫🇷 Far-left French politician Louis Boyard slyly takes off his Rolex worth approx. $50,000 before giving an interview ‘denouncing the ultra-rich’ Communists are the worst hypocrites.

Here it is:

This is a truly impressive example of Great Britain.

Sex is good but have you tried having your country shutting down its last nuclear power plants in 30 mn?

UK v US salaries

Man, @vkhosla is brutal. I've never raised VC. Curious to know what founders who have think about this. Do 70% of investors add negative value?

If Germany had stuck with nuclear power it would have saved €350 billion and cut emissions by 73% more since 2022. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.…

The French government this week wanted to organise a big conference on working 4 days a week, but then realised Wednesday and Thursday are bank holidays and everyone is taking Friday off. France in May: you can't even get enough people for a meeting to discuss working less

How the Besties Think About Defense Investing Last week, @friedberg, @DavidSacks, and @chamath discussed investing in defense startups: Both Sacks and Chamath said they would have to think twice about investing in startups that made weapons. But, both have invested in defense companies building tech that is defensive in nature, gathers intelligence, and saves lives, like @saildrone and @allencontrol. Sacks: "I don't have a problem with investing in a company like @anduriltech. America needs defense companies ... and we need startup disruptors. So I'm not morally opposed to it. And in fact, I think it's probably a good thing." "I think my concern would be I don't really want to be part of the military industrial complex. I feel like it might corrupt my views on things. I don't want to feel an incentive to be like these generals who go on CNN and Fox News and justify every single war." Chamath: "That's my biggest fear as well. It's one thing to be investing in a bunch of companies where we're sitting around hoping for cheaper clicks on Facebook and Google. It's an entirely other thing to sit on the board of a company and hope for war. That's a horrible place to be." "If you believe that America should be the most important country in the world, and you have the ability to help it be that, eventually some of those decisions will come in contact with (the choice to invest in defense startups). Friedberg: "I think the fact that both of you highlighted a degree of trepidation, and you guys are fairly outside of the middle bounds of how Silicon Valley would think and make decisions, indicates why so much of Silicon Valley has deep concerns about investing in defense technology..."

Eric Schmidt says the US is 2-3 years ahead of China at AI, while Europe is too busy regulating to be relevant

Clara Chappaz (ministre du numérique) à propos de X : "nous voulons des outils pour nous assurer que les opinions qui seraient de fausses opinions peuvent être sorties de la plateforme"

*taps sign again*

Eric Schmidt says it's going to be rare to see the successes in Europe that you see in America and the UK: "The fundamental reason is that they can't get the capital and Europe's regulatory structure is so prohibitive It's really sad because the European talent pool is amazing, the opportunity to build companies in terms of impact is huge And frankly Europe's government and its regulation is slowing them down"

Historic! The EU becomes the very first continent to set clear rules for the use of AI 🇪🇺 The #AIAct is much more than a rulebook — it's a launchpad for EU startups and researchers to lead the global AI race. The best is yet to come! 👍

All those critiquing @elonmusk (rightly so) should begin by questioning those calling him a “genius” or even a “tech bro”. He invented NONE of the TECH. Just bought stuff at the right time. More marketing than science. He’s benefitted by billions of government dollars that he questions when given to others. Clear regressive political agenda: underfund government (even more) hoping that deregulation and a weak state can make outer space his playground & sling mud like a child at all progressive politicians like @Keir_Starmer. I wrote about this more than a decade ago in my book The Entrepreneurial State.