How Silicon Valley helps spread the same sterile aesthetic across the world
siliconization
Siliconization refers to how local technocultural practices all around the world have been replaced by an imported "Silicon Valley" model, especially since the 1990s.
How Tech Is Remaking Fashion in Its Image
The ethos of Silicon Valley—scalability, homogeneity, and a subtle exclusivity—has crept into the clothes people wear.
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?
Inside Shenzhen’s race to outdo Silicon Valley
Shenzhen flooded the world with cheap gadgets. Can it now become what Silicon Valley never did—a global hub of innovation, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing?
What Anthropic's fight with the Pentagon tells us about the politics of Silicon Valley
Trying to make sense of the conjuncture
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass - The …
archived 30 Apr 2026 15:40:29 UTC
Books — Sharon Weinberger
Drawing on deep, exclusive reporting, a veteran national security correspondent reveals how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power.Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all. As Sharon Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as we now know it, and some of its biggest and most valuable companies today owe much of their success to the Pentagon and CIA. Beginning with the War on Terror and accelerating under Donald Trump, however, the old alliance between elected leaders in Washington and the unelected CEOs of Silicon Valley has grown increasingly uneasy as power has shifted to the private sector and Big Tech exerts greater and greater influence over its old patrons. Companies such as SpaceX and Palantir, along with newer entrants to the field such as Anduril, are proudly supporting—and quietly shaping—US national defense, whether by providing spies and soldiers with AI and cloud-computing tools or actual military hardware such as microwave weapons, hypersonic missiles, and advanced drones. The implications of this historic shift are poorly understood and fraught with peril. What happens when mercurial billionaires like Elon Musk control weapons and technologies that were once the preserve of the US government? How will this new military-industrial complex affect the way wars are fought, or even which wars are fought? That is the urgent question before us today, at the dawn of this new era—and as Weinberger reveals, it is one on which our collective future might well hinge.
Who Asked For This? - Cal Newport
Last week, Elizabeth Lopatto published an insightful article in The Verge. It boasted an intriguing title: “Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want.” “Within ... Read more
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewi…
Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass
The people building A.I. fear that we have only a short time before advanced A.I. disrupts the labor force.
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shoc…
Silicon Valley: A Reality Check
The nation has spoken: weird pointless $400 wi-fi enabled juicer company Juicero is the perfect symbol of Silicon Valley. So says the Washington Post: Juicero Shows What’s Wrong With Silicon …
More Everything Forever
This "smart and wonderfully readable" (New York Times) exposé shows why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death...
