Yes, I never expected Marc Andreessen to flip his own bozo bit, but that quote did the trick. Andreessen took the concept of "shooting the messenger" to new depths of stupidity when he said that.
Still, this link is well worth the few minutes it takes to read. His blog has a lot of "Things I've learned from" entries from various people.
I have to call you out on this one. I disagree with Andreessen's statement on Snowden, but it is not an unreasonable position to hold (he did steal secrets and he did damage the capability and reputation of the US in revealing them. I just happen to think he was right to do so)
I suspect I also disagree with Andresseen on provision of comprehensive public healthcare (I am a product of the NHS) and gun control and many other political issues - all of which it is possible to have reasonable people disagree reasonably on.
Just because he holds a different view on this issue to most tech sector, does not make him a bozo. If anything, the potential danger Snowden has alerted us to is the ability of the Administration to shut down political discourse and disagreement through superior knowledge of our lives - ironically we should embrace statements like Andreesseens as something that can and should be openly discussed.
I hear what you're saying, but I believe that anyone who condemns Snowden's crimes while saying nothing about those of Alexander and Clapper is ethically challenged at best. Snowden arguably betrayed his government, while Clapper and Alexander committed offenses of even greater magnitude against the American people. If Andreessen has a beef with anyone, it's with the latter two people.
I personally find it difficult to believe that Snowden's revelations weren't already old news to the influential foreign business and political leaders that are the target of Andreessen's concern trolling. Snowden's sin was bringing the knowledge down the mountain to the rest of us.
It's part of this strange double standard we have for spies - their guys are liars, our guys are cunning. Once upon a time "our" meant "our country". Today it seems to mean "our values". I think that's an improvement.
And to be honest I think Chancellor Merkel, who by all definitions should be cynical as hell, was genuinely shocked by the Stasi like extent of PRISM et al. So I think Snowden did reveal, in convincing ways, that the NSA had gone far far beyond what many thought practical and most thought sane. No matter how cynical a business leader you might be a small part of you thought "everyone" did not really mean everyone till Snowden
> Andreessen took the concept of "shooting the messenger" to new depths of stupidity when he said that.
And yet, not really. With the exception of RSA, American tech. companies are being hammered for the actions of NSA, not for their own "crimes". Even German companies obey German legal directives after all, and Vodafone made clear the other day the extent of government monitoring of networks around the world.
To the extent that Snowden has made clear the reality that government (and not just criminals) can take advantage of the jurisdictional problems of an open Internet, that's not the fault of the U.S. tech sector either. After all, some of the most successful NSA programs are really liaisons with European security agencies that run the actual intake work, not conspiracies with Silicon Valley.
The correct solution for Europe if they want to be free of the possibility of other nations (incl. the USA) doing targeted operations in their networks is to completely balkanize the Internet, which companies like Google and Facebook oppose for obvious reasons.
You can credit Snowden with revealing to the world the types of dangers inherent to an open Internet, but that very same set of revelations is a large part of what's harming the U.S. tech sector. You're right that people may have figured it out eventually, but nations and companies around the world tended to agree not to make too big an issue of it since the benefits of an open Internet were thought to outweigh the risks. But Snowden forced the issue.
The only true solution to the issues he raised, if you're a European citizen, cannot be left to voluntary compliance by the other nations of the world, especially since you can never certify compliance with that. You'd have to instead build out your own Facebook, your own Google, your own tech sector, just like Russia and China have done.
So credit Snowden with opening the eyes of Europe to that reality, but you can't eat your cake and have it too. We've seen region locking spread too far with just with RIAA/MPAA to want to see it infect the rest of the Internet, but that is the message Snowden is responsible for (even if it wasn't the message he meant to send).
It's one thing to be dismayed at what the revelation of facts has done to the tech sector. Nonetheless, they are still facts. Calling Snowden a traitor is a red herring.
One could just as well say that Andreessen's greatest allegiance is to money. So perhaps in that context Snowden is a traitor to Andreessen's cause.
Yes, it's not that Andreessen's lost his mind; just that his role in life means he's in antagonism with people like us.
And Snowden is a traitor to the US government, whose interests are pretty much the same as wealthy elites like Andreessen (to a first approximation). But not a traitor to the world or even just the US population.
...the types of dangers inherent to an open Internet...
You haven't made the case that the NSA's shenanigans are in any way "inherent" to the internet as currently designed and implemented. I would suggest that these phenomena are due far more directly to the current organization of the USA federal government, and to the oligopoly that exists in internet service in that country. I think we ought to give Cerf, Kahn, and Postel a pass on this one.
> You haven't made the case that the NSA's shenanigans are in any way "inherent" to the internet as currently designed and implemented.
Not the NSA's shenanigans, the shenanigans of any properly resourced foreign (or domestic!) intelligence service. After all, the U.S. itself suffers the same problem in reverse from China and Russia and God only knows who else.
If there's anything I've learned from hacktivists, it's that if you leave your stuff on the open Internet it will be exploited eventually, the only question is who will be exploiting it.
You're describing two different classes of threat. The threat posed by bad actors from the other side of the world is necessarily bounded: they can't take more from me than I have "online" in the first place. If I have a bank account, a secret soft-drink formula, or other assets subject to attack, what I spend on defense can be proportional to the assets themselves.
The threat posed by the bad actors affiliated with the state to which I am subject is qualitatively different. Based on intended-private information that can be construed as unlawful or even vaguely against the national interest, they can take away the rest of my life. There's nothing proportional to that.
For me, a16z was just the best VC ever, I thought wow finally somebody different to everyone else, finally a real investor. But that statement just shattered all my high opinions of them, they're just another VC firm/shark/herd investor like everyone else. How sad :((
Presumably you mean that his moral judgement is suspect and therefore you won't follow his principles. That's fine, and I can respect that.
What I cannot agree with is that you can't learn anything from someone you disagree with. I think that's a terrible principle to have.
If you can't learn things from people you don't agree with then you are at risk of groupthink[1] at the very least.
As a specific example, William Churchill's leadership of the British Admiralty during the Gallipoli Campaign[2] in World War 2 was - in my view - completely immoral (as well as terrible ineffective). Indeed, his attitude towards the troops he sent to fight created one of the core national myths[3] of my country.
However to reject learning anything from Churchill because of that would deprive me of a lot.
One can learn a lot from Henry Ford about transforming industries. Does the fact that he had his newspapers publish anti-Semitic writings[4] mean we should ignore him completely?
Does Bill Gate's many ethical failings while building Microsoft into a monopoly mean we can't learn from how he structured his development teams during the browser wars (I didn't realize how ironic this example was until after I wrote it. Maybe Marc Andreessen could have learnt from him too..)
In business there are plenty of people with moral failing in one area or another.
In my view you are better sucking the marrow out of their teaching, and then viewing what they say through the lens of your own ethics.
[3] http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1398405363/61#61 (Sorry for the random forum link, but finding a better short summary of the "the English officers sent the Aussie Diggers to die while they stayed behind" thing is too hard right now.
Yes, true. One can certainly learn from what they have done, but I think what I mean with invalidated is that they immediately lose all of their credibility with a statement like this.
Because of this, people won't be inspired by them anymore and their opinion doesn't have weight anymore, because now everybody knows they are not looking to make a difference in the world, they are only looking out for themselves and their own benefit.
Still have hopes for Ben, I've always admired a16z, but this really sucks
I think you still have to qualify that as 'moral or ethical credibility', and even then limit it to topics relating to government power and accountability.
By all accounts, their treatment of founders is very ethical indeed (by Founders' standards), for example, and I wouldn't expect this to impact their credibility as knowledgable VCs at all.
In short, people are complicated, and applying well-earned admiration in one area to transitively enhance someone's reputation in another is clearly an all too common error (hence celebrity endorsements, etc.)
No, there are simply sentences that fall into this category such as not supporting gay marriage, proclaiming Snowden as a traitor, being anti-abortion, which invalidate everything that the person has ever said or done, because they reveal untenable views like homophobia, ignorance and religious misogonysm.
There are some more views, that reveal racism, but lets leave it at that.
In this particular case, this ignorance reveals the view that mass surveillance is okay, whereas the author seems to miss that every nation that supports mass-surveillance is going towards a Nazi-Germany-like regime. Ever wondered why Germany is so adamant about privacy? Because they remember what happened when a certain entity gained too much control. The thing is, it's not a question if such mass control will be abused at some point. It's just a question of when, maybe in 5 years, maybe in 15, but it will inevitably be abused at some point. Americans don't get that, because they haven't been there.
Firstly, someone being wrong about one thing doesn't mean they're wrong about something else.
Secondly, there are some issues about which people have valid disagreements. This is one of them. Come to think of it, much as I wish it wasn't, gay marriage is also such an issue in most places (though clearly not in Silicon Valley or in Hacker News).
Third, I don't understand how you made the leap from him thinking that Snowden is a traitor, to him thinking that mass surveillance is okay. Maybe he said other things I'm not aware of (seriously - correct me if I'm missing something). But thinking that Snowden is a traitor has nothing to do with views on mass surveillance.
Finally, you are taking an extremely absurd position where the world is entirely black and white - someone says one thing that you disagree with, clearly he thinks terrible things, clearly this invalidates anything he has to say, including on a subject on which he is very knowledgeable, and clearly he's not worth listening to.
That is not a good way to be part of a diverse society, and definitely not a good way to expand your horizons.
Your zeal has lead you to an absurd conclusion. "Invalidate everything they have ever said or done"? That's not how it works... People can be completely wrong about one thing and have good insight into something else.
Still, this link is well worth the few minutes it takes to read. His blog has a lot of "Things I've learned from" entries from various people.