Timeshift

I think we’re going back in time to the 1950s and 1960s.

I wasn’t around during these decades so it’s hard for me to know exactly, but from what I’ve read in books, we’re headed there, especially for technology and venture capital.

I think the next two decades will look a lot like the 1950s and 1960s:

• post war economy = post pandemic economy
• two power competition (US-USSR) = two power competition (US-China)
• machine automation revolution = algorithmic automation revolution
• re-entering society post mobilization = re-entering society post isolation
• repurposing war production = re-shoring offshore production
• space race for national power = computation race for national power
• import substitution = industrial policy
• Atlantic treaty organizations = Pacific treaty negotiations
• containment = grey-zone competition

Technology is key in all of these, and I believe we’re headed back to days of critical technology development like we had in the 1950s and 60s. The case today is as strong as it was then that technology can solve big problems.

Moon landings, spy planes, highways— these were built in record times, often by small teams motivated to advance the national interest.

Posters of the 1950s were the embodiment of this renaissance: a presumption of civic service, laboring to move the country forward, and unreasonably optimistic. You don’t rename the War Department into The Department of Defense unless you’re optimistic.

I wish I was alive during this time to have felt the culture, especially on the national security side. The CIA went from its beta version to production, venture capital was minted, and these large national projects were humming deep in the Nevada desert.

In addition to the optimism, I think there was also a little fear, a fear that we might get nuked drinking a Coca-Cola, that the next-door neighbor might be a Communist, and that although we had just won against evil, we could still lose to a political system in the Soviet Union, which had not yet come tumbling down.

This motivation used to feel uniquely American to me — the ability to project optimism but run on aerospace-grade fear.

I believe it’s now global. Part of the feeling I felt doing counterterrorism work, I now feel working on technology.

I’m incredibly optimistic that those with democratic values (specifically: freedom, capitalism, and independence) will build better tech because it’s more compatible with the human condition. But it’s actually the fear of losing to an alternative set of values that helps motivates me.

Definite optimism, underpinned by fear, was the culture of the 1950s and 1960s, and I think we’re in the exact same headspace for the 2020s and 2030s. You could call it techno-optimism, but the best words I have for it are anxious optimism.

This culture exists outside the US. Europe is waking up from a long malaise, finally taking agency for its future. “Market shaping” is ineffective when others are out there creating markets, and stewarding old money purely to avoid losses is nothing compared to using it to create value. And finally, inch-by-inch, defense is no longer a bad word in Europe.

We should back European efforts to revive the craftsmanship and entrepreneurship that built the continent. We should celebrate the idea that hardcore engineering to create something new is so much more fun that repurposing something old. For me, this is a timeshift.