The Confidence Industrial Complex
Certainty is not strategy. But it has never been easier to monetize.
This week, we’re talking:
Silicon Valley is funding conviction over competence—and pretending it’s strategy. 🤡
Sam Altman’s firing gets the Hollywood treatment (Andrew Garfield in a hoodie incoming?) 🎬
Björn from ABBA is co-writing a musical with ChatGPT—and honestly? It’s kind of working 🎶
Google’s Veo 3 can conjure a fake riot in 4K, because what could go wrong with that? 🎥
Feudalism is back, baby—only this time it’s powered by privatization, crypto, and Erik Prince 🏰
My Take:
A candidate sat across from me and talked proudly about scaling Meta from $5 million to $50 billion. He was employee 2,000-something. The delusion would be laughable if he were an outlier. He wasn’t. He was evidence of a very real trend across Silicon Valley, a system that pays for noise, not signal—where showing up gets confused with showing results. That noise has a heat signature: weaponized certainty.
The ecosystem selects for the loudest voice. False conviction gets funded.
This corrupts by design. It turns people into blowhards who talk too much, who try to get a leg up in every interaction, who crush uncertainty instead of exploring it, who optimize for looking smart over being thoughtful. Even the ones who hate the game know that opting out carries a cost. Breaking free requires deliberate resistance.
Two ratios expose the rot:
Certainty-to-Knowledge, and
Ego-to-Accomplishment.
Silicon Valley runs both backwards. There are too many running around town with their ratios hopelessly out of whack.
Uninformed opinion passes for expertise. Thoughtfulness and an honest ‘I don’t know the answer to that question’ are mistaken for weakness. Tedious stories from olden times about slaying the dragon or dating the prom queen are trotted out at every opportunity.
Some founders resist the programming. They listen before they speak. They treat teams as collaborators, not props for their narrative. Success doesn't corrupt them. They practice humility and fierce resolve—quiet confidence paired with relentless focus. The Valley says it values both, but rewards them infrequently.
My hiring strategy has evolved accordingly. Skills are table stakes—by the time a candidate gets to me, they’ve already proven they’ve got the chops to do the job. Character is the real signal. Can they resist the Valley's programming? Do they make use of what I call the ‘declarative present tense’ – the ability to see and communicate a compelling future that’s coming quickly – without drifting into straight fiction? Do they ask uncomfortable questions when groupthink takes hold? Do they elevate others or perform for the crowd? Did their momma raise 'em right?
The enduring winners aren't playing the Valley's game. They're building something real while everyone else optimizes for demo day.
Commentators with too much certainty relative to what they really know – or what’s knowable at any given moment – are almost always proven wrong. Young entrepreneurs who haven’t landed the plane but talk about their companies as ‘trillion dollar’ behemoths need to put the pipe down, step away from the baggy, and just get to work.
Stay humble. Keep it real. Don’t talk about it.
Just prove it. Send it. Do it.
This Week’s Stack:
OpenAI's Boardroom Drama Heads to Hollywood 🎬
The dramatic saga of Sam Altman's firing and subsequent rehiring at OpenAI in 2023 is reportedly headed to the big screen. While the cast is currently unconfirmed, sources say that “Artificial” could star Andrew Garfield as the enigmatic CEO. I’m not *not* casting the rest of the board in my head. So far I’ve got Aubrey Plaza as Tasha McCauley and Paul Rudd as Brett Taylor. Thoughts?
Sources: Hollywood Reporter // Deadline
Björn Ulvaeus Teams Up with AI for New Musical Project 🎶
ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus is embracing the digital age by collaborating with artificial intelligence to craft a new musical. Speaking at SXSW London, the 80-year-old music legend revealed he's about three-quarters through writing the show, using AI as a creative partner. While Ulvaeus acknowledges that AI struggles with generating complete songs and quality lyrics, he finds it invaluable for overcoming writer's block. "You can prompt a lyric you've written about something, and you're stuck maybe, and you want this song to be in a certain style," he explained. "You can ask it, how would you extend? Where would you go from here? It usually comes out with garbage, but sometimes there is something in it that ... ."
Sources: The Times, The Guardian
Google's Veo 3: Deepfake Generation Raises Alarm 🎥
Google’s latest AI toy, Veo 3, can generate jaw-droppingly realistic video from text prompts. Riots, campaign speeches, fake arrests—you name it, Veo can fake it. A TIME investigation showed just how easy it is to spin up disinfo in cinematic form. The tool includes some basic guardrails—no violence prompts, invisible watermarks—but they’re limited, and misleading footage still slips through without much effort. We’re not ready for what this can do—and the people who are ready don’t exactly have democracy in mind.
Sources: TIME // arsTECHNICA
Feudalism Is Our Future: The Empire Strikes Back 🏰
Cullen Murphy's latest Atlantic piece, Feudalism Is Our Future, reads like a dispatch from the Dark Ages—except it's set in 2025. Drawing parallels between ancient Rome's decline and today's privatization spree, Murphy warns that outsourcing public functions to private entities is eroding centralized authority and public accountability. From private prisons and security forces to the commodification of essential services, the lines between public good and private gain are blurring. The result? A modern-day serfdom where power concentrates among a wealthy few, and the rest of us are left holding the pitchforks. As Murphy succinctly puts it, the trajectory of empire can be summed up in three words: "Fewer have more."
Read the full piece here: Feudalism Is Our Future