Contrasting Ideals: Venture Capital, Defense Spending, and a Disturbing Photograph

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today’s post is a Read Max audiovisual product featuring cohost Sam Biddle, senior technology reporter at The Intercept.

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Yesterday Sam and I “went live” to talk about a set of new stories on tech’s ever-increasing ties to the defense industry:

* A recent white paper from OpenAI outlining the company’s vision of A.I.’s geopolitical future, about which Sam wrote more here;

* Mark Zuckerberg and Palmer Luckey burying the hatchet and partnering on a V.R. headset for the military; and

* Palantir's controversial new role counting human beings for the U.S. government.

What do these partnerships tell us about the present and future of the tech industry, A.I., and geopolitics?

Also up for discussion: What’s going on at Apple? And two distinctly unsettling photographs, the first of Luckey and Zuckerberg breaking bread…

…and the second, a sort of wedding-announcement pic of former Apple designer Jony Ive and OpenAI C.E.O. Sam Altman:

Please enjoy, here on Substack, or, without video, on any of your preferred podcast platforms!