Silicon Valley Is Nearing A Breaking Point

Forbes

a day ago

American comedian Gallagher (born Leo Gallagher Jr) moving fast and breaking things at the Rosemont ... More Horizon, Rosemont, Illinois, July 10, 1981. (Photo by)
The current mood in Silicon Valley seems to be dominated by this sentiment, originally popularized by Facebook. And for many leaders in the tech center of the universe, Silicon Valley, it has spread beyond just information technology innovation and into a sense of how to reinvent all walks of life, all industries, and even politics.
For many of the giants in today's tech and innovation sector, technology is by itself the solution to everything. It is Schumpeterian thinking dialed up to eleven. It is quasi-religious, in that there is a sense that a great technology flood will wash over the economy and society and wash clean the ills, leaving behind efficient, reinvented new industries, regulations (if even needed at all) and personal behavior.
Some of this is a byproduct of ideology and an independent streak – an understandable frustration that today's systems are antiquated and in many cases broken, giving the idea of starting from scratch a romantic appeal. These are brilliant people who think big and so aren't tethered to old 'this is how it's done because this is how it's always been done' thinking.
Some of this is a byproduct of naivety and not ideology – I once sat in a meeting while a very successful individual from Silicon Valley lamented how hard it was to change Sacramento… and concluded that his next step was therefore to go fix Washington, DC. Because of course changing Washington DC would be easier than changing a state government. Sure.
This combination of ideology and naivety has recently impacted how some of the most powerful in Silicon Valley view the climate change challenge, among other 'non-tech' issues. For some of these titans, there is a sense that the people most in need of innovative solutions around issues like climate have rejected them personally, so the heck with those issues, no need to care about all that fluffery anymore. For others, there is a sense that what is needed isn't to try to improve the current infrastructure over time, but simply to effectively start over. For example: Working with today's utilities on energy efficiency is a waste of time, go invent commercially-viable fusion-based nuclear power and the rest (ie, who will finance those plants, who will build those plants, who will maintain those plants, who will distribute the power from those plants) will simply sort itself out. These sentiments may seem in opposition to each other, but in reality they are simply two sides of the same techno-superiority coin.
So, moving fast and breaking things (either ignoring petty issues like a rapidly degrading global climate or undermined political-economic foundations, or assuming they'll be addressed by unnamed others because, you know, 'Innovation') is pretty much how many of the leaders in Silicon Valley are setting their agendas these days.
But here's the thing – they would never think to do this with data center construction. Nor with IT networks or microchips or any of the other hardware and infrastructure that they know they fully depend upon for their own innovations to work.
These giants of the tech industry know full well that they can't 'move fast and break things' when it comes to building out and maintaining the infrastructure that is core to their own operations. They employ huge teams of project developers who are tasked with definitely not being sloppy and letting things break. They pay for the careful maintenance of decades-old communications infrastructure. Unlike fuzzy concepts like climate change and politics, these are very concrete systems that must be built the right way, not just assumed to be built by someone else unnamed, and (of course!) incorporating a lot of 'old tech' alongside innovations rather than replacing it. This infrastructure is very real to these tech leaders, and thus given the respect and investment it deserves.
As a rapidly degrading global climate and increasingly undermined political-economic foundations come to the fore, they will also start to become very real to these same leaders. Natural disasters are already affecting the tech sector's customers, workforces, and infrastructure. Political-economic uncertainty will begin impacting revenues and costs (see Exhibit A: Tariff uncertainty, and Exhibit B: Unforecasted and significant costs recently incurred by various universities, law firms and media companies – will the tech industry be next?). As these risks start to directly impact the day to day business of these tech leaders, they will no longer be able to consider them some distant concepts to be treated academically. They will have to invest into clean energy, climate adaptation and resiliency, clean water, and stable politics. Or their companies, industries and personal wealth will suddenly start to directly suffer the consequences.
The good news is that Silicon Valley has a long and proven history of building great infrastructure. When push comes to shove, 'move fast and break things' quickly gets put aside in favor of professional, thorough, critical infrastructure investments.
All that needs to happen is for their definition of 'critical infrastructure' to be broadened to include the planet they live on and the social and economic foundations that they depend upon.
Silicon Valley may soon be at this breaking point, if not already there. Not abandoning techno-centric viewpoints and big bold ideas. Just no longer naively leaving these other crucial underpinnings like the environment, the economy and society to someone else to deal with.
And when that happens, when the technology Great Flood assumption is abandoned and these brilliant minds are put to work actually pragmatically addressing this 'infrastructure' broadly defined… we will see an amazing resurgence of actual investments and scalable solutions for these mounting challenges. The innovative power of Silicon Valley is one of the most powerful forces humanity has ever built, and harnessed correctly accomplishes amazing things.
Just as when a fever breaks, when Silicon Valley finally reaches this breaking point it will be a very good thing.