Without a scientific foundation, there is no tech industry
Without renewed investment in fundamental science, the tech industry’s foundations will crumble — threatening jobs, growth and national resilience.
Most people use “the tech industry” as shorthand for the likes of Meta, Amazon, Nvidia and Alphabet. But that’s only one pole. The real tech industry starts with deep tech — fundamental science and research — and encompasses everything in between.
The biggest challenge to the tech industry today is not the current crop of extremely rich but ultimately servile tech oligarchs, even though it’s torturous to watch them morph from the industry rebels they once were into cowards. Just look at how quickly some of these companies have fallen into line — whether it’s Amazon shelving its tariff protest after a call from the White House, or tech leaders retreating from once-bold public stances.
It’s that fundamental science and research is being starved and strangled.
Over the years, the distance between the “Magnificent Seven” and everything else has widened as these companies consolidated their dominance over search, social media, retail, and compute.
The internet — the one true infrastructure of tech — is fragmenting. Instead of fulfilling the utopian aim of connecting us, it’s become an efficient machine for sorting people into echo chambers. This fascinating piece on how group chats of technology elites have been sculpting politics is evidence of this. Instead of opening the gates of knowledge, it has facilitated a misinformation superhighway.
