Will Populism Kill Your Jetpack?

Populism could most alter innovation when it comes to the executive and administrative state—which, in the United States, it just came to control. Stretching back to the Clinton years, there has been a carefully choreographed interplay between pro-Silicon Valley administrations, emerging tech behemoths, and new billionaires. That relationship has now been disrupted. The attention, budget, and expertise that was directed at a light-touch management of innovation—creating conditions for the market itself to make “the new”—will now likely be tied up in re-paving the old.

Where does that leave us? The outcome of this redirection may be a near-future for the West that essentially re-entrenches crony capitalism, where big construction projects replace Big Data as an engine for exacerbating inequality. Will Elon Musk let SpaceX’s serve as a military enabler in low-Earth orbit in order to keep Tesla going? Do Amazon, Google, and Apple join Thiel’s Palantir in providing explicit products for the Department of Homeland Security? Or do the tech oligarchs gang together to provide their own counter-infrastructure? If so, whom do they serve?

via https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/12/will-populism-kill-your-jetpack/510734/