Balaji Srinivasan

Much of any digital job is now preparing context for AI models. Organizing files in folders, naming everything correctly, introducing things in the right order, and only then asking the AI to do something in clear written English.

PERSONAL PRIVATE PROGRAMMABLE I’ve been thinking more about the intersection of Claude Code and Obsidian. There is an upcoming tech stack here that I’m calling personal private programmable. Here’s a sketch of the idea. First, if you squint ahead a few months, we will likely have open weight AI models that work as well as Claude Code does today, and that can handle the context that Google Gemini does. We also already have many different kinds of file types that can be exported out of apps, from markdown files (like Obsidian) to git repos to mbox files (from email) to all the miscellaneous file types you store online or on disk. The open we…

FROM ONE TO ZERO There is a scenario in which Silicon Valley could literally go to zero in the next ten years. The successors would be China and the Internet: namely Chinese tech companies and Internet-based crypto protocols, because those have embedded political protection in a way Silicon Valley simply doesn’t. Here’s why this is possible. (1) The first and most obvious factor is that wealth seizures are now on the ballot in the most literal sense. The 2026 “Billionaire Act” referendum[1] directly targets the founders of billion dollar tech companies, which is to say that it directly targets the power law, which is to say that it targets …

This is American Anarchy. From 2021: https://t.co/fVOBT8PlrK AMERICAN ANARCHY American anarchy is the limit case of left- and right-libertarianism, when a good thing is taken so far it becomes bad. It’s what happens when we are all equal and you ain’t the boss of me. When no one is in charge and everything is in chaos. When the left loses control of speech and the right loses control of borders. When you have millions who agree on nothing other than 1A and 2A, with all the commensurate shouting and shooting. This type of anarcho-libertarianism is ascendant in 21st century America, and is the mirror image of the totalitarian movements of 2…

After America, China vs the Internet. After DC, Xi vs Satoshi. China is moving into Canada. Tech is moving out of California. And the world is moving out of the dollar. What that adds up to is Communist vs Maximalist. Because after the dollar ends, DC is out of money. So: Carney, Newsom, Walz, Mamdani turn to Xi. And MAGA, Elon, Texas, Miami turn to Satoshi. I agree that places like Alberta will be a battleground (and indeed are already battlegrounds; see Bessent's recent comments). This was an alternate map: https://t.co/aFdVOrmOEp https://t.co/HVczaoWBjp Communist America will have Chinese drones and robot dogs. And the abundance agend…

The dollar era is ending. https://t.co/m5xRfyG3PJ The hard assets are mooning. https://t.co/fSBo77dAoR The US passport is declining. https://t.co/LxptpjDdb2 The world economy is recentering. https://t.co/4ZAGtBKkQ6

That's exactly what happened in the Soviet Union. At first, communists denounced top-hatted capitalists. Once in power, they began killing "wealthy" peasants. Then, they killed anyone who opposed them. https://t.co/Ae6IWblGWw https://t.co/dYzZh7E9Ds

FROM SILICON VALLEY TO STARTUP CITIES The techxit is on, and not a moment too soon. Now that Elon, Larry Page, and Peter Thiel are all safely out of the failed state of California, anyone who's still there by choice is just in denial about the reality that San Francisco is the next Detroit. Here are ten thoughts on why technologists should immediately exit California, and why we'll need to build something better. (1) First, you can do tech anywhere in the world. That's because the Internet is global. And there are now 400+ cities with unicorns. So you don't need California to do tech: This is good. Technology can and must decentralize out …

Silicon Valley’s Ultimate Exit is here. San Francisco is the new Detroit. “I did not expect every man I spoke with to be considering an exit, and I was actually shocked to find this applied even to the men most historically outspoken about the unique importance of California.” “Of the 21 men I interviewed, 20 would have been impacted by the ballot measure. All 20 of them, including the Democrats, as well as several of the most committed diehard proponents of revitalizing San Francisco, are now developing an exit plan. (Three have already left.)” The ongoing sovereign debt crisis means Western wealth seizures have only begun. They’re start…

Liquidate. Emigrate. Accelerate. And get out of that failed state. Doing technology in California is Iike solving the Riemann Hypothesis on the decks of the Titanic. It doesn’t matter how great your work is. The platform is collapsing under you.

As a Farcaster investor, can confirm: money is coming back to investors. Dan and the team built something genuinely amazing, perhaps the best decentralized social protocol. He's independently wealthy from Coinbase, and could have done whatever he wanted, but he decided to spend many years grinding on Internet freedom and decentralization. For that I salute him. Also, protocols sometimes take a bit longer to cook than the lifespan of companies. The handover to Neynar (one of the first Farcaster indexers) may help make Farcaster a truly decentralized social protocol. The tech is real, and it works. It just needs a killer app. Still worth it…

Traditional finance says rapid inflation is bad, but deflation is also bad, so slowly losing your wealth via inflation is good. Bitcoin rejects this. Traditional medicine says rapid death is bad, but life extension is also bad, so slowly losing your health via aging is good. Bryan rejects this. Inflation is slowly losing your wealth. Bitcoin fixes this. Aging is slowly losing your health. Longevity fixes this.

Winners write history. So: if you do not write the history, you will not win. Fortunately, the Bitcoin blockchain is the most unfalsifiable form of history ever invented. A cryptohistory.

Free speech is open borders for ideology. (1) One way of thinking about the last ten years is that the American left busted the physical borders of the right, while the right smashed through the digital borders of the left. (2) Because the left relied on mind control, on controlling the discourse. And the busting of those digital borders by the Internet is what hurt them the most. They wanted stern penalties for crossing the line, for saying the wrong thing. So then the left tried to re-impose speech controls, but lost control. Will the right succeed in re-imposing border controls? We will see. (3) Btw, of course I am aware that these are…

WHO LOST CANADA? It was obvious that China/Canada would happen. Here's how it happened, and what may happen next. (1) First, in early 2025 it looked like Canadian conservative Pierre Poilievre was a straight shot to win Canada. Instead, all the MAGA posts about annexing Canada undercut Pierre, boosted left nationalism, and turned what looked like a sure thing into an epic defeat. The result was Mark Carney: (2) Carney is on the left but is far more intelligent than his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. He's also the former governor of the Bank of Canada, and understands that the G7 (including Canada) is in the midst of sovereign debt crisis. And…

Even in 2013, it was clear we'd have to leave. The collision between the rising network and the failing state was all too obvious. And much has played out as foreseen. Fortunately, we've already globally decentralized. That's what the Internet means. https://t.co/FSRE6vbCz1

The end of Western Keynesianism will be even bigger than the end of Soviet Communism. They’re just going to destroy every Western fiat ledger. Anything stored on any fiat ledger, from currencies to stocks to bonds, will be first exorbitantly taxed and eventually simply seized. Or simply inflated to zero. That is the logic of the sovereign debt crisis.

Silicon Valley technologists exiting California should move to Starbase, Texas. Tech won 97.74% of the vote there. It’s populated by engineers. It’s what tech used to be. And Elon is the de facto mayor. This is how tech wins democratically. Voting with feet, wallet, and ballot.

One of the big AI companies should consider acquiring Tailwind, or do a strategic investment. And maybe rehire all the devs. They’ve given the ecosystem so much.

In 2026, Claude Code could finally unleash the golden age of local and decentralized apps. The reason is that Claude Code allows you to quickly clone any moderately complex cloud-based app into a decent local one that runs on only your files. This is an important update to Obsidian founder Kepano’s concept of “file over app.” His argument was that files are portable (and hence more reliable) but apps are not. The new information is that apps are suddenly portable too. That is: apps of moderate complexity without strong global network effects are suddenly easy to clone. The clone won’t be perfect right away, but it’ll be pretty good. And if…

Water, water everywhere… But not a drop to drink. Printer, printer everywhere… But no money for anything. https://t.co/Z2N46YTFj6

Just because something has never happened, doesn’t mean it can never happen. Humanity never flew, and then it did. https://t.co/gBFhp2Lcej

@yishan Counterargument: a future China-backed California may be like the current China-backed Venezuela. They’ll give enough support to keep the lights on and people down in a kleptocratic socialist state. But it’s not going to be very functional. More likely to be anarcho-tyrannical.

Exit communism. Exit California. https://t.co/xfWxgJO7Eb The right to exit is a fundamental human right, literally encoded in article 13 of the UN charter. It is the physical embodiment of democracy. You vote with your feet to vote against an illegitimate state. The states that inhibited the human right to exit are the worst states in history. The Soviets, Nazis, Cubans, North Koreans, and East Germans robbed or shot those who tried to leave. Democrats destroyed democracy in California. They built a one-party state, where "elections" are held but the party always wins. https://t.co/GpWmkhUZIF https://t.co/3YdTfmRtst Democrats destroyed …

The disruption that’s not priced in is the disruption of Silicon Valley itself. Because California is the physical platform on which it’s built. And that platform is collapsing.

@karpathy I know the feeling, but sometimes I think the opposite. Perhaps the hard part is just the precise articulation (and iteration) of what one wants, more than the speed of the computer executing on that. https://t.co/u7n4Wa7akA

I'm not saying I fully believe this yet. And I'm not saying that there are zero gains or anything like that. But we may still end up wetware-limited, more than we think. Loading in the context & writing the prompts is a lot like setting up the environment & writing the programs.

@Honack You can do technology without building capital (eg open source). You can do capitalism without advancing technology (eg small business).

Well, there are two parts to the argument. Americans are uncalibrated on how much the rest of the world has advanced BOTH because (a) they don’t fly there (as other data also shows) AND (b) they don’t see media on the world outside the West. You mention Hong Kong; they aren’t as uncalibrated because Shenzhen is right across the way, and US media is always on the TV. They know where China and America actually are in relative terms. Also, if there is demand, flights do exist. EWR has direct flights to Israel. SFO similarly does have many direct flights to Asian capitals, because tech does need to travel to Asia.

@mattyglesias Reasonable thesis, and I do think that’s part of it, but LA-Tokyo is 12h while LA-Shanghai is 14h and LA-Singapore is 16h. Visas are also part of it. But whatever the reason: much of the world is out of sight and hence out of mind. Even smart Americans are very uncalibrated.