OpenAI and the Manufacturing of a Red Scare by Venture Capital

One thing that went unremarked on during the OpenAI conflict was the fantastical claim by many in the venture capital circuit and its bizarre amalgamation of fanboys, that one of the sitting members of the OpenAI board, Helen Toner, was an asset of the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, and if not, was basically the same as a CCP asset. Helen was one of the board members who fired Sam Altman in the original public catalyst for what became an exhausting multi-week circus fanned by the venture capital marketing machine. 

 Toner was massively targeted in the backlash against the firing, with people @ signing her on Twitter with comments like “Did the CCP try and get you to destroy OpenAI?.” Lunacy. 

Some more of the absolutely mad commentary on this line: 

From Founder’s Fund (Peter Thiel’s VC firm) chief marketing officer: “I am not saying helen toner is a CCP asset — that would be crazy. but I am having a hard time discerning the difference between her impact on OpenAI, and the likeliest possible impact of a CCP asset.” (link) 

From a venture capitalist for Marque Ventures, focused on weapons companies: “I’d like to think this whole episode really was an example of the CCP trying to take down @OpenAI and they just lost. Much sweeter than thinking that maybe this was a narrowly avoided "own goal". This does drive home how important private efforts are to national security tho.” (link)

From a professor at Princeton’s Operations Research and Financial Engineering Department: “The CCP certainly has a lot to gain if OpenAI were set back. Might sound conspiratorial to some but seems plausible to me.” (link) 

From another AI investor: “The biggest winner of this weekend's drama and the burning of 10s of billions of dollars at OpenAI? The CCP.” (link) 

"Make sure the CCP sleeper agent is out.” (link) 

 “DOJ should investigate collusion with ccp” (link)

“I dunno man, the lady spent quite a lot of time in China. If I were CCP, torpedoing OpenAI would be on the list of “Nice to Have”” (link) 

This one is truly remarkable: "A pause by #OpenAI is to the CCP as a pause by the IDF is to Hamas.” (link)

“Helen Toner's influence on OpenAI and the potential impact of a CCP asset are difficult to distinguish. It's important to critically evaluate the influence and intentions of individuals involved in organizations like OpenAI.” (link)

“Conjecture: At the recent summit between Xi and Biden, they negotiated an AI "ceasefire" mediated by Newsom. Helen Toner who has connections to the CCP was tapped to take OpenAI down from the inside. Thoughts?” (link)  

And so it continued, from a mix of “legitimate” voices in venture capital and from various smaller and anon accounts as well, likely venture capital sock puppet accounts for use in these moments. 

Perhaps the most important thing here is that all of this is word for word talking points out of Peter Thiel, who has platformed and circulated this messaging on many occasions, and indeed it is not new, something he was also pushing hard under his relations with Trump, specifically for an investigation into Google for collusion with the CCP. Definitely having nothing to do with the tensions between venture capital and the giants! 

This language has accelerated dramatically with the dawn of the weapons boom out of Silicon Valley, which relies to great degree on tensions between China and America in order to wrest major weapons contracts for its fleet of new weapons companies — a short list which can be found here.  

An encapsulation of this messaging, which has repeated over and over by Thiel with increasing frenzy and lack of wits about it, we can find in a Founder’s Fund propaganda podcast between its CMO — another beneficiary of Peter Thiel’s Affirmative Action Program For the Mediocre White Gay Man — quoted above, and Peter Thiel himself (hello darkness), 

Interview question: “Is DEI a plot by the CCP to take over Silicon Valley?” 

… “I think it is not the most important question of what the mens rea of these people are. Are they truly card carrying members of the Communist Party, are they getting instuctions from Beijing or are they just useful idiots… In the intelligence community context it’s sort of the difference between an agent and an asset. An agent you know, an agent is someone who has full mens rea, full knowledge, full intentionality; an asset can be just a useful idiot of one sort or another. You could similarly ask the question… is Bill Gates China’s top agent or China’s top asset, and it seems to me if it’s either of them that’s interesting enough.” 

But this is the first time I have seen this fraudulent analysis applied in a significant way, by a wide section of people in the venture capital orbit, to a breaking news event, ensuring that it would spread significantly and indeed, this is one of the lasting takeaways from the OpenAI drama — the opportunity to platform this propaganda and seed it in the right-wing technology and venture capital base. 

I’ve published previously on how venture capital is aggravating tensions with China (an additional follow up piece can be found here) in order to gain weapons contracts for its fleet of weapons startups that are built with the express purpose and with the express aim of conflict with China, both in a potential direct hot war and through cold war, including proxy cold war, something I will have an article about soon to provide additional geopolitical context here. Founder’s Fund and a16z are behind many of these weapons companies, including Anduril, the aspiring prime which has raised $2.2 billion; a book on its strategy out in 2020 called “The Kill Chain” (great) was entirely about creating a war machine to fight China in a number of countries, in a number of planes (including space), and with a new breed of weaponry based in autonomous systems and AI. So we have some very powerful venture capitalists here with MASSIVE investments in weapons companies, whose success and funding relies in a very fundamental way on aggravating tension with China in order to squeeze as much money as possible out of the war apparatus of the United States and its allies. 

The timing of all this is certainly no coincidence as President Biden and President Xi Jinping just met in Silicon Valley — with the express goal of diffusing tensions and the choice of locale in Silicon Valley being no mistake, as geopolitical competition for technological dominance holding semiconductors at base has long been at issue, particularly as regarding Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. This was an obvious meeting to dissuade and minimize tension in the AI age and hopefully move forward on a better and healthier dynamic as regards technological development. This is something that is emphatically NOT in the interest of venture capital, which has aligned itself to succeed via opposition to China and Chinese technological development, and to grow to its next stage through military development and artificial intelligence development under as much pressure as possible. Aka, accelerationism. 

 The meeting with Biden, following which Xi Jinping delivered a statement with utter clarity:

“We aim to construct more bridges and pave more roads for people-to-people interactions rather than creating various obstacles and fostering a Cold War mentality. Whatever stage of development it may reach, China will never pursue hegemony or expansion, and will never impose its will on others. China does not seek spheres of influence and will not fight a cold war or a hot war with anyone.” 

Relieved tension with China means reduced need for warp speed, reduced cause for irresponsible neck break pace AI development under American venture capital. In a word, a de-escalated scenario with China around technological and military development — inexorably linked here — is bad news bears for venture capitalists who are relying on that tension actually increasing. 

And so, like in this case where you have a moderate liberal board member being smeared as an undercover/sleeper communist agent on the flimsiest possible connections — in this case, an utterly benign and measured criticism of OpenAI in a small circulation academic paper — there is a need to continue to manufacture the threat of China in order to justify a military and technological build-out that has been strategically situated around it and which, importantly, it is relying on for its returns.

There is also the very worrying feature that all progressive, liberal and leftist elements in tech are now subject to smearing as CCP agents and thus marked for suppression, possibly including by the American defense apparatus itself. Certainly these kinds of wild and false allegations, dangerous allegations, bring to mind McCarthyism, anti-communist hysteria and so on, and the effects that this will certainly have on any kind of progressive organization in the field. 

So, here we are!! The red scare ramping up in Silicon Valley as venture capitalists push AGAINST the wills of the American people and the Chinese people, to manufacture this tension. We will see the full weight of the venture capital propaganda apparatus coming online against it as indeed, the King of Silicon Valley, its top venture capitalist, Marc Andreessen, has been banging on for a year+ now about the evils of the Communists and now it seems he is finally getting somewhere, after including communists in his “enemies list” openly published in his “Techno-Optimist manifesto”. 

We will continue to monitor the situation. As it will monitor us in return.