Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Criminal Deception in Silicon Valley: With entrepreneurial fraud cases on the rise, we investigate how entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception, employing deceptive means to defraud audiences. Analyzing court data from Silicon Valley ventures and their founders prosecuted for fraud between 2000 and 2023, our findings reveal that entrepreneurs carry out criminal deception through a process of façading: Entrepreneurs construct, perform, and protect illusory appearances (façades) that externally project high-growth performance to audiences while masking ventures’ actual underperformance. An Organization Science paper extending the cultural-entrepreneurship literature — how founders craft compelling narratives to acquire resources, and where dramatized discourse crosses into fraud. (Organization Science)
• How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking: Flock’s array of license-plate cameras was built to fight crime. But at least 50 law enforcement officers were charged with or accused of misusing it and other systems. Drew Harwell on Flock’s license-plate cameras, built to fight crime — and the at least 50 law enforcement officers charged with or accused of misusing them, including to spy on their exes. (Washington Post)
• A Civilian Plane Crashed in New Mexico. Was the Military’s Tech to Blame?: Jeff Wise on a medevac flight out of Roswell and how drone warfare is making the skies more dangerous, even for airplanes far from any battlefield. Drone warfare is making the skies more dangerous, even for airplanes far from the battlefield. (Wired)
• How the Reflecting Pool Came to Mirror Trump’s Washington: The New York Times on the canoe incident’s afterlife — how a shallow pool on the National Mall became the perfect metaphor for a capital where every symbol is contested and every stunt is a federal case. (New York Times)
• REVEALED: The Scope of ICE’s Surveillance of Its Online Critics: Talking Points Memo on the documents showing ICE monitoring journalists, activists, and ordinary critics. (Talking Points Memo) see also How ICE Is Weaponizing Social Media Against Its Critics: The Wall Street Journal’s parallel investigation — the agency is building cases from posts, likes, and follower lists. Agency says its surveillance program searches for threats to agents, but critics see free-speech infringements (Wall Street Journal)
• How predatory trade schools drained $300 million from the GI Bill and cheated veterans: The institutions defrauded Veterans Affairs while cheating thousands out of career training, with some offering training on how to grow grass and make fake rocks, a Post investigation found. The Washington Post’s investigation into the schools charging veterans huge sums to learn how to grow grass and make fake rocks — the GI Bill grift at industrial scale. (Washington Post)
• Blanche Privately Vows to Take Down Abortion Rights Next: The New Republic reports on the AG nominee’s private assurances to conservative groups — the public confirmation-hearing moderation is not the private agenda. (New Republic)
• The Cities That Said Yes to Drugs: Michael Powell walks a mile from downtown Seattle into Little Saigon and finds an open-air market of roughly 250 people at 12th and Jackson. A long look at what harm reduction has and hasn’t delivered. Policies that gave addicts clean needles and places to use drugs were intended to reduce harm. They created a “zombie apocalypse.” (The Atlantic)
• What Happened to Talenti?: Wirecutter investigates the gelato decline — the recipe changes, the shrinking jars, and the private-equity playbook applied to premium ice cream. The comment-section outrage was right. (Wirecutter)
• One Night Only: An Honest Attempt to Understand the Ridiculous World of Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro’s New Rom-Com: Why are single people only allowed to have sex once each year? How on earth is that rule enforced? Is third base permitted? Pull up a chair—and get ready for a deep dive. (Vanity Fair)
Video of the day: The Watches We Were Wrong About
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Jack Raines, a writer and venture capitalist. We discuss his new book, Young Money.
AI Has Doubled Computing’s Share of U.S. GDP
Source: Paul Kedrosky
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