Big Tech is Like a Long Firm Fraud

Another book that I really enjoyed last year was Davies’ Lying for Money. As its subtitle says, it’s about what legendary frauds reveal about the workings of the world, and while he doesn’t discuss big tech, the parallels are inescapable; understanding the patterns of fraud laid out in Davies’ book makes it possible to see them in Silicon Valley business plans. Fraud is more common than prosecutions suggest, and its most dangerous forms are not easily recognized as fraud even by the people committing them. Many frauds begin as genuine optimism, turn into rationalization, and end in deliberate concealment. By the time the fraud is clear from the outside, its perpetrators may have so thoroughly internalized their own narrative that they are genuinely shocked by the prosecution. There is often no clear moment when they knew knew they were crossing a line. The semi-technical definition of fraud is “a deliberate misrepresentation of material fact that causes someone to act to their…