It wasn’t so long ago—just over a decade—that Silicon Valley occupied a rarefied space in the global imagination. The founders of American technology companies were the great disruptors, the optimists, the engineers who would remake sclerotic political systems and extractive industries. While politicians dithered, Big Tech would engineer solutions.
Remember when Silicon Valley was America’s greatest export?
It wasn’t so long ago—just over a decade—that Silicon Valley occupied a rarefied space in the global imagination. The founders of American technology companies were the great disruptors, the optimists, the engineers who would remake sclerotic political systems and extractive industries. While politicians dithered, Big Tech would engineer solutions.
From Beijing to Berlin, delegations arrived in Mountain View and Palo Alto asking the same question: How do we replicate this? The world didn’t just want Apple’s iPhones or Google’s search engine. It wanted America’s innovation culture, its garage start-up mythology, its belief that smart people with code could build a better future.
That faith has collapsed with stunning speed.
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