In 2017, a mysterious company began buying large plots of land in Solano County, California. The company has since spent $900 million purchasing around 70,000 acres of farmland in what is currently the most rural part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Then, in August 2023, after speculation began to mount around the project, the […]
Tag: Silicon Valley
What Silicon Valley and Shenzhen Forgot
At a startup fair in Shenzhen, often called China’s Silicon Valley, a robotic arm salutes the Chinese flag while a camera scans the crowd for faces to greet by name. Six thousand miles away in Palo Alto, an engineer pitches an AI model that can generate lifelike images of anything, except, he jokes, “political context.” […]
The Case for Breaking Up Big Tech
The Big, the Bad, the Un-American… In 2020, New York Times writer Kashmir Hill set out to answer a salient question: how dependent are we on Big Tech? Working with a technologist, Hill designed a virtual private network that blocked all internet addresses controlled by tech’s five largest companies: Amazon, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Meta, […]
The U.S.-China Brain Drain
This publication, the Berkeley Political Review, is situated within the Bay Area, a section of California that is best known for its incredible innovations in the technology field. The ecosystem created in Silicon Valley is unlike any other comparable industry ecosystem in the world and has led to the creation of world-conquering technology companies. Focusing […]
Mobilizing to Fight the California Housing Crisis
In the Bay Area, one can see the effects of the California housing crisis in the slew of RVs and mobile homes parked on the streets. The residents of these mobile homes are much more resistant to the change offered than expected, indicating the need for different ways to address the issue. The housing crisis […]
The Spies Next Door: China’s Espionage Campaign in California
Cloak and Daggers in California In the early 2000s, the CIA succeeded in recruiting the personal valet of one of China’s most powerful Communist Party members. Over the next few years, this source overheard hundreds of conversations that gave the CIA an intimate picture of the inner workings of China’s state security apparatus, Party plans, […]
Peaks and Valleys: The Resilient Nature of Silicon Valley
California dreaming is now looking more like California leaving, as recent data reveals an exodus of Californians is slowing the state’s rate of growth. IRS data revealed that between 2007 and 2016, 1.2 million more residents departed from the state than entered. This problem is particularly accentuated in the Bay Area. A survey taken in […]
Whole Foods in the Rust Belt
“Bright” is the word that might best describe the United States’ economic powerhouse: Silicon Valley. Yet while San Jose and Palo Alto sparkle in the political spotlight, Midwestern towns of Detroit and Dayton have been left in the dark. For the last two decades, while manufacturing towns in the Rust Belt have declined, Silicon Valley […]
Capitol Hill or Silicon Valley? Big Tech’s Growing Influence in Political Arena
Since its inception as the the hub of innovation, Silicon Valley has primarily been known as a bastion of promising startups, cutting-edge technology, and endless wealth. Lesser known, however, is the influence companies and their respective CEOs wield in the field of politics. Uber has both revolutionized the driving world, given the taxi industry steep […]
Trump vs. Tech
How the President has incited political action from Silicon Valley “This is truly an amazing group of people,” President Donald Trump said in a meeting with prominent executives during his presidential transition. “I’m here to help you folks do well.” The executives weren’t the Wall Street bankers or oil magnates Trump is often criticized of […]