Today’s links The CHIPS Act treats the symptoms, but not the causes: Monopoly destroyed America’s high-tech capacity. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2004, 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023 Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading The CHIPS Act treats the symptoms, but not the causes (permalink) There’s this great throwaway line in 1992’s Sneakers, where Dan Aykroyd, playing a conspiracy-addled hacker/con-man, is feverishly telling Sydney Poitier (playing an ex-CIA spook) about a 1958 meeting Eisenhower had with aliens where Ike said, “hey, look, give us your technology, and we’ll give you all the cow lips you want.” Poitier dismisses Aykroyd (“Don’t listen to this man. He’s certifiable”). We’re meant to be on Poitier’s side here, but I’ve always harbored some sympathy for Aykroyd in this scene. That’s because I often hear echoes of Aykroyd’s theory in my own explanations of the esoteric bargains and plots that produced the world we’re living in today. Of course, in my world, it’s not presidents bargaining for alien technology in exchange for cow-lips – it’s the world’s wealthy nations bargaining to drop trade restrictions on the Global South in exchange for IP laws. These bargains – which started as a series of bilateral and then multilateral agreements like NAFTA, and culminated in the WTO agreement of 1999 – were the most important step in the reordering of the world’s economy around rent-extraction, cheap labor exploitation, and a brittle supply chain that is increasingly endangered by the…Pluralistic: The CHIPS Act treats the symptoms, but not the causes (07 Feb 2024)