This is like communism in the sense that it's sold as one thing, but serves another purpose for a different set of people than those it was marketed to.

Having worked as a software engineer in the industry for almost 15 years, my experience is that the leading (elite) proponents of this philosophy don't really care about tech or innovation; they only care to the extent that they control the innovation.

Any innovation created outside of their sphere of control will be ignored and suppressed (as best as possible). It's ironic because this is how they view China's tech sector. I remember reading an article about DeepSeek and the author made a comment about how it was developed independently of government by a relatively small company and how unusual this is for China; surprised that they were able to build without the blessing of the CCP... But the US works the same way! Except instead of the CCP, the power is called Big VC.

Anyway this is the past 20 years or so. I'm skeptical of this model. I'm quite sure, as a tech guy, I would do better in a strict hard-money capitalist system, even if I just did software as a side project. Right now it's just too centralized and monopolized and there are perverse incentives keeping everything locked in. It used to be that a 10x solution could get you noticed, now nothing will get you noticed besides the right technocratic pedigree.

"Every accusation is a confession" they say