gantron

Agreed. You can really tell commenters' ages based on whether they recall this. The Gates you describe is the one I remember from the '90s.

I have to assume that anyone who thinks of Gates as a rich old man who just wants to cure Malaria is quite a bit younger (or their memory is easily overwritten).

> To what purpose?

Steel-manning: Gates has run a deliberate PR campaign for decades to rehabilitate his reputation. In the 80s & 90s (before the Gates Foundation) he was known as a ruthless corporate tactician who crushed competitors like ants and earned a federal antitrust suit against Microsoft. Prior to his divorce he had a widely-publicized affair with a subordinate. He befriended Jeffrey Epstein and appeared in his flight logs after Epstein had already been convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. (Gates has worked very hard to distance himself from Epstein since then - another example of the PR machine at work).

Someone who wants to paint the least charitable picture possible of Gates could factually describe him as a cutthroat businessman and a philanderer who associated with a pedophile on at least a few documented occasions. And that's ignoring the nuttier Gates conspiracy theories (e.g., Covid microchips).

Sure, everyone knows him. But he'd rather be known as a voracious reader who fought polio & malaria and provided drinkable water to millions. Not a bad use of his billions - what else could he spend those on that would materially affect his life?

I really enjoyed American Prometheus. Might be a bit too focused on Oppenheimer for the original request, but it covers the Manhattan Project more broadly too.

No.

> That September morning, Krebs didn’t take up Waifu’s chess challenge. “What am I going to do, play him at chess?” he said. “He would have just screenshot what I said and send it to his friends.”

I'd argue that working on the right projects reduces the likelihood of collateral damage.

Take for example the R9X [0]. Instead of an explosive warhead it has a set of blades on the tip. The US has used it to assassinate single people in the passenger seat of a car while leaving the driver untouched. I'd rather this than dropping bombs on terrorists that come with a blast radius that takes out everyone else nearby.

This seems net-good to me. There are certainly people alive today because of the R9X team's work.

Seems fun to me.

> Same folks, everyone.

Fewer than 5% of Anduril employees are former Palantir employees.

I fail to see how a country maintaining awareness of passages across its borders is a bad thing.

This really isn’t to sell any Roadrunners. Anduril has surely been talking to the right program offices and relevant government entities for some time now.

This is more to establish the company’s general credibility & draw in new talent.

Scattering sensors in the desert is militarizing the border? That’s an awfully dramatic characterization, no?