💋 Pinecones & Satellites: Engines of Decay (vol. 4)
Corruption, fragility, and unseen incentives shaping our world.
Essays in this edition:
- Conspiracy of Interests
- Steel Lions; Glass Lambs
- App Store Rotting at the Core
i.
Conspiracy of Interests
Scott Horton—libertarian radio host and antiwar.com editor—calls it the "conspiracy of interests." Not a smoky room of villains plotting world domination at old oak tables, but something quieter, more insidious. The way poor incentives and self-interest line up, one rung of the ladder at a time, to make sure nothing ever really changes.
Daniel Ellsberg—the American political analyst, RAND researcher, and principal author of the Pentagon Papers—once described his early years working under Robert McNamara's team at the Pentagon. His job, he said, was less about finding truth than about making his boss look good. Even when the policy was failing, you stayed quiet. The plan was to keep your head down, get promoted, and someday you'll be in a position to fix things. But by the time you arrive, you've built your whole career on silence.
I saw the same logic up close as a college kid in then-Congressman Bill Nelson's office. He backed a piece of legislation that didn't serve the country but played well in his district. I asked him why. His answer was simple: "You have to get reelected before you can pass any laws. And to get reelected, you have to give your voters what they want."
And this didn't just happen in the past. Look at how climate policy is handled today. Everyone in Washington admits the costs of delay will be catastrophic, but the short-term incentives—donor money, quarterly profits, election cycles—always outweigh the long-term. Another rung on the ladder. Another year lost.
The game is incumbency. If that's all anyone is really playing for, no wonder nothing gets done. It made little sense to me then; it makes even less sense to me now. Maybe the real conspiracy behind America's slow fade isn't masterminds pulling strings, but ordinary ambition, multiplied by millions, aligning in ways that guarantee dysfunction.
ii.
Steel Lions; Glass Lambs
Every era has its race. The Space Race was about technology supremacy and bragging rights. The Cold War was about land and nukes. Now it's the AI Arms Race—U.S. vs. China, or so the headlines frame it.
This got me thinking. The real contest here—the thing we should all be watching much more closely—isn't technological; it's human.
In China, the CCP treats its youth like a long-term project. Screen time for minors is rationed. Video game play is limited to a few hours a week. Social media is heavily policed for addictive content. Schools drill math and science relentlessly. Physical fitness is mandatory. National pride, sacrifice, and endurance are woven into the curriculum. It's authoritarian, yes—no one should mistake it for freedom—but it reveals a recognition that tomorrow's strength depends on today's youth.
In the U.S., we've chosen a very different path. Our economy is built to monetize distraction. Our kids grow up on infinite scroll and engineered outrage. Anger and frustration at ten, porn at eleven, gambling at thirteen. Public schools cut physical education while childhood obesity spikes. We hand out devices like candy, normalize addiction, and medicate attention with pharmaceuticals. We glorify "freedom," but the freedom we're offering is the freedom to be consumed.
The result is that China is deliberately, if harshly, conditioning its youth to focus, endure, and defer gratification. We are conditioning ours to fracture, crave, and collapse. They are building steel lions. We are raising glass lambs.
So when people talk about "winning the AI arms race" as if it all comes down to faster chips and bigger models, I can't help but wonder: really, with what army? You can own the fastest GPUs on earth, but if the next generation comes up thin-skinned, dopamine-jacked, and attention-fractured, how do you win anything that truly matters?
The Cold War ended with "our side" on top, but losing one round doesn't mean you stop racing. Russia regrouped. China lost a century to Mao's Cultural Revolution, and they've been sprinting ever since to make up for it. They treat human weakness as a liability to be stamped out. We treat human weakness as a business opportunity.
This naturally raises questions about the real contest: when it comes, which future are we really training for—steel lions or glass lambs?
iii.
App Store Rotting at the Core
Experiment with me?
Open Apple’s App Store. Pick any big-name app. Click “Ratings & Reviews.” What do you see? Five stars — ★★★★★.
Excellent. Now flip to “Most Recent.” What do you see? One star. Maybe two. ★ or ★★.
WTF? Doesn’t matter which app. Try another. Try five more. Ten more. Yesterday’s glowing reviews don’t matter, because today, like the rest of our rotting digital wasteland, users aren’t happy. With anything.
It’s like walking into a Michelin-starred restaurant and finding the kitchen now serves wet cardboard. Every plate sprinkled with ads. Water refills $1 each. Ask for bread and you’re tossed onto the street.
The App Store was once Apple’s crown jewel, a triumph for both consumers and shareholders. Now it’s a live exhibit in tech’s great enshittification.
Why? Because apps aren’t aging gracefully. Greatness no longer exists. Good is now mediocre. Mediocre is now intolerable. And broken is the new normal.
We’re watching a ratings collapse in real time, where ★★★ is the new ★★★★★, ★★ means “pretty good,” and ★ is average.