Y Combinator’s Little Tech Summit was a bizarre snapshot of DC

It has been reported in Washington nearly six years ago, and in politics for more than a decade, and has attended more policy events sponsored by companies (and I tend to gesture during them) than I remember. I also reported the gradual disintegration of the reality caused by the rise of Maga, so I believed that his tolerance with confusing political phenomena was very high. But I did not think in my life that I would see Steve Bannon sitting on the stage in the barn jacket that was removed next to the director of the Protection Office of Consumer and the former Protection, Rohit Chopra, a prominent gradual that was presented as “a protein of senator Elizabeth Warren”, with a serious discussion of the topic: Is artistic and populism not coordinated? ”

No, the topic was outside the left field in itself – the right of technology and popular right We are In an all -out war, it wanders in the Trump administration. But this visual conjugation reduced me from sending a picture of the stage with the explanatory name “What if the theory of horseshoe, but real” for several sources.

Bannon’s appearance was at the Small Tech Summit in Y Combinator earlier this month a surprise – Timeslot was buried in the schedule as a committee entitled “TBA”. Conferences tend to have paintings that amplifiers are not confirmed until the last minute, and those present were barely wandering in the anticipation.

It was today actually It was Mindfuck and the mind will remain. Sajar Ingéti, the right -wing host of podcast The score of collapse, He managed a plate – a smart man, for sure, but the idea of ​​hosting PodCaster hosting a policy Policy Panel last year would have been Bonkers. The Chairman of the Federal Trade Committee, Andrew Ferguson, was presented through the Avatar created from the artificial intelligence for himself. He – in addition to the main officials of the Anti -Monopathic Department of the Ministry of Justice – appeared – in this event while he was deliberately a spring meeting to combat monopoly of the American Lawyers Association across the street, which is the first time that any administration has done so. It was granted, this was hardly the strangest thing that was until these days – Ferguson, as the leader of the Federal Trade Committee, recently announced his opposition to keeping FTC as an independent agency.

Hours later, Lina Khan, his progressive predecessor, criticized President Donald Trump for his launch at FTC Commissioners, and then began taking a picture with Bannon. (The image, which ended on social media, ended, causing a slight collapse on the Internet).

On the stage, the lawyer of the Ministry of Justice announced that this was the anti -monopoly era. Senator Josh Holie (R-MO) continued to make a threat noise in Meta, despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg has begun to present himself as a Manusver speech, supportive of empty. (“I welcome the fact that Zuckerberg says that he will not engage in clear and misleading control anymore. Congratulations, but this does not mean that you violate the anti -monopoly laws.”

The Senator Korea Booker (D-NJ) was limiting the room, returning to his 25-hour speech, we condemned Trump the night before, and three quarters of the room jumped to their feet to pity him from endurance and the courage of resistance.

I can safely say that I have never attended anything completely broken my mind at that moment: an audience of lawyers, politics experts and government relations teams that had not said (and frankly) from Trump, but they were quietly (quietly) to write down notes about what Maga Populalists and Rial-Rialists say. It was granted, every person in the room was there under any of the anti -monopoly discussion, one of the very few common denominators between the populist and the progressive right. To be fair, they were doing it with Y Combinator, one of the few Silicon Valley entities that may say reasonably supports small companies and is supporting the competition (although it is an act Get a date of converting small -sized technology to medium market technology). In the previous year, Y Combinator held a similar conference to combat monopoly and called a similar group of speakers (including SEN.

But this is what happens in Washington Trump, when the world of politics, and the companies in which you must move in, must suddenly renamed the points of conversation as a friend of Maga. “Small companies support” is now “economic populism”. The “dismantling of” justifications “should include because they suppress freedom of expression. DieHard intellectual carriers are not usually invited to the events sponsored by companies suddenly sponsored by companies to host the panels with progressive speakers. and Steve Bannon It can appear without being screaming outside the building. It was not as if the DC Technical Policy Policy Policy has become full of Maga Diehars overnight – they gave Bokerer Permanent applause, For the sake of Christ – but it was strange, at least for this reporter, seeing the barbarians inside the gates and It is treated collectively. It was so confusing, in fact, so that I could barely address the news that Trump had just detonated the global economy by announcing his induction until the next morning.

Sometimes, you have to cooperate with enemies to accomplish something, but Maga was running the city. Maga Hate Big technology. The DC Tech, which has been built on the same companies, must live with it now.