24
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
24 points (96.2% liked)
TechTakes
2696 readers
147 users here now
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Oh yeah, I saw the author post this. The argument appears to be "blow 40% of the Norwegian Pension Fund's current value on OpenAI, because democracy?" and then goes on to paint opposition to datacenters as a "you will be left behind" move. Just absolutely dumb stuff all around.
"OpenAI has tapped out one petrostate already, time to move to the next one!"
FWIW I have no clue how the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund is managed. The principal idea is to sequester windfall earnings from hydrocarbon extraction from the normal day-to-day economy, avoiding a boom-and-bust cycle and the resource curse.
That said, it's pretty useless to just store a bunch of money to use "later". I can imagine a portion is used for infrastructure (all those marvelous tunnels) but taxes on income and VAT are eye-wateringly high (and I say that as a Swede!). So there has to be some political pressure to raid the piggy bank, not least for election winning purposes.
So presumably the fund is insulated from day to day meddling. On the other hand, you can't just hand over the reins to 25 year old coke-addicted MBAs.
My main point is that for the proposal to happen, someone will have to try to convince the people in charge of the fund that betting the farm on Sama not ripping you off is worth doing. Possible? Maybe. Probable? I fucking hope not.