The group chats that changed America

Last Thursday morning, a bit before 10 am in Austin and nearly 11 pm in Singapore, Joe Lonsdale had enough of Balaji Srinivasan’s views on China.

“This is insane CCP thinking,” Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir, wrote to a 300-member Signal group. “Not sure what leaders hang out w you in Singapore but on this you have been taken over by a crazy China mind virus.”

Srinivasan, a former Coinbase chief technology officer and influential tech figure who now lives in the city-state, responded that China “executed extremely well over 45 years. Any analysis that doesn’t take that into account makes it seem like the US could have held it back.”