When Not to Move Fast and Break Things
There’s a saying in the fast world of Silicon Valley, “Move Fast and Break Things.” Donald Trump has adopted it if it were his own. Now in the world of technology, it makes a certain amount of sense. It basically assumes that something truly innovative has been invented, and that it will be utterly disruptive to the environment in which it will be introduced. When that’s the case, moving fast is essential, and if you break things on your way to establishing the disruptive new concept, well, that’s just the way something new breaks onto the scene. Does what works in the wild jungle of technological innovation also apply to the staid and serious world of international diplomacy? Donald Trump thinks so. He enjoys moving fast, and if he breaks things along the way, so what? But the stakes are higher in diplomacy, and the risk of breaking things can be catastrophic.
The credit for coining the term “move fast and break things” belongs to Mark Zuckerberg, in the early days of Facebook. It was also the title of a 2017 book by Jonathan Taplin, with the subtitle How Facebook, Google and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy. But even undermining democracy, as serious a threat as that might be, isn’t as potentially catastrophic as destabilizing the world order among nuclear powers.
There are now nine nuclear nations: the US, Russia, the UK, France, Israel, India, China, Pakistan and North Korea. Iran is on the cusp of becoming the tenth. There’s a kind of dynamic tension among them today, and NATO plays a crucial role in maintaining that fragile equilibrium. Donald Trump’s insistence on member countries paying a fair share of NATO’s cost is a bold and positive factor, but it is unfortunately coupled with a naïve lack of appreciation for the role the Treaty has played in resisting Russian aggression in Eastern Europe for three quarters of a century. If NATO were to become one of the things that break as a consequence of Trump’s brash attempts to reset the balance of power in the Russian war against Ukraine, then literally no one knows what might happen. Would Vladimir Putin take another step towards restoring the scope of the Russian Empire by invading Poland, Lithuania or the Baltic States? Most European heads of state consider that a real risk.
He also moved fast and didn’t mind breaking things when he announced his plan to redevelop Gaza. Here are his exact words from the news conference with an obviously startled Benjamin Netanyahu: [Quote] The only reason the Palestinians want to go back to Gaza is they have no alternative. It’s right now a demolition site. This is just a demolition site. Virtually every building is down.
“They’re living under fallen concrete that’s very dangerous and very precarious. They instead can occupy all of a beautiful area with homes and safety and they can live out their lives in peace and harmony instead of having to go back and do it again.
“The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it too. We’ll own it and be responsible for dismantling all of the dangerous unexploded bombs and other weapons on the site, level the site and get rid of the destroyed buildings, level it out. Create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area … Do a real job, do something different.” [Unquote]. That’s a pretty arrogant perspective to take on one of the world’s perennial trouble spots. Fortunately, over the following weeks he modified and softened this proposal, but the point is, he really wanted to move fast and break things.
Certainly the initiatives undertaken by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency are in the same mold, and it is becoming increasingly clear that moving fast and breaking things like federal government departments and entitlement programs are on a very different scale than introducing a new device like a smart phone or a disruptive social media tool like Twitter. Voting with Russia and North Korea and failing to condemn Russia for invading Ukraine threatens almost all of the alliances that the US has participated in since the end of World War II, and has the potential to trigger a World War III.
Moving Fast and Breaking Things is a cute slogan for a product introduction strategy in the technology industry. It is not responsible policy on a national or international scale.
