Ten Things I Learned in DC
I have much more free time to work on exciting new projects now. If you haven’t contacted me yet, feel free to do so at hi [at] brianchau.ai.
Your actions matter
Most people are not thinking very hard about how to do something, even the thing they want to do. They are instruction receivers. Giving them plans to do their job well almost always creates a meaningful improvement, whether that’s administrative enforcement, legal language, or coordinated timing in media/backdoor pressure.
… But not always
Nothing I did decided the 2024 election or Chinese AI releases. Sometimes things just go your way and there’s nothing you did for it. Sometimes you are just downstream of fortune.
Your work schedule should reflect that. Be ready to work 80 hours one week even if it means you work 30 hours the next.
Stereotypes are correct
… when it comes to DC and SF. People from both cities should take what they think of the other, and double it. DC is twice as procedural, charismatic, and fake as SF thinks it is. SF is twice as autistic, reckless, and ambitious as DC thinks it is.
Funding doesn’t scale with winning
It scales with name recognition (for good or for ill) and event planning, mostly.
Right-wing status is more random than left-wing status
Who matters in the right is up in the air. As a result, you’ll often have totally marginal randos in group convos with the VP, Cabinet officials, etc.
Variation is probably good for philosophy and governance. But sometimes someone will need to tell a senile boomer nobody to let the Cabinet nominee speak.
Multiple people tell me that Democrats are much more class-conscious and exclusive. I’ve never really verified this.
It pays to be a philosopher. And if not a philosopher, than an ideologue.
You’re more trustworthy if you have a coherent framework of what’s right and wrong, even for people who disagree with you.
The Mafias are real
Most things people say about the mafias —Catholics, the asylum rights lobby, farm lobby, Ukraine lobby, Israel lobby, gays (left and right), degrowthers, EAs, Straussians (east and west coast), etc. — are mostly true. They are very powerful, within their side.
Neocons are even more evil than you think
They will make stuff up with no basis in evidence. They will make stuff up about you. They engage in the cattiest, socially destructive behavior. Just based on personality alone, I want the war lobby to suffer. This includes the war with China lobby.
The Tech Right vs. Trad Right fight is brewing
Every week or two, some people would message me from one of these sides, asking me to explain the other side and what their interests were. Everyone’s on edge. Both sides seem pretty clearly defined to me, but they clearly aren’t to each other. There was relatively little debate on AI and at least at my last job my policy was always that I don’t weigh in on coalitional fights unrelated to AI. If you ask again now, the odds are I’ll say more.
Almost everyone is competing for slots on a trough
That’s just how most funding in DC works. Because people compete for slots on a trough, conformity is encouraged, even on the right. This means people on the right will snipe at you for offending even the left. Seems like a perverse incentive. This is more of a systems problem than a problem with the individual morality of people involved, who are better than average.
This won’t change until the funding changes. I had the privilege of being funded by tech people and could piss off the typical conservative donor base or people related to the typical conservative donor base. This is a rare privilege.
On point 10, do you mean trough, or through?
As someone from DC, I just want to say that the “DC” of Congress up Pennsylvania Ave to the White House and on to the lobbies of K Street is an entirely different world from the DC of its residents and the suburbs too. The stereotypes do not apply. There is all sorts of good and bad in the “people’s” DC that is separate from what the rest of the country thinks of when they imagine DC.