Balaji S. SrinivasanVerified account

@balajis

Angel investor. Cofounder of Earn, Counsyl, Teleport, Coin Center. Previously CTO of Coinbase, GP a16z. I hear this Bitcoin thing might be kind of a big deal.

Stanford, CA
Joined November 2013

Tweets

You blocked @balajis

Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @balajis

  1. Pinned Tweet

    Caijing is one of the most reputable outlets in China. Their article on the was censored today. It claims significant underreporting of both cases & deaths, especially among the elderly. Here it is: Translation:

    Show this thread
    Undo
  2. Ben Gurion once said “fight the war as if there were no White Paper, fight the White Paper as if there were no war” The tension between crypto & quarantine is obvious. Perhaps we fight for crypto as if there is no coronavirus, and fight the coronavirus as if there is no crypto.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  3. The coronavirus may also be to decentralized medicine what the financial crisis was to decentralized currency. It is an enormous stimulus for portable diagnostics, wearables, mobile clinics, telemedicine, right-to-try laws, accelerated approvals. For decentralizing medicine.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  4. Sometimes a solution creates the next problem. My rough forecast of the future: the coronavirus results in quarantines, nationalism, centralization. And this may actually work to stop the spread. But once under control, states will not cede their powers. So, we decentralize.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  5. If the coronavirus goes pandemic, and it seems it may, the extreme edge case becomes the new normal. It’s every debate we’ve had on surveillance, deplatforming, centralization — accelerated. Pandemic means emergency powers for the state, even more than terrorism or crime.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  6. It’s hard to argue that the Wuhan quarantine should be porous. Or that contagious riders should spread to drivers. That’s how the whole system crashes, as in Wuhan. Yet the potential for long-term abuse here is so obvious.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  7. First, Wuhan is a city in crisis. The healthcare system has crashed. You do not want that in your city, or country. This is not an illusory threat. So, a quarantine. Stop this from spreading. Free movement suddenly has externalities. But how efficient should that quarantine be?

    Show this thread
    Undo
  8. Digital quarantine is here. It appears that folks who fled Wuhan have been digitally quarantined, likely via WeChat. Their apps don’t work outside the quarantine zone. Now that’s happened to 240 Uber users in Mexico exposed to the infected. Complex issue! A thread…🧵

    Show this thread
    Undo
  9. Citing a movie feels trivial, but I can’t help but be reminded of the Dark Knight scene where every cellphone in the city is turned into a tracking device. It was written to explore the ticking bomb of terrorism but is even more applicable to contagion.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  10. As you go from crime, to terrorism, to pandemics the frequency decreases but severity increases. Governments ask for powers in times of crisis. They will be granted them. They may use them to solve the crisis. Then they often eventually abuse them. Both crisis & abuse are real.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  11. As you go from crime, to terrorism, to pandemics the frequency decreases but severity increases. Governments ask for powers in times of crisis. They will be granted them. They may use them to solve the crisis. Then they often eventually abuse them. Both crisis & abuse are real.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  12. Obvious potential for abuse. But this is that rare situation where many would opt in to being tracked. It could help determine the people and behaviors spreading the coronavirus. Literally a life & death issue. Far more immediate than terrorism or crime.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  13. I hadn’t even thought yet about the degree of digital surveillance that may have kicked in. Forget traditional epidemiological contact tracing. For every infected, the Chinese government can pull up their location history and find every other cellphone that was nearby.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  14. There is no progress without technological progress.

    Undo
  15. One caveat: the main issue will not be the RT-PCR itself, but rather careful sample handling to ensure lab techs don’t get sick. They are trained to test for things like HIV already. But you want to take special precautions here.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  16. We have the technology to rapidly diagnose coronavirus in every major metro area. The problem is the bureaucracy! Decentralized testing should be immediately expedited, with executive order if necessary. Every CLIA-certified lab should be able to do this, it’s just RT-PCR.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  17. The big issue with these possible disruptions is that there are so many of them, and they are all hyped. But if you don’t react strongly to the real ones, you’re dead. So the whole game is about diligencing these curves. And then insulating against the ones that seem real.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  18. The Quarantiner’s Dilemma is similar to the Innovator’s Dilemma. There’s a fast-growing but still small threat. Throw all your weight at it early? Then you seem to have overreacted. Wait till it gets big enough to be undeniable? Then you’re surely dead.

    Show this thread
    Undo
  19. Jan 31

    We need prepare for possibility that nCoV will spread widely around the world even as we continue to try to contain it -- some priorities for action

    Undo
  20. There has been a genre of “official misinformation” where Washington Post, Wired, USA Today, BuzzFeed, etc have posted dangerously trivial headlines comparing coronavirus to the flu. Fortunately, NYT has been publishing the science from NEJM, Lancet, CDC, WHO. Credit where due.

    Undo
  21. If real, shows how seriously the Chinese are taking this situation. You don’t do this for the flu.

    Undo

Loading seems to be taking a while.

Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

    You may also like

    ·