Permissionless

Every few hours, it seems like there’s a new software exploit. This week, a critical PHP flaw forced government websites across Europe offline, and the NSA told anyone who couldn’t patch to take their systems down, and one attacker used AI agents to break into the websites of 100+ companies for about $50 a hack. Exploits that used to take months now take minutes. And a standard VM still assumes you trust the host. The hypervisor, the admins, anyone who gets that far can read what’s in memory. The hardware to close that gap already exists. The question is no longer how fast you can patch, it’s whether anyone else can see inside your workload while it runs.

The writing is on the wall. Public support for hyperscale data centers is collapsing, and 77% of Americans are now worried AI will drive up their electricity bills, and only 14% are okay with a data center near their home. NY just became the first state to enact a statewide moratorium, and 300+ data center bills have been filed across 30+ states, and $64B in projects have been blocked or delayed. Nvidia sees it too. They're pivoting to distributed compute: residential nodes, personal AI supercomputers, and a vision of "an AI supercomputer in every household." The narrative is shifting from scale to sovereignty. The question is no longer how big your cluster is, it's who owns the compute.

"The jig is up." Palantir cofounder Alex Karp on what technical customers actually want: "control over their compute, their models, their data stack, and their alpha." Blind reliance on centralized providers is ending. Replaced by permissionless compute and true ownership.