this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026
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It really occurs to me that this emphasis on surveillance (Palantir, this Discord stuff, the cameras everywhere, etc.) really shows how afraid the billionaire class is. They're trying to identify those that are getting uppity to try and prevent organizing, which they hope would quash revolution. They know people are angry; they know they've been looting and pillaging; they know they've been denying access to badic things like food, housing, healthcare; and they know they work for hostile interests. Yet, they're going to keep on doing it. They even have a new police force.
It never works though.
If you get under the hood of Mangione's actual history and ideology, the guy was an Effective Altruist insider. Not some Far-Left Antifa Radical, but a staunch techbro anarcho-libertarian who initially sympathized with Balaji Srinivasan's Network State and Peter Thiel's vision of fully capitalist Start Up Cities.
He'd never have normally registered on a dragnet like this.
But, more importantly, he's a near-singular instance of vigilante violence against a business executive. To say "it never works", you need to ignore the enormous security apparatus surrounding Fortune 100 senior executives. And the relative infrequency of these attempts in general. Since Thompson, there hasn't been some wave of executive assassinations. The closest we've seen was another lone wolf shooting of Charlie Kirk. Has a billionaire ever been deliberately targeted and killed... ever?
Whether it is through a reasonably robust security state, a militantly apathetic public, or the general anonymity of business executives, the real physical risk to billionaires and their CEO stogies appears to be nearly zero.