Described as a “ticking time bomb,” AI notetakers create a near-verbatim, searchable, and durable record of every utterance, off-hand remark, inside joke, and speculative comment made in a meeting. In the abstract, that may sound like good governance. In the context of litigation or regulatory inquiry, it can be deeply problematic.
In the startup world, things move fast—your legal strategy should move faster. Waiting to bring in counsel until there’s a co-founder fallout, a misfired contract, or a surprise lawsuit is like trying to install brakes after your Tesla hits 90 mph. We’ve seen it all:
A little legal foresight upfront saves hours of cleanup later.
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As a transplant in America, the festivities and excitement for the July 4th holiday always surprised me – until this year. My son, Luca, who is now 18-months, was able to properly celebrate the holiday for the first time. As for most toddlers, for him the holiday was a culmination of all his favorite things to do – eating his favorite foods (especially ice cream and popsicles), playing with his cousins, jumping in the pool, having his dad’s undivided attention, and, of course, watching fireworks.
In an effort to be timely and topical, I thought about writing something about the coronation of the new titular leader of our closest ally, but—let’s face it—this subject is of limited interest except to the most devoted Anglophile. And, aside from commenting on the huge amount of capital that must have been expended in this exercise, there wasn’t much I could think of in relation to this event that has instructive or inspirational entrepreneurial overtones.
So I turn instead to a story of plain old American ingenuity. In the early days of the American republic, soon after we had overthrown the shackles of colonial status and our allegiance to this leader’s ancestor, the distance between nascent agricultural settlements and trade ports considerably hindered economic development. It didn’t take long, though, for those on the western side of the Appalachian Mountains to discover that they could use rivers as an economical way to float goods to market in New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Even the flatboats used for this purpose themselves generated revenue: after arriving at market, they would be disassembled and the wood sold or repurposed.
It’s a view of human nature that we all accept. It tends to shape how we view our political affairs, our economic institutions, our business practices, and really any realm of human endeavor. It is expressed as an aphorism of only two words: “power corrupts.”
Political Scientist Brian Klaas—a Minnesotan, a contemporary of one of my daughters at a local high school, a graduate of two institutions of higher learning with which I am familiar, and now a professor at the University of London—has set out to examine this idea in light of the question, “Does power corrupt or are corrupt people drawn to power?”
The answer, it seems, is yes—both are true. While Klaas’s analysis focuses on obviously nefarious activities, he includes some aspects of corporate endeavor and business behavior along the same spectrum. His focus is on people who have wielded “enormous power,” be they “cult leaders, war criminals, despots, coup plotters, torturers, mercenaries, generals, propagandists, rebels, corrupt CEOs, [or] convicted criminals.”
