| Thanks for reading The Briefing, our nightly column where we break down the day's news. If you like what you see, I encourage you to subscribe to our reporting here. Greetings! A decade ago, Peter Thiel wrote somewhat famously that "competition is for losers." He was interested in backing startups that looked like Google, whose products were so good "that no other firm can offer a close substitute." A caveat he offered was that he wasn't interested in backing monopoly businesses that look like "government favorites." Thiel's mission statement might need updating. Ten years later, a lot of the big money in startups backed by Thiel's Founders Fund is wrapped up not in sticky consumer startups like social networks but in a trickier sort of business that sells technology, services and weapons to the U.S. government. Palantir, SpaceX, Anduril, Scale AI, OpenAI and more have all been backed by Thiel's firm—and next month they plan to announce a "consortium that will jointly bid for U.S. government work in an effort to disrupt the country's oligopoly of 'prime' contractors," like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, the Financial Times reported Sunday. The effort shouldn't be surprising. Success in government contracting—for as long as it has existed—has centered not just on product quality, but on government influence through lobbying, regulatory capture and politics. Silicon Valley has gotten its first taste of what success in government contracting can look like, thanks to soaring valuations for SpaceX and Palantir in particular. So far, the collaboration between Silicon Valley's government contractors seems light on specifics. But there are several possibilities as to why the companies are getting together, investors and executives in the industry told me. For instance, a single government contractor is rarely in charge of an entire big defense contract; instead, the work gets subcontracted to other firms. Putting tech companies together for bids could yield more contracts than any one firm could get on its own. A coalition could also put up a bigger fight against government agencies it thinks are writing unfair contract requests. The other purpose could be to combine lobbying efforts. More startups benefit from advocacy for Defense Department programs focused on emerging technologies, like the new administration approving a program for using autonomous drones. Plus, the traditional defense industry lobbying group—National Defense Industrial Association—has never really attracted tech firms as members. The effort comes as more and more voices with Silicon Valley sympathies get top government jobs. The latest appointments include Scale AI executive Michael Kratsios as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as two general partners at Andreessen Horowitz, another prolific backer of defense tech startups. A16z alum Sriram Krishnan was named as OSTP's senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence, while Scott Kupor will serve as director of the Office of Personnel Management. And of course, there's also the well-covered influence of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX. Of course, joining startups together and putting the tech industry's friends in positions of power will have to yield actual results, like curbing government spending and improving war-fighting capabilities. Otherwise, it will end up looking like the kind of old-guard regulatory capture tactics Silicon Valley says it hates. Apple has managed to come across as holier than its big tech peers on privacy, in part because it's a relatively small fish in internet advertising, which harvests lots of personal data. It might get increasingly difficult for the company to pull off that image if it moves forward with a plan to make a doorbell camera, as Bloomberg reported it was considering doing on Sunday. Many people (including yours truly) have found Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest doorbells extremely convenient for keeping tabs on who comes to your front door and when packages arrive. But plenty of people find them creepy. Ring itself paid more than $5 million in consumer refunds this year as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, which found that Ring had allowed its employees too much access to customers' video footage from the doorbell cameras. In addition to considering a Ring doorbell competitor, Apple is also working on other kinds of security cameras as part of a broader push into the smart home category, Bloomberg has reported. Perhaps the company will be able to use its privacy pedigree to make more people feel OK putting an Apple camera and microphone on their doorsteps. But staying out of such businesses in some ways has also made Apple's life a lot simpler.—Nick Wingfield - Telegram's revenue is likely to surpass $1 billion this year, compared to nearly $350 million last year, and the messaging platform is on track to report its first profit, according to The New York Times.
- The Nordstrom family reached an agreement to take the namesake retailer private in a $4 billion deal that will receive support from Mexican retailer El Puerto de Liverpool.
- Meta plans to add displays to its Ray-Ban smart glasses as early as the second half of next year to show notifications and other information, the Financial Times reported.
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