https://adamwillems.org Adam Willems Wed, 28 Jan 2026 03:58:51 +0000 https://adamwillems.org en https://adamwillems.org/Adam-Willems Fri, 12 Nov 2021 00:25:08 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Adam-Willems Adam Willems • Seattle-based journalist and researcher • Covering finance and banking for WIRED, The Guardian, The American Prospect, etc.• Other reporting on tech, culture, and politics for local outlets• News editor for CHUM News, a Seattle-focused culture publication contact: first [dot] j [dot] last [at] gmail [dot] com https://adamwillems.org/An-ex-Intel-CEO-s-new-venture Thu, 30 Oct 2025 19:13:00 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/An-ex-Intel-CEO-s-new-venture An ex-Intel CEO’s mission to build a Christian AI The GuardianNow Gloo’s executive chair and head of technology (who’s largely free of the shareholder suit), Gelsinger has made it a core mission to soft-power advance the company’s Christian principles in Silicon Valley, the halls of Congress and beyond, armed with a fundraised war chest of $110m. His call to action is also a pitch for AI aligned with Christian values: tech products like those built by Gloo, many of which are built on top of existing large language models, but adjusted to reflect users’ theological beliefs. “My life mission has been [to] work on a piece of technology that would improve the quality of life of every human on the planet and hasten the coming of Christ’s return,” he said. [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Stablecoin-Interest Wed, 17 Sep 2025 17:40:58 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Stablecoin-Interest The Loophole Turning Stablecoins Into a Trillion-Dollar FightWIREDIn April, the Treasury Department released a report suggesting consumers may move as much as $6.6 trillion out of bank deposits and into stablecoins, partially as a result of the GENIUS Act. If that happens, it could reduce the funds banks have available to lend, and consumers and businesses may face higher borrowing costs in the long run, according to research by the American Bankers Association, a prominent industry group.Crypto advocates see things differently. They claim stablecoin rewards create healthy market pressure and could drive big banks to provide more competitive interest rates in an effort to keep customer deposits.“To call this a trillion-dollar fight would be an understatement: This is highly fraught territory that banks have jealously guarded,” says former Republican representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who served as chair of the House Financial Services Committee until January 2025. [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Purge-at-the-NCUA Thu, 11 Dec 2025 19:37:19 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Purge-at-the-NCUA The State of Credit Unions as Trump Purges its RegulatorThe American ProspectOn October 27 in Las Vegas, National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) Chairman Kyle Hauptman waved around a Venetian Resort poker chip in one hand, and a $100 bill in the other. On the keynote stage of Money20/20, a finance and banking trade conference, Hauptman touted the great potential of stablecoins, a kind of cryptocurrency that pegs its value to a more stable asset, like dollars. Stablecoins are like poker chips, Hauptman explained: a symbol whose reliable value depends on secure conversion into a sovereign monetary instrument.Glossing over the deeper resonances one might acknowledge when likening cryptocurrencies to poker chips, Hauptman said stablecoins may buoy credit unions’ long-term business prospects, enabling new capacities such as instantaneous bank settlements. He added that he and his colleagues on the NCUA’s board have put a lot of care into issuing productive crypto-related guidance—even during the blockchain-averse Biden years.As of April, however, Hauptman has no colleagues… [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Erebor-Bank Thu, 24 Jul 2025 19:29:52 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Erebor-Bank Erebor’s Fundraise Follows SVB CollapseWIREDPalmer Luckey, cofounder of the weapons manufacturer Anduril, along with firms connected to Palantir cofounders Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel, are investing in a new bank that is aiming to fill a gap left by Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse two years ago. The venture is expected to be backed by upwards of $250 million in funding from Luckey, Lonsdale’s venture firm 8VC, Thiel’s Founders Fund, crypto-focused VC Haun Ventures, and several angel investors whose identities are not yet publicly known. Like Anduril and Palantir, Erebor Bank is named after a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien. (Introduced in The Hobbit, it’s the name of a mountain where the murderous dragon Smaug hoards gold and jewels.) The bank’s organizers and backers have remained tight-lipped about their vision. But their national bank charter application filed in June with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), as well as interviews with more than a dozen industry sources, suggest the organizers are leveraging current regulatory openness in banking, as well as their political power, to build a crypto-focused Silicon Valley Bank successor made in their image. [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Search-Party Thu, 13 Apr 2023 06:51:48 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Search-Party Search Party Real LifeAs Google’s first personal utterance, “I’m Feeling Lucky” was the company’s version of the Biblical “I Am Who I Am”: a declaration of omnipotence. Such audacity finds precedent in the inaugural statements of other Silicon Valley institutions. Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, for instance, began with a manifesto declaring that “we are as gods and might as well get good at it.” Like the Catalog, Google was born in a different tech culture from our own — a different internet that Google in large part created. At the time of its founding, the company’s branding channeled a prevailing sense of leisure and optimism, and a democratic sensibility: The internet, and even its corporate culture, was about converting spectators to participants, outsiders to insiders. That sensibility has long since congealed into something resembling its opposite. Your search is not your own; it’s Google’s. [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Bluesky Thu, 24 Jul 2025 19:52:27 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Bluesky The Rise of BlueskyCascade PBSAs local historian Roger Sale noted in his book Seattle, Past to Present, if cities are like trees, then Seattle is like a rhododendron, not a towering maple or oak; such sprawl and alterity may apply to Bluesky, too. Its 20 employees borrow heavily from municipal structures to understand their own function. For example, they’ve modeled decentralized content-moderation structures after the tiered system of lower and upper courts seen in the real world. Users are both consumers of Bluesky as well as its stewards, deputized through the moderation systems they develop or opt into. Regardless of this rhetoric or intent, most people experience Bluesky as any other form of social media: a platform (an account, an app, a website), not a protocol (infrastructure for servers or many mini-Blueskies). And they’re more interested in the former than the latter, complicating efforts to shunt content-moderating responsibilities onto users. They may even be put off by the notion that content moderation should be largely self-administered, which basically puts them to work — and quite conveniently reduces moderation costs for Bluesky. [HERE] https://adamwillems.org/Boeing-Strike Wed, 28 Jan 2026 03:58:51 +0000 Adam Willems https://adamwillems.org/Boeing-Strike The Boeing Strike is About More Than MoneySeattle MetAnother 737 MAX machinist who’s been on the job for two-and-a-half years—and who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation—says that, despite Boeing’s slogan to “speak up,” some managers will move workers or change them to a different shift if they do, in fact, speak up… That fear has compounding effects, Evans adds. “There’s people who see that other people are getting retaliated against: They see that their coworkers are not getting justice for it, and so it prevents them from speaking up,” he says. “As a result, you just have a lot of perpetuating incompetence.” “Perpetuating incompetence” doesn’t bode well for an aircraft manufacturer already mired in safety lapses and federal investigations. It puts workers in danger on the job, and can spell doom for people flying in those aircraft. Outliving picketers’ soggy signs or the embers of their burn barrels, these ongoing defects may seriously hamper new Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg’s stated efforts to revamp the aerospace giant’s long-term prospects through a “fundamental culture change.” [HERE]