--- title: Cargo Culture | daily.dev description: A sharp critique of Silicon Valley's AI boom as a 'cargo cult' — where tech giants, VCs, and AI labs mimic past success patterns without genuine innovation.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Cargo Culture | daily.dev og:description: A sharp critique of Silicon Valley's AI boom as a 'cargo cult' — where tech giants, VCs, and AI labs mimic past success patterns without genuine innovation.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/7ZXijFE81.png og:image:alt: Cargo Culture og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Cargo Culture **[Where's Your Ed At](https://daily.dev/sources/wheresyoured)** · 41 min read · 28 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary A sharp critique of Silicon Valley's AI boom as a 'cargo cult' — where tech giants, VCs, and AI labs mimic past success patterns without genuine innovation. The piece argues that the industry has run out of ideas, with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic burning tens of billions while lacking viable paths to profitability. It covers the collapse of VC returns, the 'SaaSpocalypse,' the hollow hiring of AI luminaries, the push for token-burning 'loops,' and how executives cargo-cult management philosophies like 'founder mode' — all symptoms of an industry doing impressions of success rather than creating real value. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@petermrozek** · 0 upvotes > My god... "Cargo cult" - that's the term I was looking for, looking at the IT industry in the recent years. I just couldn't put my finger on it, as I haven't heard this for years. > > "Cargo cult" described a phenomenon where less developed communities (tribes or island-based villages, mostly on the South Pacific) created a cult following that would prophesize a coming of a "great power" that would bring "wealth and prosperity", often preceded by some apocalyptic event. In extreme cases, their understanding was that if they mimic the west (build "infrastructure", having only basic materials... **@rahulkumar23** · 0 upvotes > Infromative --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#venture-capital](https://daily.dev/tags/venture-capital), [#openai](https://daily.dev/tags/openai), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Cargo Culture","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81"},"datePublished":"2026-06-23T15:27:26.354Z","dateModified":"2026-06-23T16:21:02.814Z","description":"A sharp critique of Silicon Valley's AI boom as a 'cargo cult' — where tech giants, VCs, and AI labs mimic past success patterns without genuine innovation....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/574adc906abb37956ea31d3307bf03c0?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/574adc906abb37956ea31d3307bf03c0?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Where's Your Ed At","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Where's Your Ed At","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--_fiBlTSf--/f_auto/v1737645971/logos/wheresyoured","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/wheresyoured"},"commentCount":2,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":28},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}],"keywords":"ai,venture-capital,openai,anthropic","timeRequired":"PT41M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Where's Your Ed At","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/wheresyoured"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Cargo Culture"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/cargo-culture-7zxijfe81","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"My god… “Cargo cult” - that’s the term I was looking for, looking at the IT industry in the recent years. I just couldn’t put my finger on it, as I haven’t heard this for years.\n“Cargo cult” described a phenomenon where less developed communities (tribes or island-based villages, mostly on the South Pacific) created a cult following that would prophesize a coming of a “great power” that would bring “wealth and prosperity”, often preceded by some apocalyptic event. In extreme cases, their understanding was that if they mimic the west (build “infrastructure”, having only basic materials tribes have to do building - “sticks and mud” - it’s, of course, an extreme case, but just to give you the idea of the gap between the west and those tribes in the most extreme cases), it will bring in prosperity (ships and planes with goods).\nModern AI industry really seems to be a quite good reflection of a cargo cult. It checks all the boxes in some ways (as far as Wikipedia definition goes, but it’s pretty accurate):\n\n“charismatic prophet figures foretelling a coming cataclysm or utopia for followers” - check, we’ve got Altman, Amodai, Huang, Nadella and a few others and “coding is done in 6 months”, “white collar jobs are done in 18 months”, etc.,\n“predictions by these prophets of the return of dead ancestors or other powerful beings bringing the cargo” - check, basically all their AI shilling and how it will end jobs, replace humans and “democratise everything” (no, people are not equal and never will be - it’s diversity that defines us and we should embrace it - but that’s a whole other topic by itself),\n“the belief that ancestral spirits were responsible for the creation of the cargo” - check, people think AI is the progress of today with algorithms reaching in their core decades ago (the statistics underpinning basic neural networks were developed 200 years ago, with NNs being a product of around 1950s - it’s debatable, but around that time +/- 10 years)\nthe instruction by these prophets to followers to fulfil the prophecy by either reviving ancestral traditions or adopting new rituals - check, “tokenmaxxing”, “agentic” everything, “use loops”, etc. and the best one: “it will work when everyone is doing it”,\nfinally, these cults had a religious following, often shunning non-believers - check, just try criticising AI 😉 - it’s a matter of time.\n\nAlso, there cults were expecting things to magically happen when people prepare properly. This, of course, did not happen. The AI industry seems to be going in parallel with this very strongly.","datePublished":"2026-06-24T06:06:43.882Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7ZXijFE81#c-SHFJD4XUQ","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Peter Mrożek","url":"https://daily.dev/petermrozek","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--pBfYX68K--/f_auto/v1769247960/avatars/avatar_Qz65P1nVw3Bu6C5YwaZgA?_a=BAMAMiiu0"}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Infromative","datePublished":"2026-06-26T05:51:15.552Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/7ZXijFE81#c-CKx4t6Xg4","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Rahul Kumar","url":"https://daily.dev/rahulkumar23","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--qVHREbAq--/f_auto/v1759385623/avatars/avatar_U27QLhICCvm4in2e75Blh?_a=BAMAK+ZW0"}}]} ```