Who is Marc Andreessen?

Marc Andreessen is one of the earliest tech entrepreneurs of the information age, a Democrat and major league venture capitalist.  His many successes give reason to take his thoughts very seriously.  He has been quite skilled at recognizing value in the complex and competitive emerging fields.  Did all that recently change?  Probably not.

This recent ZeroHedge article about a Joe Rogan interview of Andreessen is focused on the statements from Andreessen about meetings in Spring of 2024 with Biden officials.  Andreessen is influential for obvious reasons, besides being a fountain of capital to fuel the aspirations of tech innovators.  Influential people are those with whom politicians want to somehow join forces.  In this case, it backfired because of the policy that shocked Andreessen concerning startup businesses, which have been his 'bread and butter'.

How does this differ from a merchant being approached by a mob made man who makes him 'an offer he can't refuse'?  That is not clear, because the conditions of the implied contract are not spelled out, but the fact that the unspoken law was spoken like this is a rare opportunity.  The heavy-handed way this approach was taken was signaling a sea change in US society.

Quote of Marc Andreessen, describing a meeting with Biden officials:

"We had meetings [Biden officials] this spring that were the most alarming meetings I've ever been in. Where they were taking us through their plans, and it was - basically just full government - full government control - like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don't even start startups - there's just no way that they can succeed - there's no way that we're going to permit that to happen." 

The term 'fascist' has become a cliche and lost its important meaning, so let's revisit high school.  Communism is a system where the state owns everything and the party is the sole source of official Truth and commands everything with a military intolerance for individual prerogatives.  Getting caught departing from that Truth can have deadly consequences.  Fascism is a system where the means of production and much of the information dispersion is in the hands of relatively independent people.  Both systems are totalitarian and authoritarian.  Given the overweening attitude that Andreessen reported, was he not describing fascists?   How would Hitler perceive some German citizen starting a business that would upend many of the businesses over which he held control?  How would Hitler see Randell Mills if he appeared in 1935 with his devices, theory and publications?  Favorably, if total control of Mills' activities was maintained by party officials answering to Hitler.  A dictator would not tolerate someone putting his power base at risk and being forced to defer to an independent business over which he could not exercise effective control.

In various forums, I suggested that Dr. Mills was facing powers that were not well defined, but which would not want to allow uncontrolled development of hydrino technology.  The reflexive conspiracy theorist label was irresistible for people.

Andreessen decided to support Trump, as a result of this experience.

As I see it, there are basically two possible explanations for the lack of development of the knowledge and technology pertaining to Hydrino and LENR.  One is that it's all delusion and wishful thinking.  The other is that it is deliberately suppressed.  The third alternative, that these observational claims were all based in wishful thinking and pathological science is one that I had to reject because, in the case of BLP, the experimental results are so repeatable, so simple to measure in some of the methods of analysis, and results observed by multiple parties, that mistake is beyond unlikely.

We know that the drive to advance knowledge and technology is very powerful, for many reasons.  At root, it is survival.  So, it is reasonable to assume that if there was real potential with these claims, we would see development, but we don't.   Most people assume that can only mean that it is all false.  This was my mindset when I began working for Dr. Eugene Mallove in his lab, that it was probably false, but needed investigation. 

It was because I actually investigated and spent a lot of time communicating with actual scientists that I realized how strong was the case for significant anomalies, however poorly understood and difficult to replicate. Still, the repeatable robust experiment within my observation and control has evaded me all this time.  I do not represent a recognized institution, nor do I hold advanced degrees that might allow me to lay claim to the title of scientist.  Consequently, Dr. Mills does not see it to be in his interest to allow me to perform experiments covered by his intellectual property.  I do not have the funding for it, in any case.

I had to entertain the possibility of suppression.  I don’t favor believing in conspiracy when stupidity is in such abundant evidence.  Well, what Andreessen has just described is exactly what I suspected as a nearly worst-case scenario.  I find that his story is believable.  What do you think?  Is this not evidence of systematic suppression?

{edited 12/2/2024}

Some review of Brett Holverstott's book is relevant.  The pattern of suppression did not start with the Biden administration.  The US Patent Office left a trail of testimonies concerning the intellectual property.  The story related in BH's book begins with an introduction to the patent attorney for Dr. Mills, Jeff Melcher, on March 1, 2000.  The quotes from his book:

"Mills was flush with tens of millions in venture capital from private sources that included energy utilities, which he funneled into a large laboratory just outside Princeton, New Jersey. Working for him there was a team of PhD scientists, including highly trained specialists in plasma physics, microwave physics, electrochemistry, and chemical engineering, with backgrounds in industry and academia."

BH goes on to explain the depth of research taking place within the Blacklight Power facility, which was broad in scope and extensive in terms of publications and experiments performed there.  The patents filed by Mills were very extensive.

"The two examiners of record in charge of Mills’s case, Stephen Kalafut and Wayne Langel, were initially skeptical, but after reviewing Mills’s data, they were both convinced." ... "Mills received a letter that the patent would be issued, and paid the required fee. However, a few days later, he received a notice that his patent was being withdrawn, with no explanation. Mills was also notified that the review process for his five other pending applications would effectively start over."

I would like to quote in greater detail, but that risks plagiarism.  I urge the reader to get a Kindle version of the book, which is so useful for searching phrases.  This book and the one by Thomas Stolper are well worth the effort and cost for gaining the factual content about Mills.

"Investors included Conectiv, an energy utility, whose senior vice president David Blake wound up on BLP’s board. He told a reporter: “We’re past the scientific verification stage. The talk now is about commercial applications” (Baard, 1999a). Executives at Eastbourne Capital Management put in five million dollars after in–depth due diligence with PacifiCorp, a utility in Oregon (Baard, 2000). BLP had also met with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, to discuss the possibility of a billion dollar initial public offering. Mills was attracting board members that any tech–startup would die for, including Aris Melissaratos, former director of Westinghouse’s Science and Technology Center, and Shelby Brewer, a nuclear engineer and physicist who was Assistant Secretary of Energy under the Reagan Administration."

Obviously, there were many reasons to take Mills very seriously.  There is real intrigue concerning how the USPTO proceeded with the prosecution of the patent applications, which I will not quote.

"Mills told a reporter “We intend to fight this all the way to the Supreme Court and enlist whatever resources it takes in Congress and industry to rightfully win this” (Baard 2000). Indeed, after several months of silence, BLP enlisted the help of five current and former US Senators to write letters on their behalf."

This has elements of a comedy skit for the reader who studies the details, but the consequences are tragic.  In a world where "Truth is a Distraction", how do we decide what to believe?  This has been a central question throughout human history, which BH thoroughly addresses in a recent substack.

I believe that there are two main reasons that Mills was rejected.  First, there was no return on capital invested.  Second, the empirical evidence provided by Mills was not strong enough to convince people that a commercial device was imminent, and he had promised such a breakthrough would happen soon, repeatedly, and he failed to deliver.  But, as an engineer myself, who has been studying these matters since 1989, I have come to understand the difficulties with creation of a replacement for a most fundamental resource of human society: energy.  

Frankly, it is quite disappointing to see the many repeatable scientific evidences presented, and then see the rejection.  Being an engineer, theory is important to me, but what matters is what can be demonstrated as real, beyond question.  How it is explained is important, but not as important as establishing existence.  With a matter as important as this, the idea that such data can be rejected without much explanation is an indictment of institutions established primarily for validating important and easily discoverable facts.  Facts trump theory, in every way.