The New York Times has published sophisticated propaganda, structurally designed to manufacture consent with the murder machine known as Waymo.
The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course.
The entire function of this PR piece is to make us stop counting the ways Waymo kills by overwhelming us with the ways humans kill. That is cynically erasing the dead.
He never addresses correlated failure: I know he didn’t read this blog because my core point, fleet-wide bugs aren’t comparable to heterogeneous human error, doesn’t appear. It’s the most important methodological objection and he doesn’t even touch it.
The clinical trial analogy is intellectually dishonest: In actual trials: randomization, blinding, independent data collection, FDA oversight. Here: Waymo controls all the data, self-selects operating conditions, and there’s no independent verification. He’s borrowing the epistemic authority of medical research while violating every principle that makes medical research trustworthy.
The comparison is rigged from the start: “Human drivers on the same roads” sounds controlled, but humans drive those roads in rain, at night, hungover, distracted, in vehicles with failing brakes. Waymo operates in pre-mapped ideal conditions and pulls over when confused. It’s comparing a curated highlight reel to raw game footage.
He buries the conflicts: Healthcare VC making deployment arguments. The disclosure appears after 1,500 words of persuasion. In actual medical publishing, conflicts go at the top.
He acknowledges the accountability void then crashes into it: “We need the denominator, not just the numerator”—but who audits the numerator? Waymo. Who controls the crash definitions? Waymo. Who decides what gets reported? Waymo.
The timing is reputation management: Published December 2 while Waymo is bleeding from school bus violations, KitKat, the police standoff. This is crisis PR with an MD byline.
A doctor is arguing we should trust corporate self-reported data over democratic accountability mechanisms, in the name of public health.
That’s obscenity.
Game over.
He may be a doctor, but I study disinformation.
A venture capitalist is using his medical credentials to make dangerous technology deployment arguments that are a profit-driven threat to public health.