Salesforce CEO Says National Guard Should Patrol San Francisco(techcrunch.com)
techcrunch.com
Salesforce CEO Says National Guard Should Patrol San Francisco
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/10/salesforce-ceo-says-national-guard-should-patrol-san-francisco-stunning-his-own-pr-team/
36 comments
We need to return nuance to everything. And we don't need team politics any more.
San Fran has major problems. It's under much better control now, than it was a decade ago. Admitting and realising that truth, doesn't mean that there's anything wrong in Portland.
This whole "All (red|blue) cities are (bad|good) is insane. Yet I see both sides playing it. Playing it, because one (bad|good) somehow means all are?!
Madness.
San Fran has major problems. It's under much better control now, than it was a decade ago. Admitting and realising that truth, doesn't mean that there's anything wrong in Portland.
This whole "All (red|blue) cities are (bad|good) is insane. Yet I see both sides playing it. Playing it, because one (bad|good) somehow means all are?!
Madness.
Team politics are a seemingly unavoidable outcome of the way our electoral system is structured: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
San Francisco has ranked choice voting, but it's available to only about 14 million voters, about 6% of the eligible voter population. It tends to be mostly on progressive districts, conservatives are implacably opposed to it in my experience. The federal requirements for single member districts are also part of the problem in my view. Some states have multi-member districts but the practice seems to be in decline over the last century.
I also think the strictly scheduled elections in the US are a problem. It's made electioneering into an industry and led politicians to engage in all sorts of abusive behaviors, knowing they can run out the clock. You can see the sam mindset in US-centric sports like American Football and basketball, where coaches and teams habitually exploit the clock period by retaining possession if they ahead or forcing fouls to to create turnover opportunities if not. Fouling has become part of the game and this is a Bad Thing. The same is true of politics. The US would, in my view, be far better off with parliamentary government and a little less institutional stability, so as to limit the overwhelming advantages of incumbency, and the abuses that accompany it.
San Francisco has ranked choice voting, but it's available to only about 14 million voters, about 6% of the eligible voter population. It tends to be mostly on progressive districts, conservatives are implacably opposed to it in my experience. The federal requirements for single member districts are also part of the problem in my view. Some states have multi-member districts but the practice seems to be in decline over the last century.
I also think the strictly scheduled elections in the US are a problem. It's made electioneering into an industry and led politicians to engage in all sorts of abusive behaviors, knowing they can run out the clock. You can see the sam mindset in US-centric sports like American Football and basketball, where coaches and teams habitually exploit the clock period by retaining possession if they ahead or forcing fouls to to create turnover opportunities if not. Fouling has become part of the game and this is a Bad Thing. The same is true of politics. The US would, in my view, be far better off with parliamentary government and a little less institutional stability, so as to limit the overwhelming advantages of incumbency, and the abuses that accompany it.
“We don’t need team politics any more.”
Perhaps the single greatest sentence on Hacker News, for quite some time. Thank you.
Perhaps the single greatest sentence on Hacker News, for quite some time. Thank you.
Nuance seems to have gone out the window long ago with blatant lies being stated and posted everywhere.
Any nuanced statement, meaning out of lockstep with The Information Ministry, is attacked, and with the usual ad-hominem.
Seriously, if you disagreed on some point, say, "Portland is reduced to smoldering rubble" and came under attack via media and death threats, how would you nuance that?
We in the U.S. have not experienced what other countries have experienced, at least since the Civil War, and any outside view, presumably nuanced, comes down hard on outright lies and personal and group threats.
And other countries have fought fascism on their homelands and see the big picture.
Any nuanced statement, meaning out of lockstep with The Information Ministry, is attacked, and with the usual ad-hominem.
Seriously, if you disagreed on some point, say, "Portland is reduced to smoldering rubble" and came under attack via media and death threats, how would you nuance that?
We in the U.S. have not experienced what other countries have experienced, at least since the Civil War, and any outside view, presumably nuanced, comes down hard on outright lies and personal and group threats.
And other countries have fought fascism on their homelands and see the big picture.
> https://isportlandburning.com/
If the goal is to show how the government is exaggerating or lying why not set up webcams around federal facilities in Portland?
Seems to me that this is just the other side of the same coin. If the government is going to be dishonest and just point to where the “fires” are and pretend like there is no place that isn’t under siege…it’s just as dishonest to pretend like there are not places in Portland that are problematic.
If the goal is to show how the government is exaggerating or lying why not set up webcams around federal facilities in Portland?
Seems to me that this is just the other side of the same coin. If the government is going to be dishonest and just point to where the “fires” are and pretend like there is no place that isn’t under siege…it’s just as dishonest to pretend like there are not places in Portland that are problematic.
There are parts of Portland being burned to the ground, as the government has claimed?
There are certainly parts of Portland that are dealing with protests that appear, to me, to be dangerous enough that I have no interest on being anywhere near them.
You certainly do not see those places on that website, nor any mention of them.
Everybody has a story to tell and a perspective that they want to tell it from.
You certainly do not see those places on that website, nor any mention of them.
Everybody has a story to tell and a perspective that they want to tell it from.
That's not what i asked
show me, please.
Do you deny that there have been protests around that ICE facility and that there has been some violence and arrests in connection with those protests?
Show us
I recognize this stupid game. Let me guess, there is no news story I could post here that would satisfy you, am I right?
MSNBC, CNN, local Portland TV stations? All have stories detailing the ICE protests, acknowledge that there has been violence and arrests in Portland, and are easily accessible to you via a google search. But…I know y’all know this already and it doesn’t matter to you who is reporting it, you will just obfuscate, spin, or provide some stupid reason why those specific sources or story cannot be trusted.
No thanks, I don’t need to play…but y’allhave fun storming the castle!
MSNBC, CNN, local Portland TV stations? All have stories detailing the ICE protests, acknowledge that there has been violence and arrests in Portland, and are easily accessible to you via a google search. But…I know y’all know this already and it doesn’t matter to you who is reporting it, you will just obfuscate, spin, or provide some stupid reason why those specific sources or story cannot be trusted.
No thanks, I don’t need to play…but y’allhave fun storming the castle!
No, i asked for evidence that "Portland is burning to the ground" and will happily accept any evidence from any source, but you haven't provided anything resembling one, presumably because no part of Portland is burning.
I genuinely know nothing about Portland, but i know that the way Chicago is described is entirely unmoored from reality, and that none of the protestors in Chicago have been violent, so you can back up your claim or continue to look like you're making things up
I genuinely know nothing about Portland, but i know that the way Chicago is described is entirely unmoored from reality, and that none of the protestors in Chicago have been violent, so you can back up your claim or continue to look like you're making things up
I live a 20 minute bike ride from the Broadview ICE facility (the focus of the protests here) and there has been no indication whatsoever of violence originating in the protests (the average age of a Broadview protester appears to be 45, the average hair color "balding").
It is annoying the residents of Broadview though, since ICE/DHS is erecting barricades and disrupting traffic flows.
It is annoying the residents of Broadview though, since ICE/DHS is erecting barricades and disrupting traffic flows.
I never made that claim. All I said was that there have been protests at the ICE facility in Portland, that there has been violence, and there has been arrests. All of this is well documented by a lot a news outlets and not just from those that are considered right-leaning.
Then go back and read my original comment again lol.
Protests are not war zones, nor are they "burning the city to the ground" nor are they even starting fires (and you did use the word fires).
My point is that the administration is lying about what's happening in Portland, and you don't seem to care. The things you're describing are not the same things the administration is describing.
And again, I don't know much about the protests in Portland, but Trump keeps saying the ones in Chicago are violent when they are not, so unless you can show me that Portland is different, it'll continue to assume you, like the president, are making things up
Protests are not war zones, nor are they "burning the city to the ground" nor are they even starting fires (and you did use the word fires).
My point is that the administration is lying about what's happening in Portland, and you don't seem to care. The things you're describing are not the same things the administration is describing.
And again, I don't know much about the protests in Portland, but Trump keeps saying the ones in Chicago are violent when they are not, so unless you can show me that Portland is different, it'll continue to assume you, like the president, are making things up
Did you also happen to notice the quotes around my use of that word? Apparently not. But now that I have pointed that out to you why do you suppose I did that? That was a sarcastic reference to the original claim.
You also attribute to me an attitude that I did not express on here. My point all along was that the propaganda goes both ways. The government exaggerates their claims and the protesters try to minimize their violence and destructive impact. I stand by that, especially now that you have mischaracterized me several times over the course of this thread. You also describe the Chicago protests as non-violent (and you claim you know about those), but that is simply not true. Just yesterday the Broadview Illinois mayor Katrina Thompson decried the violence of the protesters in her city from Saturday night, So you are contributing to that other side of the propaganda coin by minimizing in the same way the government exaggerates.
“There are too many protesters are raising their fists rather than their voices, creating chaos at the expense of the people who call Broadview home,” Thompson said in a statement. “Broadview residents lack the protestors’ privilege to return to calm, quiet neighborhoods for undisturbed rest.”
https://news.wttw.com/2025/10/13/broadview-mayor-shrinks-des...
You also attribute to me an attitude that I did not express on here. My point all along was that the propaganda goes both ways. The government exaggerates their claims and the protesters try to minimize their violence and destructive impact. I stand by that, especially now that you have mischaracterized me several times over the course of this thread. You also describe the Chicago protests as non-violent (and you claim you know about those), but that is simply not true. Just yesterday the Broadview Illinois mayor Katrina Thompson decried the violence of the protesters in her city from Saturday night, So you are contributing to that other side of the propaganda coin by minimizing in the same way the government exaggerates.
“There are too many protesters are raising their fists rather than their voices, creating chaos at the expense of the people who call Broadview home,” Thompson said in a statement. “Broadview residents lack the protestors’ privilege to return to calm, quiet neighborhoods for undisturbed rest.”
https://news.wttw.com/2025/10/13/broadview-mayor-shrinks-des...
This is more about two sides yelling past each other and playing team sports instead of being credible parties trying to improve society. And given how weaponized especially the right has become recently, I'm not sure how you can even attempt to make an argument in good faith anymore given how you will be treated, so I'm not pretending like I have the answers to any of this.
Obviously the right is super exaggerating the state of "blue" cities to justify political grandstanding, shows of power, and increased authoritarian control.
But it's also true that a lot of these cities have major, major problems in specific areas and are a sad representation of America in 2025 (the richest country in the history of the world). And these problems are not getting effectively addressed at scale, despite many efforts and resources spent by many different groups. This is why these attacks work - you can say "PORTLAND IS NOT BURNING" (it's not!) but you can't argue with the average tourist that they visit the core tourist parts of these cities, they see horrible things that they've never seen before in their suburban lives. Many areas don't feel safe. That's why these attacks are so effective.
The saddest part is we can't talk about this seriously in the current media. You have to be on a "side". Any attempt to have a real discussion is either ignored or lambasted from one side or the other. Both sides have elements of truth which they can use to push their view.
Cities are dynamic and constantly changing. Different people have different experiences living in different neighborhoods. My experiences might not match yours. But I can say some of the most visibly terrible places for human misery in the Western world that I have seen in the last 10 years have been:
- The obvious places in San Francisco, but also anywhere at any time in the financial district
- Downtown Seattle in various areas (between 4th and Pikes Place, around various 7-11s). You want walk from the water front back to your hotel, take the public elevator, it shows up and opens, and a couple is just fully living in it. What do you do with that?
- Many parts of downtown Los Angeles
- The eastern side of downtown San Diego, around the new library and baseball stadium
- Any MacDonalds in the southern part of downtown Chicago
- The area in and around the Taco Bell on the main tourist strip in Denver
- Many parts of Manhattan
- Almost any form of public transit in any city in the US that has one, from a bus in St. Loius to the BART in SF
You probably don't live in these neighborhoods. You'll think "yeah, don't live in the bad parts - my neighborhood is delighful". But I don't think any rational person can pretend like the policies in any of these cities are working effectively, at scale.
Obviously the right is super exaggerating the state of "blue" cities to justify political grandstanding, shows of power, and increased authoritarian control.
But it's also true that a lot of these cities have major, major problems in specific areas and are a sad representation of America in 2025 (the richest country in the history of the world). And these problems are not getting effectively addressed at scale, despite many efforts and resources spent by many different groups. This is why these attacks work - you can say "PORTLAND IS NOT BURNING" (it's not!) but you can't argue with the average tourist that they visit the core tourist parts of these cities, they see horrible things that they've never seen before in their suburban lives. Many areas don't feel safe. That's why these attacks are so effective.
The saddest part is we can't talk about this seriously in the current media. You have to be on a "side". Any attempt to have a real discussion is either ignored or lambasted from one side or the other. Both sides have elements of truth which they can use to push their view.
Cities are dynamic and constantly changing. Different people have different experiences living in different neighborhoods. My experiences might not match yours. But I can say some of the most visibly terrible places for human misery in the Western world that I have seen in the last 10 years have been:
- The obvious places in San Francisco, but also anywhere at any time in the financial district
- Downtown Seattle in various areas (between 4th and Pikes Place, around various 7-11s). You want walk from the water front back to your hotel, take the public elevator, it shows up and opens, and a couple is just fully living in it. What do you do with that?
- Many parts of downtown Los Angeles
- The eastern side of downtown San Diego, around the new library and baseball stadium
- Any MacDonalds in the southern part of downtown Chicago
- The area in and around the Taco Bell on the main tourist strip in Denver
- Many parts of Manhattan
- Almost any form of public transit in any city in the US that has one, from a bus in St. Loius to the BART in SF
You probably don't live in these neighborhoods. You'll think "yeah, don't live in the bad parts - my neighborhood is delighful". But I don't think any rational person can pretend like the policies in any of these cities are working effectively, at scale.
If this current federal government legitimately cared about these problems, they'd be sending teams of social workers and medics in, instead of militarized police and national guard. Like with immigration, they are creating scapegoats and people are falling for it. These are people who can be helped better than they have been, but the solutions being used gives the game away.
Many areas don't feel safe.
That isn't to say things aren't bad in some cities, homelessness in particular, to a degree which should be considered extremely shameful for those living in "the richest country in the history of the world".
However, the fact that the focus of reporting crime and specifically violence is nearly exclusively limited to cities is strong evidence that the goal isn't to solve the problem: it's merely to continue stoking red vs. blue division.
The underlying cause of most of the crime and violence in this country is ultimately poverty, which is why no one with political power is interested in taking steps to fix it.
I don't disagree with anything you said. I guess there's also factor where the worst of Seattle is right beside a tech conference, but the worst of, say, Baltimore just never gets seen by the wider world.
Never for a second found "the southern part of downtown Chicago" to feel unsafe, nor most of the areas south of there either.
I also think you're overestimating the effort put in to help historically disinvested neighborhoods. There are policies in Chicago that are working, but they're not being done at scale, and nobody here is pretending they are.
I also think you're overestimating the effort put in to help historically disinvested neighborhoods. There are policies in Chicago that are working, but they're not being done at scale, and nobody here is pretending they are.
Yeah that didn't ring true to me either. There are no McDonalds in downtown Chicago that are in anything resembling bad neighborhoods.
Closest you could possibly get would be the McDonald's on lake and Ogden (West loop not south) and even then, that's not an unsafe area, just not a very nice/tourist-friendly area.
Usually (and I don’t want to put words in the posters mouth) when people complain about the loop being dangerous what they mean is that they are more proximate to homeless people than they are used to. Which is a bias that incorrectly associates homelessness (and it’s frequently paired mental illness) with danger.
If you replace “dangerous” with “frequented by the homeless”) you get more candidates. The now closed McDonald’s on state. The one at wells and Adam’s and (not in the south loop) the one at lake and lasalle.
Though I’d bet money that the most dangerous in terms of being involved in or witnessing violence is the “rock and roll” McDonald’s in river north because of its hours and proximity to drunks. Most people would _not_ assume it was dangerous though.
If you replace “dangerous” with “frequented by the homeless”) you get more candidates. The now closed McDonald’s on state. The one at wells and Adam’s and (not in the south loop) the one at lake and lasalle.
Though I’d bet money that the most dangerous in terms of being involved in or witnessing violence is the “rock and roll” McDonald’s in river north because of its hours and proximity to drunks. Most people would _not_ assume it was dangerous though.
I'll add this back in, as the other poster shows [dead] after their post for some reason:
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/03/hacking-group-claims-theft...
I wonder if the point is distraction. That's a fairly big hack, but now the news cycle re: salesforce is probably discussing this political story.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/03/hacking-group-claims-theft...
I wonder if the point is distraction. That's a fairly big hack, but now the news cycle re: salesforce is probably discussing this political story.
This post was submitted to hackernews within 1 minute of Saleforce’s massive data breach was pre-scheduled to leak by hackers going live.
"He praised Elon Musk’s government efficiency efforts and said he hadn’t closely followed news about immigration raids or Trump’s attacks on the media."
It's become a bit of a strategy for Trump supporters to pull 'oh I've never heard about that, let's move on' when confronted with damning evidence of Trump's corruption or incompetence.
It's become a bit of a strategy for Trump supporters to pull 'oh I've never heard about that, let's move on' when confronted with damning evidence of Trump's corruption or incompetence.
Personally, I think this is a good reminder that these people aren’t your buddies, and you shouldn’t idolize them as they are looking out for their own power. They go whichever the way the wind is blowing.
Maybe the Guard can patrol his databases.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/03/hacking-group-claims-theft...
https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/03/hacking-group-claims-theft...
I 100% support the US military carpet bombing the entirety of the bay area.
As an example, A group has set up a website to give the "ground truth" of Portland [0].
San Francisco has always had its problems, but under the control of local authorities with domain knowledge. And the same, no doubt, for every liberal city being occupied under the false pretense that it is in ruins. People go to work, schools and even zoos normally and peacefully.
You see, in this case, rampant crime, raging fires and anarchy are to be found in the mind of the beholder.
[0] https://isportlandburning.com/