Comments
Hi folks,
I recently learned about the story of Luke Farritor, one of the DOGE folks in charge of dismantling PEPFAR, from the laughably lukewarm portrayal on Bloomberg. The story combined several of my interests: Global health, scale sensitivity, and the banality of evil. I've been thinking about a way to convey the emotional intuitions behind scope sensitivity for a while now, and figured this is as good a situation as any to try.
Young Luke was a genius, everybody said. At the tender age of twenty-two, he decoded "purple" in the dead sea scrolls. Echo VanderWal's 'Luke Commission' (named after the healer saint in the gospels), the largest clinic in Eswatini, took loans against her home during the COVID crisis. While a different Luke, our Luke Farritor, the genius, was awarded seven hundred thousand dollars for reading one Greek word.
They call him a genius.
The biblical Luke gave up wealth to heal others. This Luke gives up potential wealth to follow a different path. He could, his supporters say, easily earn over $10 million a year at any of over a dozen AI companies. Instead, he's essentially volunteering: just $167,000 a year to save us from the “existential risk” of an inflated budget. Harry Vanderwal drained all their retirement savings so his patients might be cured. Luke is hard at work studying COBOL, nobly sacrificing his time to learn a dead programming language nobody likes.
They call him selfless.
Luke used to crack texts on ethics, buried since Mount Vesuvius blazed. Now he manually clicks "DENY" while mothers watch their babies cough and waste away. Even when Secretary Rubio ordered PEPFAR funds released so lives can be saved, Luke was focused and agentic. He personally made sure to block individual payments to AIDS clinics. In Mozambique, AIDS tests became heavily rationed, and fifteen thousand people, primarily children, can't start new AIDS treatment.
They call him dedicated.
Luke moved quickly from SpaceX intern to efficiency czar at twenty-three, with nuclear weapons clearance and supreme agency. He owns his choices, shapes the world, disrupts the status quo. Fatima’s clinic in Nigeria used to treat 60 children per day for malnutrition and malaria before lack of promised funding shut it down. Luke’s father was once denied a speaking gig. Children spent days walking from closed clinic to closed clinic, desperate to find medication. Luke made a funny meme. A child died. Luke’s college friend blocked Luke on Facebook. Four more children starved to death. Bloomberg wrote a mildly critical article on Luke. Silicon Valley Twitter wonders: “Has cancel culture gone too far?”
They call him a victim.
We are indescribably fortunate to have talent of Luke's caliber, Twitter says. The real tragedy, Twitter insists, is one poor, sensitive, 24 year old kid's social isolation. Not security guards turning parents away from every AIDS station. A pregnant doctor begged for medical evacuation. Luke's checkbox said "Denied." Cancer patients need their chemo flights? His veto is applied. Luke works one-twenty-hour long weeks! He's always hard at work optimizing the US government against “corrupt elites”! More children starved to death. Luke helped Elon save a few dollars per taxpayer. Mothers have to ration malarial pills between different sick children. Luke? He's maximizing his agency.
They call him a “salt-of-the-earth, American patriot”.
At twenty-two, he read deep philosophical texts on the nature of pleasure and the good. At twenty-four, he personally, against direct orders from Congress and State, decides who gets antivirals and food. Some might just follow orders, but Luke makes his own way. Infants die of diarrhea, literally shitting themselves to death. Luke checks box after box after box through each long working day, making sure to deny as much as he can. Projections suggest several million children will die by 2030 from the USAID and PEPFAR cuts. But Luke? He's building the future. He's maximizing his impact.
They call him efficient.
They call him brave. They call him agentic. A true patriot. A generational talent. A brilliant, compassionate, and sensitive young man. An American hero.
