Harry Stebbings notes that he’s invested in nine billion-dollar founders who share a common trait: “A desire for revenge—feeling wronged and wanting justice. It’s the strongest fuel to overcome any challenge.” (see below).

This observation got me thinking: Why is #revenge so powerful not only in business but also in politics and society more broadly? Does it truly drive progress, or is it an archaic impulse that might fade once global well-being hits a certain threshold—maybe through #AGI/#ASI?

Some quick examples (in no particular order and on a wide spectrum of "positive" vs "tragic"):

> U.S. elections, 2020 and 2024: two waves of political “revenge”;

> Musk vs. OpenAI lawsuits, potentially fueled by "revenge" over being left behind in the LLM race;

> Potential TikTok ban and possible consequences of the early success of DeepSeek, seemingly sparking a new wave of “US vs. China” narrative and desire for some form of "revenge";

> Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as "revenge" for refusing to be his puppet state and willing to join both EU and NATO without his "blessing";

> Hamas’s attack on Israel, and subsequent response by Israel.

How do we prevent the “revenge mindset” from leading to more tragedy or even WWIII? Maybe humanity needs a shared challenge—developing AGI/ASI together, building a quantum computer, solving cancer or colonizing Mars—to unite us instead of tearing us apart? Or these are all very naive thoughts, and the "realism theory" requires some sort of constant "revenge" in both business & politics?
#revenge