3.2.1. From CPC to CPK — Atomic Scaling

Hi from Berlin, Germany.

I'm on my way to Lisbon after a quarterly founders' offsite.

I love technology conferences. The energy. The creativity. The optimism. People building things that didn't exist yesterday.

But something struck me last week while I was at a tech conference interacting with startup founders.

THREE IDEAS:

I. Technology used to be about possibilities.

For most of my career, I've associated startups with a few simple ideas: creativity, building, sharing, love, and freedom. Technology was about making something better, faster, cheaper, or more accessible.

II. Today, there's a new vocabulary.

Walking around the conference, I noticed defense startups, military technology, and people wearing military uniforms. Understandably, Europe is taking defense much more seriously.

But one expression particularly caught my attention.

CPK.

Not CPC, cost per click.

Cost per kill.

I had to process that for a moment.

III. The same creativity can build or destroy.

The engineers who can develop autonomous vehicles can develop autonomous weapons. The AI that can help save a life can help take one.

The technology doesn't decide its purpose. We do.

TWO QUOTES

"We have allowed the means by which we live to outdistance the ends for which we live." - Martin Luther King Jr.

"Defending freedom may be necessary. But we should never become indifferent to the human cost of the tools we create." - Ludovic Bodin

ONE QUESTION

If we have more creative power than any generation before us, shouldn't we spend more time asking what that power is for?

Next stop, Lisbon!

Ludovic

3× Entrepreneur, 2× Unicorn Investor, 1× IPO — Founder of BOBIC Generational Wealth, Author of Atomic Scaling

P.S. I recently had my first exhibition in Paris as a painter, and I'd love to share War & Peace with you. It brings an autonomous military drone and a small white dove into one geometric composition, exploring the fragile place of peace in the age of AI.

The painting explores a defining paradox of the AI era: the same ingenuity capable of transforming civilization is also making warfare increasingly autonomous, anonymous, and scalable. AI-driven drones remove conflict further from direct human presence, dissolving responsibility into algorithms, systems, and distance.

Read, see and feel more here: https://wangbodinstudio.com/art/war-and-peace/