By the time Javier Olivan took the stand, Day 10 of the FTC’s antitrust trial against Meta had officially turned into a group therapy session for billion-dollar tech executives trying to self-diagnose their own strategic anxiety.
The phrase of the day, actually, of the entire courtroom drama, was once again dragged from the lips of Andy Grove: “Only the paranoid survive.” A warning turned mantra, originally penned by Grove as a corporate survival guide, now repurposed by Meta’s elite as a legal Hail Mary. Picture it: Harvard-educated executives clutching that book like it’s some kind of holy scripture, nervously thumbing its margins while muttering about chat apps like they’re ghost stories whispered around a bonfire at Sand Hill Road summer camp.
