Tinkerers and technopreneurs are no better suited to solve social and political crises than hacks and bureaucrats, says George Packer in the May issue of the New Yorker. A child of Palo Alto who knows What It Used To Be Like, Packer exposes Silicon Valley exceptionalism for its bafoonish self-aggrandizement. In one delicious moment, he muses “that the hottest tech start-ups are solving all the problems of being twenty years old, with cash on hand, because that’s who thinks them up.”

Packer notes with caution that “the phrase ‘change the world’ is tossed around Silicon Valley conversations and business plans as freely as talk of ‘early-stage investing’ and ‘beta tests.’” He also casts doubt on the good of FWD.us, a PAC conceived by Northern California royalty including Mark Zuckerberg. The FWD.us project advocates for more H1B visas in the immigration reform package, and is widely seen as Silicon Valley’s first significant foray into the messy, “data-poor” world of politics. In Packer’s estimation, the PAC is evidence that tech companies are not idealistic bands of libertarian boy-wonders; it is an industry like any other, and will employ legions of lobbyists to get what it wants in Washington, even if that means venturing off the company campus.

Packer doesn’t address how far tech companies are willing to go. If Zuckerberg is looking to dip into domestic affairs, other industry leaders have set their sights on the international arena. Silicon Valley could have substantial weight in Washington, but Google wants to take it global.