Most of the tech companies scattered about Cluj, but also Bucharest and other Romanian cities, are not from Silicon Valley per se (although plenty are); many are in fact based in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and beyond. That said, they cumulatively serve as an alibi for Silicon Valley imperial visions, while also being hooked into Silicon Valley venture capital cir­cuits, software, servers, data centers, and code. ­Today, not only does California’s Silicon Valley contain more billionaires, venture cap­i­tal­ists, and patents per square foot than anywhere ­else on earth, but also, the region hosts fifty of the top one hundred most expensive zip codes in the United States and most of the firms that power much of networked life globally. As scholars such as Margaret O’Mara and Linda Weiss have each observed, Silicon Valley economics have every­thing to do with the United States’ Cold War pursuit of technological supremacy and defense. This has continued in Cold War aftermaths, with Google’s former ceo, Eric Schmitt, leading a Pentagon advisory board while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg embraces Cold War 2.0 logics which suggest that breaking up Facebook’s monopolies would empower Chinese tech. [...]