Thus, in one fell swoop, he erased the entire history of Felix and Romanian computer production, positioning the country as technologically retrograde due to its anticapitalist alterity.

Today, the notion of hacking has had its own blood sucked through Western liberalism, with corporate hackathons a mainstay of corporate technoculture.56 Most, if not all, of the so-­called hackathons that I have attended in Romania still resemble Penn’s 1995 slideshow edifying the merits of capitalism. I have sat in on countless of ­these sessions in coworking spaces, conferences, and tech hubs alike, where after an hour or so, the w hole ­thing becomes dizzying. . . . ​In Bucharest, a German CyberGhost entrepreneur delivers talks on the benefits of outsourcing and geographic arbitrage in Romania. “My com­pany could never have succeeded had I gone to Silicon Valley,” he exclaims. Romania is where it’s at. Then, Uber’s Pierre-­Dimitri Gore-­Coty arrives in Cluj for the first time and delivers a talk on the need to innovate old industries in Bucharest’s TechHub to a room packed full of nicely dressed workers. “Bus stops are too analog!” he excitingly exclaims, promoting Uber’s new driverless cars. Pizza is delivered, and the aroma of hipster coffee seeps through the air. . . . ​Two days ­later, I find myself in TechFest nearby, where a man from a small Cluj-­Berlin start-up markets the com­pany’s new smart home security device, which is becoming especially ­popular in Western Europe with “this new immigrant prob­lem.” No one in the room seems to mind, or to consider that it is often Romanians perceived by the West as part of this prob­lem to be technologically solved through surveillance. He goes on about how the device can detect the gender of voices, so that if you are a w oman and ask to watch a movie, it w ill go through “chick-­flick and rom-­com” options first. Applause. Yet the security device, while produced in Romania, only recognizes ­English and German. More artisanal coffee. No, the code is not open source, as they must run a business after all. . . . ​I could be in San Francisco. But I’m in Cluj’s new it building, unironically called “The Office.” Sitting on the ruins of a socialist-­era textiles factory, one would be hard-pressed to imagine the former mode of production in the now glimmering glass building. Rents have gone up around it, and the food court and wine bar underneath boast prices comparable with Silicon Valley.