Silicon Valley Wants to Be Destroyed by Aliens

In the 1996 Roland Emmerich film Independence Day, a powerful alien civilization attacks Earth. Huge saucers 15 miles across lurk over major cities, literally foreshadowing their destruction. When the attack finally arrives, the vessels focus their power, signaled for cinema as an aquamarine glow, onto major monuments in each urban location. All are synecdoches for the cities and their cultures: The White House explodes, and with it the promise of representative democracy. An explosion radiates down the Empire State Building, an icon of industrial humanity’s rejection of impossibility.

One of them is not like the others.