Jack Dorsey woke up and chose violence.

The guy who founded Twitter — and then lost control of his own baby — now runs Block, the parent company of Square, that fintech that processes payments. And his latest call? Cutting 4,000 jobs. Nearly a third of the entire company.

The official justification? "Advances in artificial intelligence."

Give me a break. How convenient.

The script is nothing new

Look, I'm not against layoffs. A company isn't a daycare. If there's dead weight, cut it. That's part of the capitalist game, and anyone who says otherwise has never signed the front of a payroll check.

But using "AI" as a narrative crutch to justify restructuring is Silicon Valley's hottest trend. It's the corporate equivalent of saying "it's not you, it's me" during a breakup.

Remember the movie Up in the Air? George Clooney flew around the country firing people with a smile on his face and a rehearsed script. The only difference now is the script includes the words "machine learning" and "process automation."

Block was bloated. That's a fact. The company blew up like a party balloon during the pandemic — hired like there was no tomorrow, rode the digital payments wave, flirted hard with Bitcoin, and now? Now the bill's come due.

What's really going on under the hood

Let's get to what matters, no PR filter.

Block has been facing serious regulatory pressure. Cash App, the company's flagship product, is on U.S. regulators' radar over compliance and money laundering issues. Revenue growth has slowed down. The Bitcoin bet — which Dorsey was selling as the future of civilization — hasn't delivered the promised returns.

When revenue doesn't grow at the pace Wall Street demands, what's left? Cut costs. And nothing cuts costs faster than showing people the door.

AI is the perfect pretext. It's modern. It's inevitable. Nobody questions it. "Oh, AI will do the work of three people." Maybe. Maybe not. But the market loves hearing it. The stock goes up, the analysts clap, and the 4,000 who lost their jobs? Well, they can go reinvent themselves.

Same old game in a shiny new outfit.

Skin in the game — or the lack thereof

This is where Taleb enters the chat, as always.

Jack Dorsey is a billionaire. He'll still be a billionaire tomorrow, the day after, and next quarter. If the AI strategy blows up, he'll tweak the narrative, hire back half those people at lower salaries, and life goes on.

The ones with real skin in the game here are the 4,000 employees who woke up in the morning, opened their email, and found out they'd been replaced by a ChatGPT prompt.

This isn't innovation. This is financial engineering wrapped in tech jargon.

Warren Buffett — which Dorsey is not, not even close — always said you find out who's swimming naked when the tide goes out. The tide of easy money, zero interest rates, and infinite fintech growth has receded. And Block wasn't wearing any trunks.

The signal nobody wants to see

This round of layoffs at Block isn't an isolated case. It's a symptom.

Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft — everyone has cut in the last two years. Now AI has become the universal alibi. And the uncomfortable question nobody in the market wants to ask is: if AI really replaces all these people, why aren't these companies' profit margins exploding?

Because the truth is that many of these cuts are about belated financial discipline, not technological revolution. They overhired during the euphoria, now they're panic-firing. It's the same cycle that's existed since capitalism was born.

Will AI change the world? Yes. No doubt. But not at the speed that mass-layoff press releases want you to believe.

So where does this leave you?

If you work in tech, fintech, or any company that's "embracing AI" — wake up. Your seat is not guaranteed. It never was, actually, but now the CEO has a socially acceptable argument to replace you.

If you invest in Block or any company in the sector — stop looking at the narrative and look at the numbers. Revenue. Margins. Free cash flow. Everything else is theater.

Jack Dorsey is neither villain nor hero. He's just another billionaire CEO doing what billionaire CEOs do: protecting his own wealth while selling a pretty story to the market.

The question is: are you going to swallow the narrative, or are you going to think for yourself?