Co-Founder
James Elkins
Cornell ’11 · Saigon · Engineering & Editorial
James Elkins is an engineering leader, independent consultant, and writer based in Saigon. He is the Co-Founder of Hedge Against AI, where he writes about fatherhood, judgment, real competence, and what it means to build a human life in a world that keeps trying to automate everything worth doing.
He studied Information Science at Cornell, then spent over a decade building software across fintech, healthcare, and national security—from early-stage startups to public companies. He started at Palantir Technologies, co-founded companies in payments and patient advocacy, led engineering at OneMedical and Axon, and managed growth and professional services teams at Modern Treasury.
Today he runs ELk Winner LLC, an independent consulting practice focused on full-stack development, AI systems, and product architecture. Recent projects include prior authorization automation for neurologists, hosted MCP server infrastructure, and an AI chatbot serving Fortune 500 clients.
He has two sons—Evan and Aaron—and much of the newsletter comes from the experience of raising them in a city that is growing, human-scale, and full of effort. Once you have children, a lot of internet rhetoric starts sounding deranged. That observation is more or less the origin story of this publication.
What James Brings to the Newsletter
Builder’s Perspective
Over a decade building software across healthcare, fintech, and AI. He writes about technology from inside the machine, not from the conference stage.
Fatherhood as Lens
Raising two boys in Saigon. The newsletter’s strongest editorial lane comes from the daily work of parenting in a world that treats every human skill as a benchmark to be automated.
Bullshit Detector
Has been close enough to venture capital, enterprise sales, and AI demos to tell the difference between genuine competence and expensive autocomplete wearing business casual.
“How do you build a life that still feels recognizably human when more and more of the economy is trying to reward you for becoming a very obedient machine? That, to me, is what it means to hedge against AI.”
— James Elkins, “How Not to Die in the Age of AI”
Read What James Writes
Subscribe to Hedge Against AI—a weekly newsletter about judgment, taste, and practical ways of not becoming spiritually disposable.