Chairman Soren Van Wyk

Background

Chairman Soren Van Wyk is a CEO in The Initiative. He is from Cape Town, South Africa.

Various positions with arms manufacturer Western Armories, 2004-present, including chairman of the board since 2014. Minority ownership stake in DWKY Industries, which has diamond mining partnerships with the governments of Botswana and Namibia. He is occasionally criticized in activist media for labor practices of his various interests, but no formal investigations are known to have taken place.

Personality

His Fordship Soren Van Wyk is the fourth kind of alien plaguing Earth, a meat-covered robot only interested in maximizing profits. After being exposed to alien pherocytes, he becomes hardcore utilitarian, but still lacks grasp on basic concepts of human experience such as grief and art.

Likes: profit, golf, productivity

Dislikes: art, trade unions, safety regulations, being sued over workplace accidents

Quotes

• 'Every circumstance is an opportunity. Our test is to recognize and seize it.' - faction blurb
• 'Congratulations on your successful engagement of the enemy. Personnel losses were 63.5 percent below our "average-case" predictions, meaning that the funds reserved for death benefits and recruitment of replacement personnel can now instead be reinvested in our new reverse-engineering projects. The Board would like to pass on their personal appreciation for your efforts.' - Soren to commander, after successfuly destroying an alien ship.

Research

• "With each passing day, humanity shatters the boundaries of the possible. It is our certain destiny to move mountains at the touch of a button; we need only the will to do so. And your generous investment, of course." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Opening remarks from an Western Armories annual earnings call
• "Space is just, like, an endless, cosmic oil field, waiting to be drained by whoever's smart enough and rich enough to get there first. Black gold is back, baby, back!" — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Impromptu comments made to paparazzi in the early morning hours outside a Long Street nightclub in Cape Town
• "Culture!?! Culture is nothing more than a qualitative marketing profile. Whether your line is boots, carbonated beverages, or civilian firearms, your job is to develop products that people will incorporate into their identities so deeply they can’t see where their personality stops and our branding begins." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, remarks during conference call with senior product managers
• "You're kidding, right? I could set a puppy on fire on live TV, right, and it wouldn't change a bloody thing. That's how much they love me."
  Chairman Soren Van Wyk
  Comments made to press following victory in a libel trial, 2016
• "Then they can clean, or cook, or restock supplies. If they're eating my food, sleeping in my beds, and using my latrines, they'll damn well have to work for it." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Discussing opening residences for diamond miners' families
• "He who controls the water controls the world. That's where we're headed now. But hell, even I know that a dying world isn't really one worth controlling." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, From his Wall Street Journal op-ed, "Renewables: From Bogeyman To Golden Goose."
• "Even the air in these is a product of labor and machines and energy, so I think setting up a subscription package would be in order." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Chairing a Western Armories board meeting
• "Of course there was an accident. Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long. Just get the recovery crew in there to salvage the gear ASAP. Worry about the bodies later - the delays are costing us." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Internal memo regarding the DWKY mine collapse
• "I don't care if there are two ways or two hundred ways to filter deuterium from seawater. Just tell me which one's cheapest, and which one won't get us sued again." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Board of Directors meeting, Cape Chemicals Inc.
• "Sounds like you want to use a space heater to push a spaceship. That can't be terribly strong, so I hope it's bloody cheap." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Technical board meeting, Cape Chemicals Inc.
• "Every form I have to fill in, every ass I have to kiss, every pointless safety standard I have to meet is time I'll never get back. I say strangle these leeches with their own red tape, and let the profits flow." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Advocating for the dissolution of the EU on Fox News
• "Every time I have to pay a tariff, I feel as though one of my children has suddenly died. Why do we let them walk all over us like this?" — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, CNN interview
• "Trillions of dollars, just sitting up there, yet still the regulators drag their heels. Maybe it's time I treated the President to another golfing weekend..." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Leaked private correspondence
• "Unless you too want to be showered in liquid lead, make damn sure the coolant circuit doesn't break again. Oh, and see to it that these… statues of your predecessors are removed." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Introductory briefing for the new chief of engineering
• "Fake news, misinformation... It doesn't matter what they call it. The simple truth is that the powerful do it, and the powerless cry about it. And that is why the powerless will never, ever become the powerful. — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, During a billionaires-only Clubhouse discussion
• "You're jerking my chain, right? There's no way in hell that I'm spending millions on sending a rocket into space if we just let half of it sink to the bottom of the ocean." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, When asked by SABC News about whether he intended to join the billionaire space-race, 2021
• "If these results are accurate, we're about to upend the entire medical system. Not a soul outside this room can hear about it until we're certain our patents are watertight. And once they are, the golden age begins. Gentlemen, we are about to profit from life itself." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Minutes from Sangoma Pharmaceutical's quarterly board meeting
• "If we're not willing to spend whatever it takes to make sure that every one of those rocks has our name on it by this time next year, we might as well give up now." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, DWKY Industries internal memo
• "Where I come from, we have zef culture. It means you're poor but you got style. If we want this thing to make money, we need to zef this place up. If we put in enough windows, we can serve people cat food and have them sleep on shipping crates. The less we spend, the more we earn, nè?" — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Recording submitted as evidence in the Pyrefest Solar Hotel lawsuit
• "Genghis Khan was a short-sighted fool. All that might, all those weapons, yet instead of leasing it to others and reaping the rewards, all he could think to do was shed endless blood and sweat in the pointless pursuit of an empire." — Chairman Soren Van Wyk, Weapons development correspondence

Science

• The final frontier proved a bit underwhelming, no? 'Veni, vidi, vici' is great, but how do you say 'I leased it at triple market rate' in Latin?"
• Ingenious. Now, if you figure out a way to make it better, I'll give you a raise. If you figure out a way to make it cheaper, I'll promote you all."
• Stop. I don't want to know which regulations we broke, because we didn't. I need to know exactly how we did not break these regulations."
• Yes, you're all as terribly clever as you are terrible at listening. You've completely missed my meaning when I said I wanted greener energy. If it doesn't make us money, our money isn't making it."
• Bury it somewhere inside the licensing agreement. Nobody reads them, and most people don't comprehend that if they're not paying for a product, they are the product."
• Leak the schematics. And offload as much surplus ammo as you can. These kinetic barriers are the only thing that can stop them, and at the price we're selling them, a half-dozen covers our losses."
• The early Romans were spot on with their plan: park an army outside your territory and offer you the chance to join or die. For the small price of subsuming your culture, you too could enjoy not dying. Brilliant."