Why tech billionaires desire a dictatorship

Good day, and welcome to Decoder! That is Jon Fortt, CNBC journalist, cohost of Closing Bell: Additional time, and creator of the Fortt Knox streaming collection on LinkedIn. I’m guest-hosting for a pair extra episodes of Decoder this summer season whereas Nilay is out on parental depart.

As we speak, I’m speaking with a really particular visitor: Gil Duran, an previous buddy, journalist, and writer of The Nerd Reich, a publication and forthcoming book concerning the shifting politics of Silicon Valley and the rise of tech authoritarianism.

I’ve identified Gil for a very long time. We met on the finish of highschool and went to varsity collectively, and we had been additionally colleagues on the San Jose Mercury Information. Gil has had an enchanting profession that spans each media and politics: he’s labored as press secretary and comms director for high-profile California politicians like Gov. Jerry Brown and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, and he additionally suggested Kamala Harris when she served as California’s lawyer basic.

Now, writing The Nerd Reich, Gil is concentrated on a brand new kind of story, one he says has gone woefully under-covered by mainstream media. That story is the affect of tech cash on politics and society at giant, and the disturbing philosophical undercurrents which are driving it.

The “Nerd Reich,” as Gil sees it, is an online of highly effective, ultrawealthy tech billionaires. Individuals like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and others, whose politics and affect now see them pushing the nation additional and additional away from democracy and towards one thing resembling a form of cross between unrestrained capitalism and monarchy.

This concept has been kicking round for fairly some time now. You’ll hear Gil seek advice from it because the Darkish Enlightenment, or as some seek advice from it, the neo-reactionary motion. Some central characters right here include Curtis Yarvin — an influential, anti-democracy blogger whose concepts as soon as stood far outdoors mainstream acceptability, however who lately has captured the eye of politicians like Vice President JD Vance.

And that’s Gil’s central thesis: whereas these concepts aren’t new, their embrace by among the wealthiest and strongest folks on the planet is a comparatively current phenomenon — one which’s been supercharged by President Donald Trump’s reelection.

Now that these concepts have entered the White Home by the use of the MAGA motion, Gil argues that it has created a harmful coalition between the far proper and the stewards of the largest, hottest tech platforms and merchandise. In any case, as we’ve seen with Elon Musk and DOGE, these tech billionaires aren’t simply sitting within the shadows; they need to tear down and rebuild the federal government from the bottom up.

Gil is likely one of the sharpest thinkers on this topic, and he by no means shies away from saying what he actually thinks. So I feel you’ll discover this dialog very illuminating; I do know I did.

Okay: The Nerd Reich writer Gil Duran. Right here we go.

This interview has been evenly edited for size and readability.

Gil Duran, nice to have you ever right here on Decoder.

Effectively, we’re going to speak about The Nerd Reich, in fact, as a result of that’s what you write, what you podcast, and what you do. However first, a disclosure: You and I first met 31 years in the past as highschool seniors. We acquired the identical journalism scholarship, went to the identical school, and we’re associates.

We began our journalism careers. You targeted extra on tradition, authorities, and politics. I targeted extra on enterprise and tech. You’ve gone on to a superb and wide-ranging profession. You’ve run communications for a who’s who of California politics: Jerry Brown, Kamala Harris, Antonio Villaraigosa, Dianne Feinstein.

However that’s a little bit of a previous life for you. At this second, our worlds collide. The federal government and tradition stuff, and the enterprise and tech stuff. So, what’s the Nerd Reich?

The Nerd Reich is a time period that some folks use to explain a cultish group of tech billionaires who principally search to exchange democracy with one thing resembling company dictatorship. Some folks name this motion the Darkish Enlightenment, the neo-reactionary motion, or the community state.

It’s backed by a handful of CEOs and billionaires: folks like enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, with involvement from folks like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and the granddaddy of all of them, Peter Thiel, who’s been selling a few of these concepts for many years.

Effectively, I say it’s inherently anti-American. It sees a post-United States world the place, as an alternative of democracy, we may have principally tech feudalism — fiefdoms run by tech companies. They’re fairly express about this level. You and I did Poli Sci 101 collectively at DePaul. I’d say that there’s a dialog in academia concerning the long-term well being of the nation state within the twenty first century, and these guys are tapping into that and proposing a product or a mannequin that may put them on the supreme head of world authorities sooner or later.

However I feel earlier than we go about attempting to alter the nation or change the nation state, we should always most likely talk about that concept with the American folks. So, in a nutshell, you’ve got a gaggle of super-rich elites with a really apocalyptic imaginative and prescient of the place society and the world are headed, and they’re dashing forward with what they suppose is the answer, an answer that, by the best way, can even put a crown on their heads.

This jogs my memory of some themes from a e-book I learn in highschool, by writer Ayn Rand, referred to as The Fountainhead, and I feel you and I’d’ve talked about this throughout freshman yr in school as effectively. It’s additionally according to one other Rand e-book, Atlas Shrugged.

It’s very convincing while you’re studying it as a young person and possibly additionally as a billionaire, this concept that, “Hey, there are some folks on the market who’re simply extra productive as capitalists, and capitalism is nice. It’s the lifeblood of society, and these are the folks we should be working issues, not these altruistic, mealy-mouthed, progressive people who find themselves simply watering every part down and making every part mediocre.”

It’s undoubtedly an ideology of tech supremacy. This concept that when you’ve got billions of {dollars} and also you’ve created some tech product that’s useful, that makes you good at every part. I feel there’s an previous Yiddish saying, “If you happen to’re wealthy, you’re additionally good-looking and you may sing.” So, it’s this concept that since you’re wealthy, now you can do every part. We see this Dunning-Kruger method with everybody from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos going into companies the place they haven’t any expertise and making a large number of issues. So, they’re attempting to try this primary thought with governance.

You’re proper, lots of people hint this again to concepts like Galt’s Gulch [in Atlas Shrugged]. It’s an thought we discover all through science fiction, with enclaves of tech elites controlling every part. Normally, they’re the unhealthy guys. For the lifetime of me, I can’t perceive why these guys have determined to overtly be the unhealthy guys in science fiction.

However these are concepts that actually collapse underneath the burden of actuality as a result of governing and getting the consent of the ruled is a long-standing historic drawback. The very best we’ve gotten in our 1000’s of years is determining one thing just like the democracy we now have proper now and the concept we’re simply going to exchange it with these company fiefdoms… there’s so much they haven’t thought via, and it turns into very apparent the second you begin probing beneath the floor.

Now, one of many main thinkers on the tech billionaire aspect of this can be a man named Curtis Yarvin. He lately had a debate at Harvard, and he appears to have carried out fairly effectively. How would you body how Yarvin approaches these items?

Yarvin is a pc programmer and a pseudo-intellectual who, within the early 2000s, began inventing his personal idea of politics, largely catering to the concept as an alternative of a democracy, we’d like a dictatorship. That we’d be higher off with a monarchy and going into nice element about create this new system, which concerned breaking apart the nation state into smaller territories, he referred to as patchworks, which might then be ruled by totalitarian companies. For instance, he envisioned a San Francisco sooner or later that will be referred to as Frisk Corp, run by a company referred to as Frisk Corp, the place everyone could be underneath fixed and whole surveillance even within the privateness of their very own houses.

That is what would guarantee your safety, and also you’d have to swipe in and swipe out to get in or out of the town. The federal government of the town would have whole energy over you. They may kill you in order for you. You’d haven’t any rights. The one factor you’d be capable to do is to go away, to vote together with your ft, which is underestimating how authoritarian governments work. As a result of if everyone may simply depart, folks would simply depart North Korea, China, all these international locations. They don’t do this for a cause — as a result of they’re not allowed to.

Or possibly it’s Singapore.

Effectively, that’s one thought it’s grow to be. So, just a few years later, Balaji Srinivasan, who’s the previous CTO of Coinbase and a former Andreessen Horowitz accomplice and a buddy of each Yarvin and Peter Thiel, and that’s an essential half… Peter Thiel has a longstanding affiliation with Yarvin, funded his firm for years, and has named him in conversations as an inspiration. He’s thought-about Peter Thiel’s home thinker.

Effectively, Srinivasan sees that the affiliation with Yarvin makes it creepy as a result of he has some bizarre concepts about what we do with poor folks, and a whole lot of genocidal language happens via the writings of Yarvin. So, Balaji Srinivasan tries to replace it to one thing referred to as The Network State and places out this complete e-book the place he principally tries to rebrand it as a company secure thought. We have now to begin fascinated by sovereignty, however he additionally has some fairly nutty concepts about how that will look.

So I assume if I had been to take the opposite aspect, which I’ve to do to maintain it fascinating, one may say that Yarvin’s concepts aren’t so removed from, say, Alexander Hamilton’s? And the dynamic between Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson was a wholesome dynamic within the formation of American concepts.

Hamilton was accused of being a monarchist. He was fairly clearly in favor of sensible and wealthy folks having much more energy and say over how issues went than everyone else. Thomas Jefferson, regardless of his many contradictions and hypocrisies, was the person of the folks, the pro-democracy man.

Effectively, I feel Yarvin would really like that comparability. I don’t suppose he deserves it. You’ve principally bought a failed startup founder — his product has by no means actually carried out what it was alleged to do. If you happen to can’t create that world, how are you going to cope with the remainder of it? I’ve really been in authorities at Metropolis Corridor, within the state capital in Sacramento. There are some exhausting selections, some complicated points, that don’t lend themselves to this simplistic pondering of a bunch of fellows who spend all their lives with their necks craned over their computer systems within the code. That’s what they simply don’t get. That’s the lacking component of their concepts.

Yarvin just isn’t a PhD in something, in historical past. If you happen to discuss to political scientists and historians as I’ve been doing, as a result of I’m writing a e-book on this topic, it’s nearly an insult to deliver up his concepts to them as a result of they make no sense, and so they instantly go deep into all of the philosophers, thinkers, and historians who’ve debunked the essential concepts right here.

So, they’re working at a primary degree, nearly like excessive schoolers arguing, or us possibly freshman yr arguing over Galt’s Gulch. Or bear in mind we had some bizarre debates over stuff that neither of us actually knew about, however we had been actually going to be proper about it. That’s what they’re doing, besides they’re grown males. The issue is while you get these billionaires who possibly haven’t matured as quick as their funds have, they suppose these are nice concepts, and so they push them, after which sadly, the remainder of us should cope with them.

On the root of it, we’re at a time the place the broader public, not less than massive segments of the broader public, appear to have misplaced religion within the concepts of experience and of establishments. So, you say he doesn’t have a PhD. There are lots of people who’re like, “Yay, no PhD. He didn’t get a PhD on this from Harvard. Boo, Harvard.”

What’s occurring with maybe the framing of the American promise, the place we’re now in a time when persons are lionizing those that have made some huge cash over those that have gained data or expertise in a given space? It looks like the results of some failed promise.

Effectively, undoubtedly. We have now a media that largely glamorizes the rich and makes them look like they’re higher than everyone else. I feel we’ve bought a longstanding tradition through which wealth is seen as proof that you simply’re higher, that you simply’re extra hardworking, that you simply’re morally superior. So, there’s so much flowing towards that.

I imply, our president of the US is a man who performed the stereotype of a wealthy man on TV within the ‘80s and the ‘90s, proper? Donald Trump has at all times been there with this gold-plated, kitschy picture that he initiatives. However I feel it’s beginning to fall quick in some methods. I feel when the consequences of those tariffs hit, Trump’s ballot numbers began sinking, and persons are studying in their very own ways in which nice wealth doesn’t equal knowledge, and it doesn’t equal management.

Trump has been capable of get fairly far on an phantasm, however there’s just one Donald Trump. Whether or not you like him or hate him, there’s no denying that he’s had a longstanding charismatic relationship with the American folks. You don’t get that with Elon Musk. You don’t get that with Peter Thiel, who can barely choke out a sentence that’s comprehensible. You definitely don’t get that with Curtis Yarvin. If I had a giant funds, I’d undoubtedly put advertisements concentrating on MAGA, exhibiting them the stuff these guys are saying, the stuff these guys are speaking about, as a result of these guys don’t have anything in frequent together with your crimson hat-wearing Republican. They give the impression of being down on these folks, too.

Sadly, the one particular person making this level is somebody I additionally despise politically, Steve Bannon. He has been telling folks about these things — about transhumanism and the community state and all these bizarre concepts that they plan to impose on folks. So, I feel the larger drawback is that we haven’t actually had a dialogue about any of these things as a result of, largely, there’s been a media blackout on it. I feel editors suppose it’s too bizarre or esoteric.

Now, it’s being shoved in our face an increasing number of with each passing month, and we’re well past the purpose of with the ability to ignore it. I imply, I’m shocked The New Yorker covered this earlier than The New York Instances or The Washington Put up. I used to be writing stuff final yr that they’re simply getting round to now, and imagine me, as pleased as I’m to be a contract author who discovered an essential story, I shouldn’t have been the man speaking about this final yr. Final yr was when the American folks deserved to find out about these things.

I feel we could be in a spot the place sure publications try to not appear bizarre and, within the course of, maybe not overlaying sure issues. However Yarvin would declare — as a matter of truth, not would, he does — that the FDR presidency is the mannequin for what America wants now, proper? He talks concerning the quantity of energy that FDR concentrated. FDR, popping out of the Gilded Age, had a whole lot of energy and made a whole lot of selections that one would simply argue had been essential. Is that unsuitable?

Effectively, he mischaracterizes FDR as a monarch or a dictator, which isn’t true as a result of FDR was elected. FDR was beloved, and after FDR left, another person took his place who was not a member of his household. After that, just a few years later, somebody from the alternative celebration was in cost. So, that’s how the American authorities works.

However right here’s the clue for why Yarvin is obsessive about FDR. FDR was an emergency wartime president. He was president in the course of the Nice Melancholy and WWII, a time of nice disaster. Due to that disaster, he was given extra energy to make issues occur shortly in protection of the nation. And now we see what? Donald Trump attempting to declare emergencies in all places to be able to get extra energy, with out having to undergo Congress, and with out having to undergo the same old checks and balances. So, I actually suppose the important thing there may be to grasp the diploma to which they see the usage of emergency powers as the best solution to increase the ability of the executives.

I wrote a piece at The Nerd Reich a couple of startup right here in California that’s proposing that Donald Trump declare a nationwide safety emergency to permit them to construct slightly community state tech hub on the island of Alameda, on a former naval base the place there occur to be endangered migratory chicken habitats. All over the place we glance, even this ridiculous instance in the present day, we’re seeing this need for an emergency, which is a solution to seize energy. So, I feel that’s the important thing to understanding Yarvin’s slanderous obsession with FDR: the emergency powers he was granted.

That concept of an emergency is, I feel, a thread all through legislation, proper? However emergencies are exhausting to outline. The one current instance is the state of affairs in LA round these protests. Had been they largely peaceable protests? Or had been they riots and insurrections? It simply relies on whose social media feed you’re , or what information channel you occur to observe essentially the most, and the way that will get framed. So, an emergency, in a means, is within the eye of the beholder and within the context of the place the beholder thinks the nation’s heading.

Effectively, I assume to some extent, while you have a look at completely different feeds, you’re seeing various things. However in California, when there’s an emergency, the governor has the ability to behave. The massive factor with LA was that the mayor and the governor each made it clear that they’d the state of affairs underneath management. The LAPD and the LA Sheriff’s Division had been dealing with the state of affairs. If somebody must name on the Nationwide Guard, that’s the governor’s job. The governor referred to as within the Nationwide Guard again in 2020 when there have been a number of days of destruction and violence in Sacramento. So, this was Trump seizing on the notion created by Fox Information and Elon Musk’s X to insert himself because the hero of an emergency that simply didn’t exist.

Sure, there have been protests. Sure, a small portion of them had some property destruction and vandalism, however nobody concerned within the state of affairs wanted Donald Trump to intervene. He politicized the state of affairs and inserted himself, and what he did really was attempt to create a disaster as a result of he knew that will create extra of a backlash from folks in California. Greater than something proper now, Donald Trump desires confrontation. So, like with Silicon Valley, they’re at all times crying a couple of disaster that they’re really dashing to create on the similar time. AGI will kill us all, let’s rush to create it. This is sort of a unusual mentality, however solely we are able to remedy the emergency that we create is what appears to be the logic they apply there.

One other factor I discover fascinating concerning the FDR argument that Yarvin makes is that FDR began social security nets, massive authorities growth, huge financial stimulus, and labor rights assist. He arguably laid the groundwork for the Nice Society. That doesn’t sound like what this crowd desires to repeat.

No, they need to use the powers of a dictatorship to go in the wrong way. Loads of that is about pulling out of the social contract, and a whole lot of these concepts may be traced again to a 1997 e-book referred to as The Sovereign Particular person, which predicted that within the twenty first century, the approaching data age would remove most jobs and that this might result in violence and chaos and societal degradation as folks not had cash and will not afford something. However a brand new know-how referred to as cybercurrency would permit a sure cognitive elite, individuals who can grow to be rich off of this new data age, to rise in energy and create their very own little fortress societies the place they’d be secure as every part fell aside outdoors of the partitions.

We have now a bunch of CEOs telling us that AI goes to do away with tens of millions and tens of millions of jobs. Effectively, what’s going to occur to these individuals who can not work? What’s their future? What’s the way forward for their kids? They are saying, “Effectively, AI will create different jobs.” Effectively, what I’m listening to is that AI will simply constantly enhance and take away the roles it creates. There’s this factor that doesn’t fairly add up, and a few of them speak about common primary revenue and everybody getting a share of the income. Effectively, that sounds so much like Silicon Valley socialism.

What does freedom seem like in Sam Altman’s common primary revenue universe? What does democracy seem like while you don’t get to eat except somebody like Elon Musk is approving of your existence? There’s a query there that these guys trace at, however by no means reply. I feel that’s a spot the place you need to go in politics. We have now to speak about what the longer term appears to be like like in the event that they’re going to kill all jobs.

So what’s the answer then? As a result of wanting regulating AI out of existence… If certainly we’re heading towards [artificial general intelligence], and this tremendous sensible software program that eliminates a bunch of jobs — and fairly often that isn’t what finally ends up taking place — it looks like we had been having this similar dialog 20 or 25 years in the past concerning the web.

Briefly, the web did remove encyclopedia salesman jobs, however persons are nonetheless vital within the loop. I imply, because the US someway tries to cease the event of this know-how elsewhere, there are know-how corporations and sensible folks at these corporations who’re going to proceed engaged on it.

Effectively, I feel you want a wise method to regulation. Sadly, what we now have now’s an effort to ban all regulation as a result of these guys have captured the White Home with Trump. I feel that it’s exhausting to differentiate between the hype of [artificial general intelligence] and the very actual harms of AI, which is able to are available in an easier kind: the bias we already see popping out of those corporations of their algorithms and the best way it’ll be used to exacerbate current deficiencies in our society. I feel the larger drawback is that we’re studying that when you give folks an excessive amount of cash, they go loopy.

A few of them go loopy and determine they need to finish democracy and overthrow the US of America and dwell in some dystopian science fiction fantasy world. When you’ve got that a lot cash, you don’t simply speak about it, you’re taking steps to make it occur. How we cope with that drawback is a really severe query that I don’t suppose anyone in politics, Democrat or Republican, desires to reply as a result of they’re so depending on these folks for marketing campaign contributions. We want somebody like FDR to be a traitor to his class and stand up and discover a solution to put these billionaires again of their place.

Effectively, to return to the FDR thought right here, what if that is a part of the pure rhythm of the American local weather? That when issues go too excessive in a single path, you had the robber barons and all of that, the roaring ‘20s and their extremes, there must be or finally ends up being some consolidation of energy on the opposite aspect that swings the pendulum again. Not that these concepts are proper, not that every part FDR did was utterly sustainable, or the best way that he framed it.

However what if it was simply vital due to the excesses of the wealthy that constructed up on that aspect, and now what these guys and their loopy concepts characterize is merely a pendulum swing within the different path?

I feel that’s believable. I feel finding out these guys, one factor that I discover scary is that they’ve studied these intervals of historical past. They perceive what occurred within the Gilded Age. Balaji Srinivasan name-checks Ida Tarbell as a significant enemy. He’s nonetheless mad about what she did to Customary Oil, and he or she’s been lifeless since 1944. So, I feel they’re searching for a solution to finish the sport. They’ve sufficient wealth accruing now the place we now have robber barons who’re richer than possibly at every other level in historical past, all these guys with infinite cash, and now they’re creating their very own types of cash.

So, I feel they’re searching for a solution to finish the sport, and that’s why they’re teamed up with MAGA, as a result of right here’s a president who’s prepared to promote to the best bidder and who’s utterly testing the legislation, the structure, and the restrictions on govt energy. I’ve little doubt that if Donald Trump tomorrow declared himself the everlasting chief of the US and mentioned democracy is over, that we might have applause and silence from nearly all of Silicon Valley.

That’s a distinct look than Silicon Valley elite executives displayed 25 years in the past while you and I had been fairly contemporary out of college and heading over there. I imply, is that this what we’re seeing, the growth of Atherton?

For individuals who aren’t acquainted with the Bay Space, Atherton is outdoors of Palo Alto. Loads of CEOs and enterprise capitalists dwell there, and it’s the weirdest place within the Bay Space I’ve ever been since you go there and there are these streets and hedges which are 15 ft tall. You’ll be able to barely see any homes. In some areas, you’ll be able to’t see any homes in any respect as a result of that’s the concept. You’re not alleged to see anyone’s home, however super-rich folks dwell there. In the event that they invite you and so they open the gate behind the hedges, you’ll be able to go in. They’re sending their children to personal faculties. They’re in these homes that you may’t see. They’re residing very rich lives, and also you see largely pickup vans from people who find themselves coming to service the properties on the streets.

That concept appears to have expanded in recent times, even past Atherton, the place 25 years in the past — and to not lionize this man — however Steve Jobs was residing in Palo Alto, sending his children to public faculty, and native households trick-or-treated at his home. It’s very completely different from the Atherton mindset that appears to have expanded recently.

Positively. I feel we’ve had a collection of crises in our society which have radicalized a few of these guys, as has the great growth of wealth via issues like crypto in recent times. Plus, we’ve had a social media hit. So, you had the monetary disaster in 2008, which confirmed folks that every part’s a lot shakier than we thought. We had the rise of social media and a social media president, Donald Trump, who utterly disrupted politics. We had the MeToo Motion, which led to much more public consciousness and sensitivity round sure buildings of oppression. That pissed off lots of people who felt fairly highly effective and wealthy and with out issues earlier than that.

Then we had the pandemic, which utterly made us all work collectively for some time and created some divisions over issues like vaccines and public well being security measures. So, I feel we’ve lived via a interval the place our tech CEOs and billionaires not really feel comfy simply being part of the system and looking for a solution to work inside it. They’ve determined that every part is ripe for disruption, together with the US of America, together with liberal democracy, and that it’s their future to overthrow it or change it and create a system that solutions to them. I feel that’s what the issue is.

I do keep in mind that 20 years in the past, residing in San Francisco, some individuals who had been there some time had been actually disdainful of the techies and noticed them as a menace, as this factor that was going to deliver unhealthy concepts and alter to the city. I assumed they had been exaggerating. I didn’t suppose it was that unhealthy. It seems, really, it’s that unhealthy.

Effectively, fascinating. Let’s go to that for a second as a result of the nationwide in style picture of San Francisco is a spot the place needles are being handed out and homeless encampments are spreading all through the town. There’s little consideration to the precise mechanics of day-to-day life.

On the similar time, the best way I’ve skilled San Francisco over the previous 20-plus years is that there’s been this huge funding in workplace house and within the downtown to the exclusion of the livability of precise people’ households. It was to the purpose the place when the pandemic hit and corporations shut down, we went to work at home, and San Francisco grew to become a ghost city as a result of there had been a lot emphasis positioned on workplace house versus folks really residing there. What do you suppose is the reality of what San Francisco is now, what it has grow to be, and who it’s serving?

Effectively, San Francisco is the most effective and most stunning metropolis in the US. I imply, it’s a tremendous place. There are all types of issues taking place, and there are areas of city which are unhealthy. If you happen to didn’t develop up in the US, you could not know that there’s at all times a foul a part of city on this nation as a result of there are poor folks. While you are likely to put them multi function neighborhood — and I grew up in a poor neighborhood, so I do know – however when you go to my hometown, Tulare, there’s a pleasant half the place folks have swimming swimming pools and massive lawns. And there’s the half I’m from, which isn’t a spot you need to go hanging round at evening. So, that’s regular.

This can be a few blocks in San Francisco the place the homelessness and open drug habit have gotten out of hand, and that’s an issue that must be handled, hopefully in a rational, evidence-based means. However what’s occurred is that there’s been this Fox Information-driven slander marketing campaign to make it look like that’s all of San Francisco, when you’ll be able to stroll three blocks from the epicenter of this zone and get like a $20 Japanese-style cocktail, proper? It’s actually the haves and the have-nots. It’s a story of two cities, and many of the metropolis is pricey, stunning, great, wonderful, filled with tradition and meals, et cetera. So, that a part of the story could be very fictional, however folks have been priced out. That’s a narrative all throughout California and all throughout many components of the nation.

Wages aren’t maintaining in a means that permits folks to proceed to dwell on this nation. A current research confirmed that 60 percent of Americans have trouble making ends meet and affording the fundamentals. That’s the issue we’ve bought to unravel. So, these tech billionaires at all times need to scream about just a few blocks in San Francisco the place there’s fentanyl habit. Effectively, guess what’s fueling the fentanyl commerce greater than something? Crypto. So, let’s ban crypto as a primary step towards fixing the drug disaster, however they don’t need to do this.

So, they are surely good at directing consideration at a scapegoat and away from the core drawback, which is that we now have an rising variety of billionaires, an rising variety of folks residing in tents, and a society that’s so vastly unequal that it’s headed towards a collapse a method or one other, however that’ll simply imply a reckoning. I feel it’s going to be a reckoning with the position that these billionaires play in our society and with the position that tech and Silicon Valley play in our society. Downtown San Francisco is empty due to Zoom, as a result of you’ll be able to work at home now. I labored within the monetary district for 10 years, and that’s not the place you see homelessness and drug habit. There are just a few homeless folks, however that’s a couple of mile away.

The issue with downtown is that individuals can work at home now. So, all of the eating places that had been there for years serving lunch are gone, and the workplaces are empty, and it’s lifeless. However when you go to the neighborhoods the place folks are actually working, the place they dwell, every part’s booming as a result of that’s the place issues have moved to. So, we’ve seen this migration out of workplace house. It seems we didn’t want it as a result of know-how disrupted it, and other people would quite not go to the workplace each day. The tales make it look like the explanation downtown is empty is due to the homeless folks, and that’s a totally fabricated disinformation propaganda narrative.

These are two separate issues inside just a few miles of one another, however the best way they get conflated by many in Silicon Valley and by Fox, Newsmax, and by the president of the US provides folks a misunderstanding of what’s taking place.

So we would simply be on this transition interval, going again to this concept of local weather versus climate, the place the cities had been designed for an Eighties or Nineteen Nineties actuality in how folks go all through their day, and in addition work, play, and dwell. However among the basic mechanics of which have modified as a result of know-how and persons are going to work, play, and dwell in another way. Meaning we’ve bought a bunch of infrastructure sitting in numerous locations that simply isn’t as vital because it was once, after which you find yourself with issues while you’ve bought setups like that.

Positively. For 1000’s and 1000’s of years, human beings have discovered a solution to shelter themselves. It’s wonderful that we are able to’t determine a means to supply shelter for the folks we now have right here. A part of the issue in downtown San Francisco is that it’s not really easy to transform all of those workplace buildings into housing. So, it might be costly to should tear them down or convert them, or utterly reconfigure them. There are some workplace buildings which are being reconfigured into housing, however in fact, that’s most likely going to be housing not for poor folks, however for wealthier individuals who can afford to dwell in a redone previous workplace constructing.

I do suppose we’re at a degree the place we now have to determine, with all of the applied sciences we now have and the entire future that we see proper in our face, why can’t we remedy the essential previous issues? Sadly, there’s a political disconnect there the place the individuals who say they need to remedy these issues solely need to remedy them in a sure means. Then there’s the political disagreement. As an illustration, there’s this e-book, Abundance, that got here out and that everyone’s preventing about on a regular basis. Oh, positive, Abundance sounds nice. It’s a superb phrase. We must always have abundance. While you get down into particulars, although, there’s no rational coverage you’ll be able to suggest the place everyone’s simply going to agree as a result of it’s rational. Politics just isn’t primarily based on rationality.

It’s primarily based on all of those different components: emotion, id, and morality. So, even when we had housing for everyone, somebody would object as a result of you need to work to get into the housing. Really, right here in San Francisco, there’s been a motion to maintain folks from getting housing in the event that they don’t cease doing medication first. Effectively, the proof and the info present that you simply need to get folks into housing and never create extra obstacles, after which attempt to get them off of the medication. However some folks have an ethical block towards permitting folks to get one thing whereas they’re doing medication. It’s utterly unscientific. The info proves conclusively that it’s unsuitable, however all these tech CEOs listed below are professional “you need to get the remedy otherwise you don’t get the housing.”

Effectively, when you couldn’t get authorities contracts when you had been on medication, that will be fascinating.

[Laughs] Yeah, effectively, the foundations solely apply to some folks. Drug exams are for the little folks.

Are we in a state of affairs the place know-how and democracy are essentially at odds? Are we in a cotton gin second in a means? As a result of with each new know-how, anyone tries to border it like that is the answer to inequality — the digital divide, we’re going to unravel that. We didn’t remedy the digital divide. As we noticed throughout COVID, children who had means and had been house from faculty really tended to do higher in isolation. Children who had been in even actually high-powered constitution school-type applications like KIPP did far worse.

It debunked the argument that these constitution faculty applications, like KIPP, are cherry-picking essentially the most promising children out of the interior metropolis. And the explanation why they do effectively is as a result of they’d’ve carried out effectively anyway, as a result of a whole lot of these children actually had a whole lot of bother after they had been disconnected from that structured surroundings and from intense consideration from academics, tutorial preparedness, et cetera. Nevertheless it’s taking place once more now with AI.

So, I actually marvel if we’re on this march of technological progress, but when know-how and democracy, equity, and financial alternative are essentially at odds. Is there any solution to shift that equation that you simply see?

Effectively, social justice and financial justice could be thought-about woke now by this new era of CEOs, and so they suppose they simply defeated all of these concepts. Now, we are able to go right into a meritocracy future the place you solely get issues when you can compete at a really excessive degree, in response to guidelines created by these Silicon Valley guys. I feel {that a} massive a part of the issue is who’s creating this know-how and who’re they creating it for? I don’t essentially purchase the hype on AGI and AI, however the CEOs are pushing this concept that they’re about to massively remodel and disrupt the world in a means that sounds prefer it’s going to possibly hurt the vast majority of folks to learn a small variety of folks.

Why is that the case? Why are they designing it in that means? Why aren’t they looking for methods to create applied sciences that may remedy the issues we now have, quite than create new, worse issues? I feel a basic drawback is that these applied sciences are actually being designed by folks within the personal sector with nothing greater than a revenue motive. Whereas prior to now, among the greatest, most transformative applied sciences we now have come out of presidency for the general public good, for nationwide safety, for another incentive, to attempt to remedy the issue differently. So, I don’t know how one can repair that drawback so long as we’re going to let a handful of extraordinarily rich megalomaniacs information the progress.

However you don’t suppose that the mindset of this handful of people that you’ve highlighted as being a part of the Nerd Reich is the dominant mindset in Silicon Valley? There appears to be a variety. I talked to lots of people in Silicon Valley, a whole lot of CEOs and founders, and only a few of them appear to be strongly aligned with this libertarian objectivist group. Some are like, “Oh, this’ll cross. I didn’t just like the Biden insurance policies. So, possibly this can be a bit higher.”

Some are actively towards the path that this administration, this authorities, goes, however hey, they’ve a enterprise to run. So, they’re attempting to maintain their heads down. Isn’t there the concept a few of these folks really may do or strive, or assist one thing completely different?

Effectively, it relies on who wins. Silence is complicity, and other people typically get mad. They are saying, “Don’t say all tech, don’t say all Silicon Valley.” Effectively, the place are all of the techies in Silicon Valley, the CEOs, talking out towards these things? The place are the folks standing up and saying, “You already know what? I’m going to place my cash towards this. That is morally unsuitable. That is repugnant. We must always do it one other means”? Silicon Valley, per capita, I feel, has the best assortment of cowardly CEOs on the planet. All of them need to disguise underneath a rock and be on no matter aspect wins. That’s what I see. I don’t see one actually talking out.

That’s a frequent criticism on this administration of the likes of Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Put up, and that paper’s slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness.” Now, I’m wondering, is {that a} prophecy, or was it a warning? Was it a prediction? He appears to have taken a distinct slant on attempting to not be in direct opposition to the Trump administration, no?

Effectively, undoubtedly, he desires to maintain all of his authorities contracts, and he’s gutted an editorial board that will’ve been a giant voice in a time like this for talking as a conscience of the nation. He has some infantile concept that he can simply be for freedom and financial markets with out these being political. I feel Bezos is completely going for self-interest. Like I mentioned, I feel if Trump declared that democracy was over, you wouldn’t hear a peep from The Washington Put up or from Jeff Bezos. They only need to be on the aspect that’s successful, to steal a phrase from Bob Dylan. That to me is the scariest half about all of it.

Rising up on this nation, I grew up in a really conservative place. I feel once I was actually younger, I had some Republican leanings simply due to what I used to be surrounded by. It was a really patriotic city, and lots of people in my household enlisted within the navy for no explicit cause. It was thought-about only a factor to do. You serve your nation.

It’s wonderful to develop up and to appreciate, as I head towards 50, that so many individuals simply don’t imagine in something, don’t imagine on this nation, and don’t actually care what occurs to it so long as they get theirs. That’s simply not the best way I ever thought it might be. That has been a little bit of a shock to me. If you happen to can’t have slightly little bit of braveness when you’ve got billions and billions of {dollars}, I feel the worth of that cash is suspect. I feel it’s going to take People who aren’t billionaires to avoid wasting this nation, after which we’re going to have a whole lot of questions for all these wealthy individuals who sat round simply watching it burn.

We’ve talked concerning the collapse or weakening of many establishments. You’ve labored for giant media corporations, for California politicians, and now you’re unbiased. So, in a means, maybe the disillusionment with establishments and their capacity to execute on fact or transfer the needle, possibly you’re residing that out now? No?

Effectively, I’d say it’s extra a state of affairs the place billionaires in know-how have killed journalism jobs. I’d’ve undoubtedly been at a publication if there had been one. It was a tough wrestle final yr to discover a solution to make ends meet and nonetheless write the tales I wrote for The New Republic. I don’t know if folks know what freelance pays as of late, however I wrote 5 main tales, and it bought me a couple of month’s price of hire in San Francisco. So, you don’t make your cash off of writing. You write on the aspect, and you discover different methods to outlive. I feel that we had been speaking earlier about know-how taking jobs. Do you bear in mind the San Jose Mercury Information in 1998, in comparison with now?

So, there was a little bit of a decimation. However I feel the larger drawback is the economics of it, the place anywhere you go — and I used to be on the San Francisco Examiner — it’s simply layoffs on a regular basis. It will get a bit miserable, after which the foundations get tighter and tighter. There’s simply fixed panic and attempting to remake regardless of the publication is to satisfy some goal that some new particular person has as a result of the final particular person failed. I used to be really going to go away journalism, however I discovered this story, and I felt like I needed to inform this story. Possibly that is the final story I’ll inform as a journalist. So, I did it.

However thankfully, there are optimistic components of know-how. It doesn’t all should be managed by a handful of fascists. We deserve know-how as effectively. We deserve know-how that doesn’t include the specter of shedding our freedom, of shedding our id, of shedding our lifestyle. Satirically, know-how has created this method now the place I can have direct subscribers and do my work and attain folks on podcasts and on YouTube.

So, we’re all on this soup. My argument just isn’t that know-how is unhealthy. I’m an early adopter of every part. I simply bought a brand new e-bike. It’s that we don’t should dwell underneath the boot of those folks as a result of they’re at some firm that creates one thing. There needs to be extra public possession of a few of these issues as effectively.

Unpack a few of that as a result of, as you mentioned, you aren’t a Luddite. In reality, you’re embracing a number of know-how and the way you’re distributing this Nerd Reich message, this text and podcast, and also you’re utilizing some AI in how the message is formulated and distributed, proper? Just like the imagery. Inform me about that.

Oh, effectively, I forbade that on the podcast. We’re utilizing Adobe now; I exploit Shutterstock. I desire actual human pictures. There was a second early on once I used a little bit of OpenAI’s picture era. It was like a brand new toy, and I used it really to depict the longer term that a few of these guys need. Really, Balaji Srinivasan had talked about this Grey Satisfaction Parade, the place all of the techies would put on grey uniforms and march down Market Avenue in San Francisco with police and drones flying overhead. So, I actually plugged his phrase into OpenAI, into DALL-E, and it created this terrifying, horrific picture that regarded really like Trump’s parade over the weekend.

However the extra I’ve had conversations with folks and talked about these things, the extra uncomfortable I’ve grow to be with utilizing these instruments. I feel proper now we’re seeing this part of an AI artwork aesthetic that’s going to look actually unhealthy in just a few years, particularly when you consider the quantity of theft and theft happening to create these little toys and the concept it boils a swimming pool or one thing to be able to generate it.

So, I’ve made it clear that I don’t need AI in my pictures. So I exploit Shutterstock. I feel most people who find themselves searching for the phrases, anyway. Really, I’ve bought a Nerd Reich artwork venture underway, and I’m going to work with an actual artist on it, despite the fact that persons are like, “Simply use AI.” I don’t suppose we are able to get to some extent the place we simply use AI so long as it’s going to complement these guys.

That’s the identical cause I’m not on Substack. I began on Substack, however a whole lot of my readers had been like, “How will you be on Substack? Andreessen Horowitz is likely one of the most important buyers on this.” At first, I used to be hesitant, and Substack made it very easy to begin a publication and monetize it. However there are alternate options. There’s a nonprofit I exploit now, Ghost, and in reality, it takes a smaller proportion of your pay. I’ve had greater progress on it. It actually does rely in your content material. You’re not going to grow to be a giant Substack author with a crappy weblog. If you happen to’re a superb author, you’ll be able to take it elsewhere.

So, I feel all of us should navigate these relationships, and there’s no solution to be good, similar to we use fossil fuels. We eat merchandise that could be harvested underneath unethical circumstances, however we now have to try to be extra acutely aware of {our relationships} with these applied sciences and to do higher if we are able to.

Appears like farm-to-table know-how. So, okay, there are boundaries round what you’re prepared to do. You axed out the AI stuff. That’s like being like, “Okay, I’m not going to import that meat from that distant and burn all these fossil fuels.” You’re nonetheless podcasting. You’re nonetheless utilizing the web, proper? It’s know-how.

What are you discovering concerning the suggestions that you simply’re getting? What’s driving the expansion and the engagement on the platforms the place persons are listening to your thesis and the company with whom you’re talking?

I feel folks have been searching for a solution to make sense of what’s taking place. This has been a lacking piece of the puzzle: “What’s taking place with Silicon Valley?” It’s a rightward flip. It’s mating with MAGA and these bizarre concepts that we see popping out, just like the Freedom Metropolis, taking Greenland and giving it to Praxis, which is an organization based by or funded by Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and Marc Andreessen. Individuals marvel why all that is taking place. Nobody’s been telling a cohesive narrative within the mainstream press about why it’s taking place. That’s very a lot been my focus.

Look, final yr, I feel to lots of people this appeared like conspiratorial stuff, or such as you mentioned earlier, it appeared bizarre. Effectively, we dwell in bizarre occasions, and we’ve bought some conspiratorial folks on the scene. I feel that the press is lastly beginning to catch as much as what I used to be attempting to say final yr. If Kamala Harris had received, it might seem like I had gone down a really unusual rabbit gap, and it wouldn’t have been clear why, as a result of these things would’ve been pushed again just a few years. I feel it nonetheless would’ve been related, however it might’ve been pushed again.

However even I didn’t anticipate it to speed up this shortly. I didn’t suppose it’d be Elon Musk within the White Home doing Curtis Yarvin’s “retire all authorities staff” plan. I didn’t suppose that Trump would already be pushing to build these freedom cities and take Greenland for the aim of doing that. This has gone a lot sooner and far additional than I anticipated to this point.

Now we’ve bought folks like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong overtly speaking about Bitcoin replacing the dollar as a world reserve forex, which is one other factor I’ve been speaking about for a few years that will have some dramatic results on this nation and its standing on the planet. So, sadly, these things ended up being much more essential than it ought to have been. I hope journalists on the massive papers and publications with huge followings will begin to tune in and inform folks, as a result of what I’ve discovered is that individuals actually need to know.

When you clarify it to them, they perceive it. They’ve the instruments to grasp what’s taking place, and the democracy of knowledge is critical for residents to make the fitting selections. I don’t see why persons are censoring an essential a part of this story. I spent my life as a journalist at institution newspapers, working for institution politicians. I’m a fairly strong evidence-based man. I feel that this era of political editors at papers like The Washington Put up and The New York Instances needs to be often known as the era of failure for utterly lacking this story. The truth that they’re racing to do it now proves the purpose.

Effectively, let’s shut on a hopeful be aware then. Paint for me — and get out your greens and yellows maybe — the image of how America, how society, and possibly even how tech works its means out of this example. You alluded earlier to the non-billionaires rising up and pursuing a distinct finish. How may that occur? What does it take?

Effectively, I feel that that is going to take tens of millions of individuals on the street regularly. We have now to get via the present disaster, and these tech oligarchs should see that they’re taking part in a really harmful sport by cozying as much as Trump and facilitating his fantasies of an authoritarian transformation of this nation. Over time, although, I feel we now have to reckon with the truth that these folks have the funds for to be an ongoing menace and to do this once more. So, I feel it’s going to take an consciousness of the position that billionaires play in our society and a political motion to demand leaders who’re prepared to handle that drawback.

What sort of leaders? Throughout the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter Motion rose up, and there was this transfer towards… I’m not going to say precisely leaderless, however decentralized approaches to actions. I haven’t examined this out, so poke holes in it, if you’ll.

However the Republican Occasion and the fitting have grow to be extra centralized in Donald Trump than at any time, I’d argue, in our lifetimes. Even Republicans who don’t agree with giant parts of what he’s mentioned, lots of them are falling in line, and it’s led to this early capacity of the Trump administration to make huge progress.

So, when you’re portray an image of how issues may swing the opposite means, is decentralization the reply? Or does there should be the rise of a distinct charismatic determine, harmful as these could be, to assist folks imagine?

I don’t suppose it must be one charismatic determine. I feel it must be a motion that speaks to the true wants of individuals. Like I mentioned earlier, 60 percent of Americans can’t afford the basics. If the Democratic Occasion can’t discover a solution to make use of that, effectively, then I assume it’s lights out. You’ve bought AOC and Bernie Sanders going round drawing tens of 1000’s of individuals in historically conservative areas. Individuals are searching for leaders who communicate to their primary core values and points, and the Democratic Occasion simply desires to play tag together with crypto. They need to be a lighter model of the Republican Occasion. I feel that means lies doom.

I feel particularly with these youthful folks arising in the present day, they don’t seem to be within the temper, particularly after the following 4 years, for some half-baked, mealy-mouthed political celebration that tells them that the established order can be the longer term. So, a method or one other, we’re going to get offered a imaginative and prescient of that future, and it’s going to be this fascist tech dystopia, or it’s going to be one thing that serves the vast majority of folks and preserves the concepts of freedom, democracy, and the rule of legislation. Once more, if the Democratic Occasion can’t discover a solution to message that, then another person will come alongside and do it for them.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose the chief has but appeared, however folks like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have. And Zohran Mamdani in New York appears to be tapping into one thing very highly effective. If the Democrats aren’t going to do it, then another person will.

All proper. Gil Duran, the podcast and the publication are The Nerd Reich. Is the book additionally referred to as The Nerd Reich?

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the Conflict on International Democracy.

Now we’re early, however you’re writing it most likely proper earlier than we bought on right here and proper after, in all types of moments. How far out ought to folks search for this to maybe seem? Effectively, undoubtedly, however how far out ought to folks search for it to seem on cabinets?

Oh, 2026, however if you wish to sustain with the progress, it’s thenerdreich.com and it’s free.

Oh, there’s like a progress bar.

Effectively, I’m giving folks some updates, and you may see the place I’m going with stuff.

Gil, thanks for approaching Decoder.

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