{"id":37312,"date":"2024-10-29T13:57:59","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=37312"},"modified":"2024-10-29T13:58:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T20:58:00","slug":"the-technocratic-conspiracy-how-tech-tycoons-plan-to-disrupt-democracy-and-become-the-new-rulers-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/10\/29\/the-technocratic-conspiracy-how-tech-tycoons-plan-to-disrupt-democracy-and-become-the-new-rulers-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The Technocratic Conspiracy: How tech tycoons plan to disrupt democracy and become the new rulers of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

<\/a>BY\u00a0GREG<\/a> ON\u00a0SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20TH (dailygrail.com)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On July 25, 2024, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the presidential election in the United States, selected as his running mate 39-year-old senator JD Vance. It was in some ways a strange pick: many believed Trump might need to pick a running mate who would appeal to some of the demographics he was himself not popular with, such as women and minorities. Instead, he chose Vance, a middle-aged white male with some extreme views about women and minorities, who came with very little political experience (having only been first elected to the US Senate in 2022), and who had only just a few years before made clear his disdain for Trump, suggesting that he might be \u201cAmerica\u2019s Hitler\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, once you start digging into why Vance might have been selected as Trump\u2019s possible vice-president, and the people behind the push for him to be there, a whole landscape of weirdness comes into view \u2013 one inhabited by fringe political philosophies as well as some of the richest people to have ever walked the Earth. But if Trump manages to win the presidency in November 2024, those people and their fringe philosophy will soon enough be in control of the most powerful country on the planet, and could perhaps transform the world into something entirely new \u2013 but not for the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Technocrats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

On October 8, 1940 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested an individual, J.N. Haldeman, in Vancouver on a charge of \u201cmembership in an illegal organization<\/a>\u201c. The illegal organization that Haldeman was part of was \u2018Technocracy Incorporated\u2019, an influential faction of a larger ideology known as the technocracy movement<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The movement, which rose in popularity during the 1930s, proposed that modern societies should bin representative democracy, and instead directly appoint scientists and engineers who would manage nations with rationality and technical expertise, which would supposedly lead to a new utopian age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the leading lights of the technocratic movement \u2013 and founder of the group Haldeman was a part of, Technocracy Incorporated \u2013 was engineer Howard Scott. His vision for technocracy \u2013 in the immediate aftermath of the Great Depression \u2013 included a major change to the way economies worked:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

At the core of Scott\u2019s vision was \u201can energy theory of value\u201d. Since the basic measure common to the production of all goods and services was energy, he reasoned \u201cthat the sole scientific foundation for the monetary system was also energy\u201d, and that society could be designed more efficiently by using an energy metric instead of a monetary metric (energy certificates or \u2018energy accounting\u2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technocracy Inc. officials wore a uniform, consisting of a \u201cwell-tailored double-breasted suit, gray shirt, and blue necktie, with a monad insignia on the lapel\u201d, and its members saluted Scott in public.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

However, the movement soon waned, not least due to its opposition to Canadian involvement in World War II. As a consequence, Technocracy Incorporated was declared an illegal organization, thus leading to the arrest of J.N. Haldeman, who was the head of the regional branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Haldeman died in a plane crash in January 1974, just two and a half years after his daughter Maye had given birth to his grandson, Elon Musk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/googleads.g.doubleclick.net\/pagead\/ads?client=ca-pub-4445298866154982&output=html&h=193&slotname=5945029896&adk=4172736526&adf=312714441&pi=t.ma~as.5945029896&w=770&abgtt=6&fwrn=4&lmt=1730235248&rafmt=11&format=770×193&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailygrail.com%2F2024%2F10%2Fthe-technocratic-conspiracy-how-tech-tycoons-plan-to-disrupt-democracy-and-become-the-new-rulers-of-the-world%2F&wgl=1&uach=WyJtYWNPUyIsIjEwLjEzLjYiLCJ4ODYiLCIiLCIxMTYuMC41ODQ1LjE4NyIsbnVsbCwwLG51bGwsIjY0IixbWyJDaHJvbWl1bSIsIjExNi4wLjU4NDUuMTg3Il0sWyJOb3QpQTtCcmFuZCIsIjI0LjAuMC4wIl0sWyJHb29nbGUgQ2hyb21lIiwiMTE2LjAuNTg0NS4xODciXV0sMF0.&dt=1730235247737&bpp=9&bdt=2259&idt=577&shv=r20241023&mjsv=m202410240101&ptt=9&saldr=aa&abxe=1&cookie_enabled=1&eoidce=1&prev_fmts=0x0&nras=1&correlator=3116168579122&frm=20&pv=1&rplot=4&u_tz=-420&u_his=1&u_h=800&u_w=1280&u_ah=726&u_aw=1280&u_cd=24&u_sd=1&dmc=8&adx=48&ady=2050&biw=1265&bih=609&scr_x=0&scr_y=0&eid=44759875%2C44759926%2C95346096%2C31088482%2C95344189%2C95345281%2C31088249%2C95345789&oid=2&pvsid=288873000193614&tmod=392312374&uas=0&nvt=1&fc=1920&brdim=1%2C23%2C1%2C23%2C1280%2C23%2C1280%2C726%2C1280%2C609&vis=1&rsz=%7C%7CeEbr%7C&abl=CS&pfx=0&fu=128&bc=31&bz=1&td=1&tdf=0&psd=W251bGwsbnVsbCxudWxsLDNd&nt=1&ifi=2&uci=a!2&btvi=1&fsb=1&dtd=603<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PayPal Mafia<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to 2024, and Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world (perhaps in all of human history) \u2013 worth around $240 billion at the time of writing \u2013 and heading up world-leading companies built on cutting edge science and engineering including Tesla, X (formerly Twitter), and SpaceX. He has also planted his flag firmly in the political camp of Donald Trump, openly endorsing him for president<\/a>. And with his flag comes his rather plump piggy bank, offering head-spinning amounts of money to back the campaign. Well, at least if Trump does what Musk wants him to do<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it doesn\u2019t seem coincidental that just a week after his endorsement, Musk \u2013 along with another billionaire, David Sacks \u2013 pushed for<\/a>, and subsequently \u2018received\u2019, JD Vance as Trump\u2019s vice-presidential candidate pick. This helps to explain the \u2018weird\u2019 choice of Vance as his running mate \u2013 the Trump campaign had been running low on funds<\/a> in the first half of the year, and then some \u2018angel investors\u2019 from the tech industry offered access to their very, very deep pockets \u2013 on the condition that they got their man in the #2 position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elon Musk and David Sacks both originally made their fortunes some 25 years ago through their involvement in the early years of the online payment website PayPal \u2013 along with a number of other individuals (many of whom are also now billionaires and still involved in the tech industry) who are often referred to collectively as the \u2018PayPal Mafia<\/a>\u2018. Apart from Musk and Sacks, individuals from this group went on to found companies such as YouTube, LinkedIn and Yelp, as well as investing in fledgling companies that would go on to become corporate behemoths, such as Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u2018Fortune\u2019 magazine group shot of some of the \u2018Paypal Mafia\u2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the most important individual from the \u2018PayPal Mafia\u2019 however, at least in terms of Vance\u2019s selection as Trump\u2019s running mate, is Peter Thiel<\/a> (front left of the image above). Apart from his status within the PayPal mafia, Thiel also wields considerable influence as an early mentor to two wunderkind who now stand atop the technology ladder: Meta\/Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI founder Sam Altman. But it may be a third protege, JD Vance, that turns out to be Thiel\u2019s trump card (no pun intended): because while Elon Musk and David Sacks may have been the ones that the media reported as pushing JD Vance to Trump, Peter Thiel metaphorically owns him<\/a>. When Vance first announced his run for the U.S. Senate in 2022, Thiel dropped $10 million into a Super PAC supporting him, and also chaperoned Vance to a personal dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. But Thiel\u2019s ties to Vance go much further back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, while a student at Yale Law School, Vance heard Thiel give a speech in which he called for smart young people to come work in tech, and was inspired enough to email him directly afterward (in Vance\u2019s words<\/a>, Thiel\u2019s speech was \u201cthe most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School\u201d). Thiel invited him to move to San Francisco, where Vance took up a job at Mithril Capital, one of Thiel\u2019s companies. When Vance later moved back to Ohio and started his own fund, Narya Capital, Thiel was one of the original investors providing funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s worth noting a subtle nod of the head to Thiel here that may demonstrate the depth of Vance\u2019s fealty to Thiel \u2013 Vance\u2019s fund \u2018Narya\u2019 is a name taken from Tolkien\u2019s Lord of the Rings<\/em> fantasy saga. Thiel is a super-fan of Tolkien \u2013 once bragging that he\u2019d memorized the entirety of the book series \u2013 and as a consequence has used names from it for a number of his companies, such as Mithril Capital and Palantir. Vance seems to have \u2018paid tribute\u2019 to his mentor by naming his company in the same way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dark Enlightenment<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Thiel and Vance both have another influence though: around 2007 a number of individuals gave birth to a far-right ideology that is referred to as the neoreactionary movement (abbreviated to NRx), sometimes also referred to as the \u2018Dark Enlightenment<\/a>\u2018. While it has a broad number of views, one of those is that \u2013 quite simply \u2013 democracy is a failed system of government. As one of its founders, Curtis Yarvin<\/a> (also known under the pen name \u2018Mencius Moldbug\u2019) has stated<\/a>: \u201cIf Americans want to change their government, they\u2019re going to have to get over their dictator phobia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yarvin\u2019s remedy for America is for a Caesar-like figure to take power, \u201cretire all government employees\u201d (a strategy he refers to by the acronym RAGE) and replace them with their own \u2018yes men\u2019, and for the system to be run like a corporate start-up, with an all-powerful CEO calling the shots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=ZluMysK2B1E%3Ffeature%3Doembed\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Yarvin seeks to reengineer governments by breaking them up into smaller entities called \u201cpatchworks,\u201d which would be controlled by tech corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe basic idea of Patchwork is that, as the crappy governments we inherited from history are smashed, they should be replaced by a global spiderweb of tens, even hundreds, of thousands of sovereign and independent mini-countries, each governed by its own joint-stock corporation without regard to the residents\u2019 opinions,\u201d he wrote in Patchwork: A Political System for the 21st Century.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Yarvin states in Patchwork<\/em> that the power of the \u2018proprietor\u2019\/CEO of each realm would be absolute. Using a newly un<\/em>democratized San Francisco as an example, he notes that they would \u201cexercise undivided sovereignty over San Francisco. You have no constraint. Your residents are as ants in your kitchen\u2026 Since San Francisco is not an Islamic state, it does not ask its residents to agree that their hand will be cut off if they steal. But it could.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, Yarvin says that each realm would have \u201cOrwellian powers of observation and action\u201d, in which all residents are \u201cgenotyped and iris-scanned. Public places and transportation systems track everyone. Security cameras are ubiquitous. Every car knows where it is and who is sitting in it, and tells the authorities both.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Some of Yarvin\u2019s other ideas include that humans have genetic differences that cause some groups to be \u201cmore suited to mastery\u201d, while others \u2013 including Africans \u2013 were \u201cmore suited to slavery\u201d. So\u2026yeah.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thiel and Vance are friends with, and heavily influenced by Yarvin<\/a>, and have fully embraced the philosophies of the Dark Enlightenment (Thiel biographer Max Chafkin described Yarvin as the \u201chouse political philosopher\u201d for the network of Thiel-connected VCs and tycoons often referred to as the \u2018Thielverse\u2019). This influence is evident when we hear that Thiel has stated<\/a> that he no longer believes \u201cthat freedom and democracy are compatible\u201d (because, \u201csince 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women \u2014 two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians \u2014 have rendered the notion of \u2018capitalist democracy\u2019 into an oxymoron\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Vance has said<\/a> that the advice he\u2019d give to Trump upon being elected would be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cFire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd when the courts stop you,\u201d he went on, \u201cstand before the country, and say\u201d \u2014 he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order \u2014 \u201cthe chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a description, essentially, of a coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are in a late republican period,\u201d Vance said later, evoking the common New Right view of America as Rome awaiting its Caesar. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to push back against it, we\u2019re going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Vance\u2019s views are straight out of Yarvin\u2019s playbook, from his suggestion of replacing government employees with his own \u2018yes men\u2019 (Yarvin\u2019s \u2018RAGE\u2019 ), to the need for a new Caesar\/dictator to take control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, Yarvin\u2019s patchworks fit right in with a long-held desire of Thiel\u2019s \u2013 and a lot of other libertarians of his ilk \u2013 to live by their own rules (that is, without government regulation and taxes), in autonomous zones of some sort. In 2009, Thiel put forward what he saw as the possibilities<\/a> for locations that would offer a new life of freedom, from cyberspace to actual space:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Cyberspace<\/strong>\u2026In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world. The hope of the Internet is that these new worlds will impact and force change on the existing social and political order. The limitation of the Internet is that these new worlds are virtual and that any escape may be more imaginary than real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outer space<\/strong>\u2026Because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics. But the final frontier still has a barrier to entry: Rocket technologies have seen only modest advances since the 1960s, so that outer space still remains almost impossibly far away. We must redouble the efforts to commercialize space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seasteading<\/strong>\u2026Between cyberspace and outer space lies the possibility of settling the oceans. To my mind, the questions about whether people will live there (answer: enough will) are secondary to the questions about whether seasteading technology is imminent. From my vantage point, the technology involved is more tentative than the Internet, but much more realistic than space travel.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Thiel has invested in all three of these \u2018freedom locations\u2019 (via, for example, Facebook, SpaceX, and The Seasteading Institute<\/a> respectively). But Yarvin\u2019s model offered something new to Thiel \u2013 the literal breakdown of existing<\/em>, modern democracies into corporate-controlled autonomous zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thiel later provided seed capital to the tune of $1.1 million for a company Curtis Yarvin founded in 2013, Tl\u00f6n Corp. Rather than taking the name for his company from Tolkien, however, Yarvin borrowed from Jorge Luis Borges. As Corey Pein notes in his book Live Work Work Work Die<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The name Tl\u00f6n referenced a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which \u201ca secret society of astronomers, biologists, engineers, metaphysicians, poets, chemists, algebraists, moralists, painters, geometers\u2026 directed by an obscure man of genius\u201d built a \u201cbrave new world\u201d that forced old cultures and countries into extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The crossovers with the previous century\u2019s technocratic movement are obvious. As is a petition created in 2014 at the White House website by Google engineer, Curtis Yarvin-fan (and Occupy Wall Street co-founder) Justine Tunney, which proposed three points for a national referendum:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Retire all government employees with full pensions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Transfer administrative authority to the tech industry.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Appoint [Google executive chairman] Eric Schmidt as CEO of America.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    As a prescient 2013 TechCrunch<\/em> article on the neoreactionary movement<\/a> noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    You can see that a certain set of ideas are spreading through out the startup scene\u2026 It\u2019s not hard to see why this ideology would catch-on with white male geeks. It tells them that they are the natural rulers of the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Another prescient article at The Baffler<\/em><\/a> (from 2014) hit the nail on the head:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    Neoreactionaries are explicitly courting wealthy elites in the tech sector as the most receptive and influential audience. Why bother with mass appeal, when you\u2019re rebuilding the ancien r\u00e9gime<\/em>?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    The New Technocrats<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    A decade on from the TechCrunch<\/em> and Baffler<\/em> articles, and it now feels like there are neoreactionaries everywhere in the tech industry. However, perhaps the most prominent, and influential, is Balaji Srinivasan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Srinivasan has been CTO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the US, and a general partner at the leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He is also another member of the Thielverse: when Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016, Thiel (who was in favour with Trump as one of his few financial backers leading into the election) put forward Srinivasan\u2019s name as a candidate to lead the FDA in the new administration. Both Thiel and Srinivasan disapproved of the FDA\u2019s regulations and trials for new drugs: \u201cFor every thalidomide, many dead from slowed approvals,\u201d Srinivasan once tweeted (and deleted while under consideration for the gig). Thankfully, Trump rejected Thiel\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As far back as 2013, Srinivasan was promoting \u201ca society run by Silicon Valley\u201d, and citing tech VCs\u2019 and CEOs\u2019 interest in \u2018exiting\u2019 from US democracy and forming their own fiefdoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    Larry Page for example wants to set aside a part of the world for unregulated experimentation\u2026 Marc Andreessen: \u201cthe world is going to see an explosion of countries in the years ahead.\u201d Two of the founders of PayPal \u2013 Peter Thiel is into seasteading, and Elon Musk wants to build a Mars colony.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    \nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=cOubCHLXT6A%3Ffeature%3Doembed\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Srinivasan also invested in a certain company along with Peter Thiel \u2013 Curtis Yarvin\u2019s Tl\u00f6n. This connection was not coincidental \u2013 perhaps more than anyone else, Srinivasan has taken Yarvin\u2019s ideas of \u2018patchworks\u2019 and run with them, actively promoting for many years now the creation of what he has called \u2018Network States<\/a>\u2018: communities that are at first digital, being formed online, which then eventually crowd-fund resources to, as a group, buy into or build autonomous cities and states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Srinivasan identifies the pioneers who would begin creating these new Network State societies as the \u2018Gray Tribe\u2019: intelligent people, mostly in tech, who have moved beyond America\u2019s traditional Red and Blue political tribes and want to create a new political system\u2026but nevertheless remain in alignment with the Reds, while being openly hostile toward Blues. He explained all of this in a rambling 4 hour podcast interview, in which he raised some truly fascist-style methods in literally taking control of San Francisco:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=EqJoXaNFFjY%3Fstart%3D12694%26feature%3Doembed\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    \n

    You have a foothold of private property and you have a group membership of Gray tribe\u2026you also issue t-shirts [that are] gray color\u2026you fence off a street and make clear that it\u2019s under Gray control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2026Every week or every month you have a policeman\u2019s banquet. All Gray-sympathetic policemen are allowed to come to this banquet. Every policeman\u2019s son, daughter, wife, cousin, sibling, whatever should get a job at a tech company in security, and again you tap the Gray root network. You also do things like you donate to the policeman\u2019s benevolent Union or what have you, right, and Grays publicly donate \u2013 they don\u2019t just donate, they tweet out that they donate, okay? You start to actually merge the Gray and police social networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What you also do is all of the kind of military stuff that tech is funding \u2013 so Palantir, Anduril [ a military tech company set up by another Peter Thiel protege, Palmer Luckey\u2026and yes, that is another Lord of the Rings reference<\/em>]. You bring those folks in as speakers and the policemen can look at this stuff and they love that, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A huge win would be a great \u2018Gray pride\u2019 parade with 50,000 Grays, that would be massive, that would start to say \u201cWHOSE STREETS, OUR STREETS\u201d\u2026.you have the Bitcoin parade, you have the drones flying overhead in formation\u2026you have the police at the Gray Pride Parade, they\u2019re flying the Anduril drones\u2026ideally you even design the police uniforms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    (It\u2019s interesting to note that the gray shirt proposed by Srinivasan echoes the gray-shirted uniform of the Technocracy movement from almost a century previous.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cReds should be welcome\u201d in this new Gray-ruled San Francisco, Srinivasan says, but \u201cno Blue should be welcome there.\u201d Furthermore, he says, movies of \u201cBlue abuses\u201d should be shown to residents. He compares these moves to the deNazification of Germany after the Second World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Despite how batshit insane and fascist in tone it all may sound, Srinivasan\u2019s Network State following has grown in recent years \u2013 so much so that a yearly conference is now held to discuss the idea, featuring some of the biggest names in various tech industry areas such as crypto and venture capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At the conference, Srinivasan has explicitly laid out the plan for achieving \u201cthat seemingly impossible thing of building a new country\u201d. Network Staters must first create, he said, a \u201cparallel establishment\u201d. By this he means two things \u2013 (1) creating \u2018parallel societies\u2019 (both online, and in the real world e.g. from tech \u2018communes\u2019 to \u2018charter cities\u2019), and (2) creating \u2018parallel institutions\u2019 in media, education, law, finance and science (to take over from the \u2018legacy\u2019 institutions of the NYT, Harvard University, the US dollar etc \u2013 those familiar with neoreactionary views will likely recognize Srinivasan\u2019s \u201clegacy institutions\u201d as a parallel of \u2018The Cathedral\u2019). The new Network State institutions \u201cexist alongside the legacy in parallel; they\u2019re gaining strength, they\u2019re pulling away users, until they become the new thing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \nhttps:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=VqIJI8fW4PI%3Fstart%3D321%26feature%3Doembed\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    The Network Staters even explicitly note that Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter (now \u2018X\u2019) was an example of the creation of a parallel institution by the technocrats to challenge legacy media (which makes sense of all of Musk\u2019s tweets deriding the NYT and others in the past couple of years). Talking to Srinivasan<\/a>, Garry Tan \u2013 CEO of tech venture capital behemoth Y Combinator (and surprise, surprise, formerly of Peter Thiel\u2019s Palantir) \u2013 discussed how the political landscape of San Francisco was already being transformed as per the Network State vision. Not only has Tan spearheaded a takeover of San Francisco\u2019s local government<\/a> by big tech through financial means, but he also noted Musk\u2019s contribution to taking power through non-democratic means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    What\u2019s next for San Francisco? We\u2019ve stated the problem, we\u2019ve outlined the political machine, and we\u2019ve talked about how we\u2019ve replaced some pieces of that political machine. Specifically, we have a parallel media now, with Elon\u2019s Twitter, or X. Getting a parallel media was a key piece, and it wasn\u2019t done through voting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2026that\u2019s a possible recipe for reforming San Francisco, and building the alternative tech political machine. And if it works in SF, it will<\/em> work everywhere\u2026this is just getting started.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    (It is perhaps worth remembering that Yarvin\u2019s original example for his \u2018patchworks\u2019 was a takeover of San Francisco.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Similarly, Peter Thiel<\/a> has acknowledged that the creation of PayPal a quarter of a century ago was intended to give birth to a parallel institution for finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    [T]he great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms\u2026I suspect that the mode for escape must involve some sort of new and hitherto untried process that leads us to some undiscovered country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2026The founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution \u2014 the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    While PayPal has now itself largely become a part of the legacy financial system, it\u2019s not difficult to see how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have taken its place as the \u2018parallel institution\u2019 for finance \u2013 so it is no surprise to learn that crypto-tycoons are all in on the Network State idea: Ethereum\u2019s creator Vitalik Buterin was one of the speakers at Srinivasan\u2019s Network State conference, and the CEO of Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, has also embraced the idea<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is therefore worth noting that the Trump campaign has in recent months pivoted hard to cryptocurrency. Despite previously being against it, labeling it as \u201ca scam against the dollar\u201d, in July Trump was suddenly the marquee speaker at the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, at which he promised to make the United States the \u201ccrypto capital\u201d of the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And cryptocurrency is not the only \u2018parallel institution\u2019 that the Trump campaign is backing \u2013 they have also proposed up to 10 \u2018freedom cities\u2019 on federally owned land. As already discussed, this meshes closely with the neoreactionary and Network State ideologies<\/a>, and their related projects currently in development:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    Balaji\u2019s concept of the Network State builds on the idea of \u201ccharter cities\u201d, urban areas that constitute a special economic zone, similar to free ports. There are several such projects under construction around the world, including in Nigeria and Zambia. At a recent rally in Las Vegas, Donald Trump promised that, if elected in November, he would free up federal land in Nevada to \u201ccreate special new zones with ultra-low taxes and ultra-low regulation\u201d, to attract new industries, build affordable housing and create jobs. The plan would, he said, revive \u201cthe frontier spirit and the American dream\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Other similar projects are already underway beyond the United States. There is Zuzalu, a \u2018pop-up city\u2019 on the Mediterranean created by Vitalik Buterin (designer of the cryptocurrency Ethereum) that directly cites Balaji Srinivasan\u2019s Network State as inspiration<\/a> (Buterin also spoke at the recent Network State conference).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Meanwhile, Pr\u00f3spera is a private tech city in Honduras that \u201cmarkets itself as a libertarian paradise<\/a> with low taxes and pro-bitcoin policies,\u201d as well as little regulation around biomedical technologies. One of Pr\u00f3spera\u2019s funders is Pronomos Capital<\/a>, which is backed by (surprise!) Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, advised by Balaji Srinivasan, and founded by Patri Friedman \u2013 who originally founded The Seasteading Institute, which Thiel also previously supported in his quest for a new residence free of government interference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (The most recently elected Honduran government is however fighting to overturn the creation of the special zones by the previous government \u2013 but Pr\u00f3spera has now filed a $10.7 billion lawsuit against them in response.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Pr\u00f3spera is just one of a number of \u2018charter cities\u2019 that is being funded by Pronomos Capital<\/a> though. Other locations include Africa<\/a>, South Asia and Palau. One in particular, however, seems to have star status. Praxis<\/a> \u2013 which is funded by Thiel, Srinivasan, Andreessen, OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman, the Winklevoss twins, and Palantir\u2019s Joe Lonsdale (another of the \u2018PayPal mafia\u2019) \u2013 aims to be, as per Balaji Srinivasan\u2019s playbook, \u201cbuilt on the Internet\u201d first, and then manifested in the physical world through funding \u2013 the \u201cfirst Network State\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The website for Praxis doesn\u2019t mince words, calling itself \u201cThe Next America\u201d and promising the dream of \u201cpermissive regulation\u201d to all its tech-bro funders. It has an application for citizenship, its very own weird cult-like promotional video<\/a>, and has just claimed to have raised $525 million in financing<\/a> to build the physical city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    As pointed out by journalist Gil Duran<\/a>, last month it published a manifesto titled \u201cThe Network State: Crypto\u2019s End Game<\/a>\u201c, which explicitly heralded the rise of Network States as modern democracies crumble: \u201cAs local communities dissolve and Nation States stumble, Network States will ascend. The next global superpower will be a Network State.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is little surprise then to see the influence that sits behind it all: a recent BBC investigation<\/a> noted that Praxis had \u201ca reputation for edginess\u201d, due to its roots in the neoreactionary movement: \u201c[Praxis] hosted legendary parties: people spoke of candle-lit soirees in giant Manhattan loft spaces, where awkward computer coders mixed with hipster models and figures from the \u201cDark Enlightenment\u201d \u2013 people like the blogger Curtis Yarvin, who advocates a totalitarian future in which the world is ruled by corporate \u201cmonarchs\u201d.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Furthermore, an internal company branding guide reviewed by the New York Times<\/em><\/a> revealed some concerning philosophies that seem to resonate with some of the racist\/eugenic overtones of certain neoreactionary identities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    The guide denounces \u201cenemies of vitality,\u201d who \u201creject what they consider the optional \u2018European beauty standards.\u201d It goes on to extol \u201ctraditional, European\/Western beauty standards on which the civilized world, at its best points, has always found success.\u201d Beauty, here, connotes proper breeding: \u201cIn humans, beauty implies a number of things \u2014 namely that two people, themselves of beauty, formed a union to create more beautiful life,\u201d it reads.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cIt\u2019s basically a colonial endeavor that they\u2019re involved in,\u201d Sarah Moser, a geography professor at McGill University who specializes in new cities, told The Daily Beast<\/a>. <\/em>\u201cThey want to have a boys-only treehouse where they can go and do their bad-boy stuff and then come back to civilization,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re little boys who don\u2019t want anyone to be the boss of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As Gil Duran noted in his article for The New Republic<\/em>, the basic strategy of the billionaire\/neoreactionary funders backing these charter city ideas is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    Work with governments to create regulation-free, privately owned territories that, over time, will negotiate for full sovereignty (or file massive lawsuits against their host governments, if the experience of Honduras is any indication).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    But now, with Trump beholden to them for funding his campaign, and their own man J.D. Vance just a heartbeat away from taking over the presidency himself if Trump wins the election, perhaps these neoreactionary tech billionaires will have no constraints, no-one to answer to, or any need to work within the system or otherwise exit it \u2013 and they will be free to enact their anti-democratic vision upon the United States itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Disrupting Democracy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Less than a century on from the technocratic takeover envisioned by Elon Musk\u2019s grandfather, today\u2019s technology billionaires stand on the cusp of making it a reality. Though, it should be pointed out, to some degree it won\u2019t precisely be \u2018rule by scientists and engineers\u2019, as more than a few of those tech billionaires are drop-outs or business\/law degree graduates. As much as they might see themselves as tech visionaries, a lot of them are simply just ruthless businessmen who have stood on the back of brilliant scientists and engineers to achieve their success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2018Smart people\u2019 are often the dumbest people you\u2019ll ever meet, and in researching this article \u2013 watching numerous podcast and video interviews in which these \u2018tech visionaries\u2019 featured, or reading their writings \u2013 I discovered that many of these supposedly incredibly smart people are the dumbest motherfuckers you\u2019d ever meet, with zero ability for introspection or emotional intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And while most of them would probably describe their political philosophy as \u2018libertarian\u2019, a little digging usually found that the personal freedom they supposedly support is typically reserved for themselves and their business strategies alone \u2013 not everyone else. As Robert Anton Wilson was said to have once clarified when asked about his own libertarian philosophy: \u201cI am not that<\/em> kind of libertarian, really; I don\u2019t hate poor people\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    So Peter Thiel can say he\u2019s a libertarian, while being the co-founder of Palantir, one of the modern world\u2019s most powerful companies in the area of personal surveillance and monitoring<\/a>, as well as funding the financial destruction of media outlet Gawker<\/a> because they posted stories about him that he didn\u2019t like. Or Elon Musk can say he is a \u201cfree speech absolutist\u201d, but suspend journalists from Twitter\/X<\/a> when the subject of that free speech is him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    These tech bros live under the delusion that they are brilliant, rather than just fortunate, and should thus rule over the rest of us less-intelligent people. And as Anil Dash has remarked<\/a>, \u201cit\u2019s important to remember, nobody becomes a billionaire by accident<\/em>. You have to have wanted that level of power, control and wealth more than you wanted anything else in your life.\u201d These are not, therefore, people that you want with power and control over the rest of us. There\u2019s a certain amount of sociopathy (possibly ranging to psychopathy) involved with a lot of these individuals \u2013 they are not in any way going to be benevolent, empathetic overlords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Furthermore, as Dash notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    If you have access to a billionaire (and billionaires all have access to each other, because it suits their ego to think of each other as peers), most are very easy to program by simply playing to their insecurity and desire for acknowledgement of exceptionalism, and so they push each other further and further into extreme ideas because their entire careers have been predicated on the idea that they\u2019re genius outliers who can see things others can\u2019t, and that their wealth is a reward for that imagined merit. \u201cI must be smart, look how rich I am.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has a similar view of of the growing extremism of tech billionaires<\/a>, warning that \u201cit\u2019s impossible to overstate the degree to which many big tech CEOs and venture capitalists are being radicalized by living within their own cultural and social bubble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    They also, it should be noted, have a really low opinion of people who they see as lacking in intellect. Which makes their getting in bed with Donald Trump fascinating, as you can only imagine the contempt with which they would speak about him behind closed doors (even Vance himself has previously gone on record multiple times as a \u2018never-Trumper\u2019). The relationship is one of pure convenience for them, as he is the candidate they see as being most malleable to their cause. As Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie has stated<\/a>, \u201cThey see Trump as a useful idiot\u2026 He\u2019s somebody who\u2019ll do what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"
    Peter Thiel with Donald Trump<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Chillingly, one of the few points of agreements between Trump and the tech billionaires might be on the topic of \u2018race science\u2019. While Trump rants about \u201ca lot of bad genes in our country right now<\/a>\u201c, neoreactionaries have for years complained about the \u2018woke\u2019 mainstream media not allowing them to speak their mind on the same topic. As the prescient 2013 Techcrunch<\/em> article<\/a> about the rise of neoreactionary views in the tech world noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    They want to be able to say stuff like \u201cAsians, Jews and whites are smarter than blacks and Hispanics because genetics\u201d without being called racist. Or at least be able to express such views without the negative consequences of being labeled racist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Speaking of which, neoreactionaries are obsessed with a concept called \u201chuman biodiversity\u201d (HBD) \u2014 what used to be called \u201cscientific racism.\u201d Specifically, they believe that IQ is one of \u2014 if not the \u2014 most important personal traits, and that it\u2019s predominately genetic. Neoreactionaries would replace, or supplement, the \u201cdivine right\u201d of kings and the aristocracy with the \u201cgenetic right\u201d of elites.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    Or as Gil Duran, who has long been warning of the danger posed by this neoreactionary tech elite, summarized it<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019ve been describing this as an ideology of supremacy: tech supremacy, wealth supremacy, male supremacy, white supremacy, Western culture supremacy\u2026they believe that they are the most important people on the planet; they believe they are the most important people in history; being wealthy they\u2019re surrounded by people who don\u2019t tell them otherwise; and they have enough money to make a lot of trouble for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cEnough money\u201d is an understatement. Pro-cryptocurrency donors were responsible for almost half of all corporate donations to PACs<\/a> in the 2024 election cycle. In the lead-up to the election, Elon Musk is the world\u2019s richest person, and has been the leading backer of Trump and Vance\u2019s ticket via America PAC \u2013 not to mention his control of one of the leading social media sites (a \u2018parallel media outlet\u2019). While you can\u2019t give water to a voter standing in line<\/a> in Georgia, Musk is free to award a $1 million prize each day<\/a> to mobilize voters in swing states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And while there\u2019s a pure power simply in their wealth, it should also be noted that there has been a growing martial drift to the tech these tycoons are interested in. Post-PayPal, Peter Thiel created his spy company Palantir. Young entrepreneurs are seeing a lucrative future in creating technology for the military<\/a>, perhaps best exemplified by Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey, who went from a kid who designed a virtual reality headset to founding the military tech start-up Anduril, and recently stated that \u201cevery country needs a \u2018warrior class\u2019 excited to enact \u2018violence on others in pursuit of good aims\u2019<\/a>. Which of course, depends on how you interpret aims as being \u2018good\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    An article in The Atlantic<\/em> from early 2024 warned of the growing danger of this tech elite, under the headline \u201cThe Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    The new technocrats are ostentatious in their use of language that appeals to Enlightenment values \u2014 reason, progress, freedom \u2014 but in fact they are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal movement. Many of them profess unconditional support for free speech, but are vindictive toward those who say things that do not flatter them. They tend to hold eccentric beliefs: that technological progress of any kind is unreservedly and inherently good; that you should always build it, simply because you can; that frictionless information flow is the highest value regardless of the information\u2019s quality; that privacy is an archaic concept; that we should welcome the day when machine intelligence surpasses our own. And above all, that their power should be unconstrained. The systems they\u2019ve built or are building \u2014 to rewire communications, remake human social networks, insinuate artificial intelligence into daily life, and more \u2014 impose these beliefs on the population, which is neither consulted nor, usually, meaningfully informed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u2026Silicon Valley\u2019s influence easily exceeds that of Wall Street and Washington. It is reengineering society more profoundly than any other power center in any other era since perhaps the days of the New Deal. Many Americans fret \u2014 rightfully \u2014 about the rising authoritarianism among MAGA Republicans, but they risk ignoring another ascendant force for illiberalism: the tantrum-prone and immensely powerful kings of tech.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    So what happens when these radicalized, ultra-wealthy neoreactionary Silicon Valley billionaires \u201cexplicitly believe that democracy is not the preferable operating system of government or society<\/a>\u201c? After 10 to 15 years of talking about it, they now appear to be putting their plans into action in the real world<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n

    You see, while the Network State cult mostly focuses on creating new sovereign territories, it also recommends an alternative: Taking over existing governments and institutions to bring them under tech billionaire control\u2026 They take this very seriously. They\u2019re working to disrupt the very idea of nationhood and citizenship by creating a network of sovereign global territories protected by military grade security. They plan to use their massive wealth to reshape the balance of power in their favor \u2013 permanently\u2026 The Network State is no longer a fever dream in a tech nerd podcast. The NS cult is making big moves. It\u2019s a global campaign, backed by billionaires, to execute colonialist power grabs all around the world.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    As Network State believer and CEO of Y-Combinator Garry Tan \u2013 who has been working on the tech-funded takeover of San Francisco\u2019s local government \u2013 proclaimed<\/a>: \u201cIf we can build here, we can take over the whole country \u2013 we\u2019re going to take over every nation in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    President Dwight Eisenhower\u2019s famous farewell address in 1961<\/a> has often been quoted for its warning about the grave implications of the establishment of a \u201cmilitary-industrial complex\u201d. Few people who have cited it however have noted that Eisenhower\u2019s warning was not just about the military-industrial complex, but also the possible future dangers of a technocracy: \u201cAkin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture,\u201d Eisenhower stated, \u201chas been the technological revolution during recent decades\u2026 In holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    63 years on from Eisenhower\u2019s warning, that danger has become manifest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\n\n\n

    This article came together after seeing the same threads of information constantly present themselves in various news stories and sources. These are linked throughout the article in the relevant places. However, two primary inspirations that must be acknowledged are Max Chafkin\u2019s biography of Peter Thiel, \u2018The Contrarian<\/a>\u2018, and a number of articles by journalist Gil Duran. While the latter are linked within the article, I also recommend visiting his website The Nerd Reich<\/a> for a one-stop place to explore these articles with additional commentary and context.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \"\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    <\/a>Greg<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Editor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Greg is the owner-editor of The Daily Grail, as well as the author of a number of books including Stop Worrying, There Probably is an Afterlife<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    (Contributed by Gwyllm Llwydd)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    BY\u00a0GREG ON\u00a0SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20TH (dailygrail.com) On July 25, 2024, Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the presidential election in the United States, selected as his running mate 39-year-old senator JD Vance. It was in some ways a strange pick: many believed Trump might need to pick a running mate who… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37312"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37312"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37312\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37317,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37312\/revisions\/37317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}