12/22/25: Silicon Valley's Dark Quest For Techno Fascism

Krystal is joined by Jacob Silverman to discuss Silicon Valley's quest for techno fascism.

 

Jacob Silverman: https://www.amazon.com/Gilded-Rage-Radicalization-Silicon-Valley/dp/1399419986 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
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That is possible.

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If you like what we're all about, it just means
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Speaker 3 (00:20):
But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hey guys, hope everyone is doing well. I have a
fantastic interview I want to share with you that I
think is extraordinarly important given the way that tech oligarchs
have effectively taken over our government and are operating it
for their own ends. So you guys know me, Saga, Ryan, Emily,
the whole team. We've been covering AI, we've been covering Crypto.

(00:42):
We've been covering both the near term and the long
term effects. So everything from the immediate electricity price hikes
because of the data center build out, the way our
whole economy is apparently now just one big bet on AI,
the stripping up back of all regulations to rein in
or have any sort of democrat check on what these
tech oligarchs ultimately want, and then also the more dire,

(01:05):
longer term consequences of potentially shredding the social contract, eliminating
the need for all or most human labor, and ultimately
an actual existential threat to humanity itself. So my guest
is Jacob Silverman. He wrote an incredible book about how
this cast of characters has come to effectively stage a

(01:27):
coup of our democratic government and are getting everything they
want in Trump two point zero. His name is Jacob Silverman.
His book is Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization
of Silicon Valley. Elon Musk is in the title, and
Elon Musk is definitely in the book. But this is
really about everyone from Peter Teel, Sam Altman, Mark Andresen
David Sachs and how they made this. I guess you'd

(01:50):
call it a right wing turn, although their politics in
terms of economics have always been very self serving and
very libertarian. So in any case, if you have to
read one book over the holiday season to understand how
we got where we are now with regard to you know, crypto,
with regard to the wild wild West of AI development,
just off to the races with that I really recommend

(02:12):
this particular book. And with that being said, let's bring
in the guests, all right, guys, So it is my
pleasure to be joined today by Jacob Silverman, who is
author of a fantastic new book called Gilded Rage, Elon
Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. He's an independent
journalist and also has a limited what four episode series
at the CBC was at ced DC that is called

(02:34):
The Making of Musk and focuses on some of the
topics in the book, but really hones in on Elon
Musk himself. So great to have you, Jacob, Welcome.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
Thank you, glad to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
Yeah, of course. So I wanted to start with this
image actually from Trump's inauguration, which is when it really
set in for me that oh boy, we have a problem.
So this was the some of the billionaires and some
of the specifically tech billionaires who were lined up behind
Trump at his inauguration. Not lawmakers, you know, there were

(03:06):
some of those, but further back, these were the guys
that were in the front row. And so I'm curious
as someone who has been writing on the tech world
for about the tech world for quite a while and
really had your eye on the ball in terms of
what these guys have been up to. I'm curious what
you thought when you saw this lineup at Trump's inauguration.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Well, it's clarifying in some ways to see these guys
all line up together. I mean, this is the oligarchy
or the new oligarchy, out in the open, and I
don't think it's necessarily surprising anymore. I mean, I divide
some of these tech elites into kind of opportunistic group
and then some into the more died in the world
ideological people. But they're all kind of moving in the

(03:47):
same direction and seek the same favors from the Trump administration.
And if any of them ever had liberal politics, all
war them pretty thinly. So you know, I think that
it's a powerful image and also a good one for
the public to see in a way, because the people
who may have been powerful behind the scenes are now
very much to the fore, you know, going to the inauguration,

(04:08):
going to Trump's oval office and presenting him with gold gifts.
So you know, I consider it as a possible.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Book cover, Yeah, it would, it would be good. The
book cover you chose is also great, But it is
a powerful image. I mean, for me, it was really
striking because obviously there's been a lot to focus on
in Trump two point Oh, there was a lot to
focus on going into Trump two point zero. But you know,
you probably have understood this the whole time, even as
there is a lot happening. I feel like the tech

(04:37):
takeover is actually the central project of what is going
on here. You know, from the beginning, you've had executive
orders to roll back any Biden era regulation of AI development.
Obviously Trump going all in on crypto for his own
personal wealth and corrupt purposes, you know, Elon Musk with

(04:59):
Doge and the extraordinary and I think criminal acts that
occurred there. You know, just we were just covering on
breaking points that Trump just signed a new executive order
banning states from regulating AI at all for ten years.
So I wonder how you see this project in Trump
two point zero and how central you see it as being.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Well, I think there's been a total and in some
cases mutually very profitable alignment between the tech industry and
MAGA and Trump to a degree that I think a
lot of people didn't anticipate. You know, some people have
asked me, do you think that they sort of bit
off more than they could chew the tech industry or
they have any regrets. But so far, I think it's

(05:43):
working out very well for both sides. I mean, even
someone like Elon Musk, there hasn't been a lot of
blowback towards him. He still has his government contracts, there's
still that mutual dependency, especially through SpaceX and he's getting
new contracts through XAI. So, you know, the kind of
high tech corporate represented by Silicon Valley and their rhetoric

(06:03):
that somehow they can introduce efficiency and innovate the future
seems to be actually really amenable to the kind of
Trump authoritarianism and the things that they want to do.
And you know, more specifically, the Trump administration doesn't really
have an industrial policy or a way to bring back
manufacturing or the other things that they sort of vaguely
talk about. So just kind of handing it all over

(06:24):
to the tech industry and saying we'll invest in AI
data centers is a kind of a solution to that
and is exactly what the tech industry wants right now.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
You write in the book that these guys are always
looking for an exit, and right now the exit and
this has been actually years in the making right now,
the exit they're looking for is basically from society overall.
And I mean most extreme example of this is Elon
Musk with his Mars fantasies. But I'd love for you
to elaborate on that concept and explain to people what

(06:53):
is it that these guys actually want.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
Yeah, exit is a specific word that you'll hear sometimes
from people on the tech right, especially people who might
style themselves as libertarian, like Peter tel for example. We'll
talk about there's an interview with him from a podcast
about how it's increasingly harder to exit, and he specifically
cites getting your money out of the US into Switzerland.
But it's a broader idea that you know, they are

(07:17):
very fed up with mainstream society. They don't want to
live with the rest of us. I mean, I talk
about this in more specific sense about Silica, about San
Francisco and the social problems there and how tech elites
reacted to it and really kind of gave up on
San Francisco as this failed city. But it also influences
things like charter cities or these initiatives to build these

(07:38):
kind of corporate fiefdoms, these little city states. And very
relevantly right now, there's one in Honduras on an island
called Roatan. The settlement itself is called Prospera. This is
funded by Peter Tile and Mark and Dreesen, other pretty
well known tech elites. It's basically a startup that under
a previous right wing government Honduras, not Joh, i believe,
but a different one allied with him, basically purchase a

(08:02):
small piece of this island from Honduras and then the
subsequent left wing governments challenge that in court and want
to take it back quite understandably, and Prospero is suing
the government of Honduras for more than the GDP of Honduras,
and someone like Joho and his party would probably be

(08:22):
much more minimal to preserving that relationship. So like that
is probably the most advance of these charter cities or
city states. But you really see that exit in all
kinds of forms. You know, it can be more metaphorical
or sort of figurative, with like a bureaucratic or legal exit,
like let's find out how to move fast and break
things and break the law. But it is also a
very specific idea that, as you said, extends to everything

(08:43):
from you know, founding new cities to going to Mars.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
And I feel like AI is a version of that
exit as well. I mean they, I think believe, Well,
you can tell me, what do they think that the
AI future is going to look like and what sort
of power do you they expect to consolidate in their
own hands if their company is the one that wins
the race to superintelligence.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
I think the tech industry has been operating on this assumption,
or at least article of faith, that if they keep
pouring resources into AI and into the basically the current
methods largely focused around LMS, that super intelligence or AGI
or whatever else they might want to call it will
somehow emerge. And there has been some admission even from

(09:29):
the industry recently that may not happen, that this may
not be the proper path for that. What we're more
likely to see is some sort of big bubble bursts
in the next year, perhaps or eighteen months, as these
enormous bets start being called in by perhaps some of
the lenders who are putting a lot of money into

(09:50):
data centers, or as a company like open ai can't
fulfill its promises and it's huge spending promises, so you
know it. For some reason, the tech industry has aside,
this is the only game in town, and right now
with a lot of money coming in from Middle Eastern
sovereign wealth funds and a lot of support from the
Trump administration and from Oracle and Larry Ellison, who you

(10:13):
know is probably the top Trump ally actually in the
tech world. In some ways this we're still going to
go down this path, and they're still going to spend
tens or hundreds of billions of dollars or as much
as they can over the next few years until it
kind of all blows up, and maybe Microsoft and Google
will be able to vacuum up the pieces. But that
is kind of how I see it going. And I think,

(10:33):
of course, when it does blow up, it's going to
affect the rest of us, even if you don't own
tech stocks. It's going to hurt the market, it's going
to hurt people's retirement accounts, and they'll be knock on
effects to the economy. But this is the kind of
alliance and bet that they're willing to make on almost
pretty much all our behalfs.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Right now, let's back up a little bit and talk
about some of the subject matter or the book, which
really tracks kind of how we got to this place,
and use Elon Musk as like, you know, a central
character to explain this reactionary radicalization and shift. Elon really,
you know, sort of comes into his own as this
big time entrepreneur with a lot of help from Barack Obama,

(11:12):
and they were close, and he was you know, sort
of seen as a liberal democratic type of ally. Then
he shifts his politics over the years. Although one of
the questions I have for you is like how much
are these guys really changing their politics and how much
are they just moving with the wins and exploiting opportunities
as they see them. But let's just start with Elon
Musk and what his trajectory has been from you know,

(11:35):
close with Barack Obama to doge and you know, wielding
the chainsaw and being besties with Trump.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
Yeah, as we could talk about. I think there are
people who in this group that were very political from
the start, but someone like Musk obviously did change. I mean,
you can even watch an interview with him on YouTube
from ten years ago or fifteen years ago and just
see a different disposition and different interests and a different
kind of psychological mind state, if you really want to
get deep about it, he doesn't seem like the same guy,

(12:05):
But specifically he was mostly a kind of centrist liberal.
He didn't donate heavily in the twenty sixteen election. He
didn't come out strongly for anyone. And I think there
are things both in the broader culture which I talk
about in the book, but also personally to him that
some of which he's acknowledged, and I think we have
to pay attention to as much as we are sort

(12:27):
of armchair psychologizing that change. And for one thing, he
started having more conflicts. A lot of this started, of
course during COVID, when there were these massive or rapid
upheavals in the culture and politics around social issues like
Black Lives Matter, or around quarantine and health care. And
some of these issues really were and also me too,

(12:49):
and some of these issues were not handled well. None
of them are really handled well by Silicon Valley elites.
And in the specific case of Musk, he really did
not like lockdowns. He did not like being not invited
to this EV summit at the Biden White House. He's
actually made a really big deal about that over the years,

(13:09):
and so his allies have. We should also note that
this is someone who during the first Trump administration resigned
from a Trump advisory board, you know, one of these
kind of meaningless advisory boards. But because Trump pulled out
of the Paris Climate Treaty, I mean this, there was
somewhat of an authent.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Them all today have that reaction.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, yeah, there was an authentic like belief in climate
change at least there. And you know, then you cut
to the twenty twenty four cycle and he basically was
doing climate change denial on of Twitter spaces or x spaces.
Event during the twenty twenty four campaign cycle, we'll talking
to Trump and so you start seeing things like the
fight over his factory in Fremont, California, one of his

(13:48):
most important factories, when the government of Alameda County wanted
him to at least partially shut it down during the
height of COVID, and that this is when Mosque is
going on Twitter, which he didn't yet and was saying
that COVID was gonna be gone by the end of
April twenty twenty. You know, this was speaking of delusion
perhaps but also self interests. And it just kind of

(14:10):
goes from there and what happens also around this time
is that his child, Vivian Wilson, she comes out as
a trans woman, and she changes her name and in
her name change applications, says I no longer wish to
be associated with my father. Over the year, summer reporting
has emerged and she's since sort of come out also
as her own media figure person, willing to give interviews
to say that, you know, this guy bullied her for

(14:31):
being queer, and that I think really did break something
or change something in Musk. You know, he became very
openly transphobic after that. It became one basically his main
cultural issue into like lane cultural lane, into maga reactionarysm
It's something that he shares, I think with sort of

(14:51):
the broad sweep of maga people. Trump is amenable to it,
and he's talked about specifically, especially in that interview he
did with Geordan Peterson I think summer of twenty twenty four,
he said that the woke mind virus killed my son,
referring to his trans daughter. And so the idea of
this woke mind virus, which of course seems is very
silly and is silly in some ways, but is also

(15:14):
very real to him I think did come out of
his daughter coming out as trans and the broken relationship there.
So you know, that's why I talk about the political issues.
Of course, the broader trends in the culture, but also
some of these guys will go personal on themselves. You see.
It also even to a degree with someone like Bill

(15:34):
Ackman who says that Harvard turned his daughter into a communist.
I believe she wrote her thesis on something about Marxism.
Like that is actually something I think to listen to,
to pay attention. These people even think.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
As sort of silly as it sounds, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:50):
They think that that America's institutions, and especially it's liberal institutions,
have turned their kids into you know, lefty trans radicals.
Moscas said some things about la private schools where Vivian
went to school. So that's the mix I'm kind of
bringing here to the analysis.

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Interesting. So there's you know, one part economic self interest,
there's one part some sort of you know, personal experience
or kind of like you know, what is experience as
a personal trauma. With Musk, you know, how much of
his radical I have a bunch of Musk questions, but
how much of his radicalization occurs after he buys Twitter,
and is you know, sort of I mean, Twitter has

(16:31):
now become its own radicalization machine, because it seemed like he,
you know what, had already made this shift. Of course
by the time he buys Twitter, but it also seems
like once he was swimming in the pools of all
this like constant great replacement theory, Nazi content, that he
just goes deeper and deeper and deeper in that direction.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, I think that that's correct. I think you could
see him trending that way. I meant in tech, you know,
he's surrounded by people who are sort of tep at
social liberals, you know, billionaire philanthropic types, but you know,
mostly also care about the bottom line and their taxes.
So it's not like he was ever very steeped in
liberal much less lefty culture or anything like that. And

(17:12):
then when he starts to spending more and more time
online as a lot of us did. I mean, one
comparison I make is that we all know people in
our lives whose politics change, perhaps our own politics change
during COVID to one degree or another. And sometimes it's
your friend or your eccentric cousin who becomes kind of conspiratorial,
right ring radical and sometimes it is the richest man

(17:33):
in the world because he's online, as you said in
this same radioactive stew that a lot of us are
either in or trying to avoid, and you could see
it happening. You see who he's interacting with. There's been
some studies of this, perhaps not enough, but you know
that he's actually talking to Nazis and talking about the
great replacement theory, or at least amplifying it. So you know,

(17:55):
that is one thing in a way that's kind of
useful for analyzing what happened here to to Musk and
some of his peers, is that you can watch their
posts and watch how their online relationships played out, watch
how often he posted and with whom and we do have,
of course some understanding of that now. And really this
is you know, the black pilling of Elon Musk, the
same way it would be of anyone else on a

(18:15):
four chan like environment. But you know, of course it's
very different because of who he is, and because he
eventually does buy that platform and basically amplify all those
tendencies and features we're talking about, brings back the Nazis.
Tilts Twitter slash x to be an overtly right wing,
pro Trump platform, which of course has electoral implications, but

(18:39):
it's something that we can see happening right there.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
You know, as someone on the left, you know, I
always I can't say maybe always, but for a long
time have seen these guys not as being you know,
really liberals or on the left. Obviously when it came
to economics, none of them ever were really I mean,
they're capitalists, like that's their thing, tech oligarchs, that's who
they are. But they wore a lot of social liberalism, which,

(19:06):
you know, given how much of our politics focuses on
culture war fights, gave them the semblance of being you know,
on the left or you know, an ally of the
Democratic Party, at least for some of them. Some of
these guys have always been you know, Peter Thiel has
always been like a very ideological libertarian at least in
a certain sense. But so how much of it is

(19:28):
for which of these guys? Is it that they are
just sort of cynically exploiting the fact that like they
can get what they want out of Trump and he's
the guy in power right now, and so they're going
to come with their gold bars and they're gonna you know,
Mark Zuckerberg caught on a hot mic saying like, oh,
I hope I said the right number of how much
we're investing in the US, et cetera, Like how much

(19:50):
of it is just opportunistic And the next time there's
a Democratic president in the White House, they're suddenly going
to you know, oh my gosh, I was so wrong
about all these things. Turns out Trump was so awful.
And you know, President AOC, we're here to serve you.
What can we do for the country under your leadership?

Speaker 3 (20:08):
Yeah? I think, you know, I divide them and sort
of into a few tranches, and I think the opportunistic
ones are more like leaders of Microsoft, Apple, Google, you know,
meta like Zuckerberg, Like you said, he likes to sort
of blow with the winds or go where the winds
are blowing and reinvent himself a little bit every few years.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Or yeah, at that moment when he showed up on
Rogan with like his like chain and his after he's
doing this heavy T shirts.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Oh my god, So I'm wearing sort of a heavy sweasher.
So who am I to talk? But you know, he
is very and we heard it very well and very
vividly on that hot mic when he said to Trump,
I don't know what number you wanted me to say
about his data center investment, like how many hundreds of
billions of dollars? But you know, I think it's worth
also looking at you have the died in the wool

(20:57):
ideological conservatives and right wingers and p but like Peter
Teel or David Sachs who was his Teal's friend and
writing partner at college at Stanford and in the early
nineties they wrote this book called The Diversity Myth, which
was basically like an anti multiculturalist what we now call
an anti woke screed. And so you know, those people

(21:19):
have always been there, and Teal sometimes has been the
lonelier figure, especially during the twenty sixteen election. But I
think what we've seen is that yes, there is a
great deal of opportunism and of a typical like corporate
billionaire type, but there's also what a lot of people
in the Silicon Valley elite who are kind of ready

(21:41):
to be activated or ready to be radicalized in their
own way, I think, and were fed up with some
of this stuff. And even some of them who you know,
some of them went one direction and back again, like
I think of someone like Doug Leone, who's not a
household name necessarily, but he's a partner Sequoia, the most
important VC firm in the valley. He was a longtime
Republican supporter, supported Trump in twenty sixteen after January sixth

(22:05):
said Trump had to kind of had to go. Elon
Musk said the same thing in more gentle terms, and
that Trump should was a little old and should write
off into the sunset. But then we see these guys
come back and Doug Leon became a very vocal Trump
supporter in the valley. So you know, I think that
that specific cocktail of opportunism and ideology is important with

(22:29):
some of these guys. But you know, ultimately it is
about class, you know, as as you were kind of
alluding to, I think venture capitalists. Capitalist is in the
title for a lot of these people that we're talking about,
and so they are so primed to pursue authoritarian politics.
I think when it's presented to them so easily, like
that is the world that they swim in in their

(22:49):
own way.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, I couldn't you tease that on a little bit more.
Why it is such a logical fit that you know
this president who is you know, a core and just authoritarian,
like that is every instinct and his body thinks that
it should be basically legal to criticize him constantly consolidating
power in his own hands and in the executive branch

(23:12):
constantly you know, flouting the constitution, laws, etc. I mean
that is just like to the extent he has any ideology,
it's just like a lust to consolidate power and be
the you know, the boss. And I guess, I mean
the obvious thing is like here he is this ceo,
not nearly as successful as like an Elon Musk or
Jeff Bezos, but he also has that CEO mindset where

(23:33):
it's like I should have total and complete control. So
is that where the alignment fits here? Why is the
authoritarian bent of this administration such as sort of natural
fit for tech oligarchs.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Well, I think for one thing, it shows how thin
their support of freedom or individual liberty and free speech are.
But more importantly, this is a group of people who
deal with fabulous amounts of money and also just increasing amounts.
I mean, one change I try in the book is
that a lot of that money is now coming from

(24:08):
dictatorships in the Middle East. I mean it has been
for a couple of decades, but for at least, you know,
perhaps the last ten years, maybe a little bit less.
Saudi Arabia has been probably the biggest funder of tech startups,
with the UAE and Katark contributing a lot of money
to So you have people who vcs and tech CEOs

(24:28):
who venerate this founder led startup model where the founder
is the supreme decision maker, and they are getting billions
of dollars from people who are also have an authoritarian
mode of governance. And you know this is not just metaphorical.
I mean Ben Horowitz, who is Marc Andreessen's business partner

(24:49):
at Andresen Horowitz major venture capital firms, said at one
of these Saudi business summits a few years ago to
his Saudi counterpart, he said, you have a founder also
usually call him your highness, And I think you know,
at all levels there's this authoritarian mindset and way of
doing business that really appeals to them and that they've

(25:10):
honed with their Middle Eastern partners. And now you know,
Trump is more gearish and stupider and more easily bought
and stuff, but they they don't mind and you know,
so they're still willing to work with that, and his
authoritarianism hasn't encroached on them yet, you know, hasn't washed
up on their shores. Quite the opposite, as we talked

(25:30):
about earlier. You know, he is pushing AI because it's
sort of good for business or good for his pocket,
and that works for them for now. And so if
Trump's authoritarianism somehow turns against Silicon Valley or specific people, yeah,
then they might have a problem. But right now, you know,
these guys think of themselves as kings or dictators of
their own little empires, so that works very well with

(25:52):
them when they can just you know, let Trump be Trump.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Can you talk a little bit about how they used,
you know, politics in San Francisco to kind of workshop
some of their reactionary politics and what that looked like.

Speaker 3 (26:05):
So this is really starting around twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
Of course, COVID is always a marker here when tech
elites really start getting fed up vocally, of course, with
San Francisco seeing it as kind of this failed city.
I mean, you had articles coming out in national magazines
about how San Francisco was dead or could ever recover
from its doom loop. It's actually recovered in a lot

(26:29):
of ways in the last few years, depending on what
you're measuring. But that's a kind of different topic. But
you know, less the sense of, you know, philanthropy or
government reform, much less activism could fix this, and more
of a sense of, you know, we need massive intervention
and we need to kind of take control of the
political system. Now you have. So what happened was they

(26:52):
discovered recall politics, really, which is that especially David Sachs,
who a lot of us know better now as the
and ai zar in the White House who's profiting from
that role. But before that he was kind of another
VC in the PayPal mafia world and was always a
conservative but wasn't as active. He was the type of
conservative who would donate to Democrats in California just so

(27:16):
he had their ear, and to the point where he
started getting involved in recall politics though and being a
little more public and vocally radical, as I would say,
and first supporting this campaign to recall a couple members
of the San Francisco School Board, which had never happened before.
This really became a flashpoint over kind of woke politics,
identity politics, and conservatives in San Francisco and the business

(27:39):
world there really came out strong and put a lot
of money in this recall election. It worked, and then
you had the attempt to recall Gavin Newsom, which did
not work, but you had the sort of funny spectacle
of David Sachs both funding the election of Newsom and
then a year or two later trying to fund his recall.
But that's just how big money work now. And then

(28:01):
you had the recall Chase A. Boudin, and this was
really big because he was the DA in San Francisco.
He was the figurehead kind of the progressive prosecutor movement
with people like the LA and San Francisco das and
in the minds of San Francisco tech elites, he was
responsible for everything there from you know, kind of hate

(28:24):
crimes against Asian Americans during the height of COVID or
increase in property crimes. There was actually a decrease in
violent crime that was kind of sort of years in
the making and has increased and has continued beyond him.
But anyway, he was tarred as this person who had
left San Francisco's to die or cared more about, cared

(28:45):
more about criminals supposedly than crime victims, and the establishment
right made it a point to, you know, get rid
of this Soros da as they called him, but also
really the tech elites, and Sacks was the ideological and
at times the mon monetary leader here, donating millions of dollars.
I think at one point something like sixty percent or
more of all money donated to the recall effort of

(29:09):
Boudin was from Sachs. And they succeeded, and they succeeded
also in painting for at least for a while. Maybe
it's rolled back a bit, but this progressive prosecutor movement
as kind of evil or corrupt, and they were very vocal.
After that, Sax went on Tucker Carlson who thanked him
for saving democracy. This was on Fox News. He went

(29:31):
on Megan Kelly and said, this is a model that
we play.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Realized democracy had been saved, has greatiny.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Right by a billionaire's cash. And this also, I think
was very reflective, and he went to Megan Kelly and said,
we're going to replicate this across the country. And I
think this is also very reflective of one other trend
you saw on right wing politics, which is that elections
are going to be contested everywhere. You know, there's going
to be of course the normal electoral process, there'll be disinformation,

(29:58):
they'll be you know, at the ballot box, but also
afterwards with you know, election denial and then recalls whenever
recalls present an opportunity. And that's something that we've seen
more nashally, and I think that the money right wing
elite now sees as another way to pull on the
levers of powers. You know, you pour a few million

(30:18):
dollars into some local election that isn't used to seeing that,
and that is in a sense what happened in San
Francisco with some of these smaller elections, and that provided
this this model for them to go nationally and both
I would say rhetorically and as a matter of strategy.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
How much of this was these guys being annoyed by
the activism of their employees, like finding their employees activism
and wokeness irritating to them very much.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
So, you know, again this is something where we can
go to the tape of these guys saying what they
actually believe, which is sometimes rather paranoid. Mark and Dreesen
has said in interviews that he was speaking to the
CEO of one of his portfolt Olio companies, someone he
had invested in, and the guy said, you know, I
think some of these young people from elite computer science

(31:08):
schools like Stanford and Carnegie Mellon are getting jobs at
our companies just to destroy them from within, because they
are Marxists and leftists. I mean, you hear anti communist
rhetoric from a lot of these guys, now, from Joe Lonsdale,
who is a right wing conservative and kind of a
younger member of the PayPal mafia, you could say. And
you hear from Mark and Dreesen talks about communism too,

(31:30):
like it's this weird almost fifties throwback red scare throwback
kind of thing, or even in an earlier era of
anti communist fervor. But so they do think. They do
both think this that people are kind of infiltrating their companies,
and they also at of just very fed up with
any visible form of activism. And a great example is
at Google, you know that Don't Be Evil company, that

(31:53):
they contributed to something called Project Maven, which still exists.
It's a big DoD project related to kind of drum
imaging and had targeting air strikes. And in twenty eighteen
a number of Google employees signed a petition and protested
against Google's participation this. They were doing image processing essentially
kind of AI image processing, and Google dropped the contract,

(32:16):
which wasn't that big at the time by Google standards.
And you cut to about six years later during protests
over Google's work for the IDF and Israel during the
ongoing war in Gouzea. But this started really in twenty
twenty fourth on the protests and Google fired forty people
in one day who participated in a silent protests in

(32:38):
an office that of course didn't disrupt anything. So the
ad to has completely changed, both within the ostensibly kind
of liberal companies. It's really worth watching what's happening in Microsoft.
They've had protests over the last few months. You know,
I've heard of people trying to emerge as whistleblowers, you
know about because there's a lot of internal surveillancebably violations

(33:00):
of labor laws. I mean, all the big tech companies
have insider threat programs, which is a term we started
hearing after the Stone revelations, which was something that was
supposed to only exist within the NSA or CIA or
something like that, Like you know, they are surveilling their
own employees and monitoring their activity very heavily. And then
you have the companies that are overtly ideological, like the
defense tech companies Palenteer on Durill and the people we

(33:24):
know associated with them who are saying, you know, building
weapons for the government is good, and Trump is great,
and we're glad to be here. And that's what the
company is about, is defending Western civilization. That's the kind
of rhetoric you also hear.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Now, can you talk a little about Alex karp Is,
the CEO of Palenteer. We were just watching some clips
of him at some conference where he seemed absolutely oh
it was with that what was it the deal Book
conference anyway, some like New York Finance conference or whatever,
And I mean just seemed like he was on crack

(33:57):
effectively and saying insane things. W kind of par for
the course for him. He's another one. He always pretends
like I don't know, you could tell me if this
is real or not, but he does the whole shtick
of like I was a liberal Democrat and they've just
completely gone crazy. Who is this guy? Where did he
come from? What is his deal?

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Yeah, he's a really representative figure I would say of
this type as this very jingoistic nationalist tech elite type
that you see in venture capital and in the more
defensive line sectors of tech. Now he does play that
song of oh I was a Democrat. I mean he
even claims to have been a Kamala supporter or a

(34:35):
Kamala supporter in the last election, which I'm a little
dubious about or what does that really mean? Given also,
you know the company he keeps, the work he does.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, and is there any evidence that you like, contributed
to her or anything like that, Not.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
That I know of, but you know, I should go
back and check the donations. But yeah, he Anyway, he
routinely appears, let's say, very amped and pop and I
think also, you know, CNBC producers, I'm sure love this
stuff because the clips get passed around a lot, and
he'll do things like, well, some of the clips are
perhaps revealing where he talks about how he wants he

(35:12):
talks about short sellers who you know, want to try
to short his company stock, how he wants to send
their coke dealers to their door. I mean, I wonder
where he got that idea to beat them up. How
he wants to drone his enemies like this is the
kind of thing he does every few months at the
very least, and now that there are also more of
these conferences where he can kind of preen and dance

(35:32):
around on stage. He originally comes from this background where
he was a PhD student in philosophy at a German university.
I mean, I believe you guys PhD and they refer
to him as doctor Karp sometimes at Pallantier, he supposedly
studied under Jurgen Haber Moss, a great German philosopher and intellectual.
I think that relationship has been overblown, but you know,

(35:56):
he was this intellectual of sorts, and somehow he ends
up in charge of the startup Palanteer, which is comes
from Peter Teel and Joe Lonsdale I mentioned earlier, and
is really I mean, there is a larger history here,
but of the kind of recent defense tech boom, this
company cannot be more important. I mean it is now
a huge company on its own, one of the most

(36:17):
favored companies in Trump world, making so much money thanks
to the Trump administration. But it exemplifies and in the
figure of Karp, this new Proud very much like war
seeking tech elite who thinks that we need to build
weapons and surveil everyone and project power in order to

(36:40):
somehow deter aggression against the United States. I mean, they
operate according to a very crude logic, which is not
anything about diplomacy. It's just about this idea of dominance,
as The New York Times calls it, and projecting American
power making people afraid, you know, China will be too
afraid to attack us. And it's a very juvenile vision,
but it's one that he's very willing to dispense at

(37:02):
a really rapid rate.

Speaker 1 (37:04):
Yeah. Well, and I think they also exploited, like genuine
issues with the existing legacy military industrial complex, which you
know where they are like they are incompetent and there
are massive cost overruns. So they're able to make this
pitch of like, oh, we'll be cheaper and will be
more nimble, and that's part of the appeal as well.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
They're using that silicon valley, the traditional kind of silicon
valley model which even those use, yeah, which those use too,
like disruption bringing efficiency. They talk about how the prime
defense contractors, which is an industry term for you know,
Boeing and raytheon and those big ones are expensive entrenched,
and this is the something you hear from, you know,

(37:44):
some liberal Democrats, more like centrist Democrats or anti trust
democrats even but they're not of course necessarily better and
then producing their own you know, ideological agenda. But it
works for them in a way. It's brought them into
the corridors of power. It's allowed them to start building
up these tracks. One thing I'd write about my book
is that, you know, there was that big meeting of
Trump and a lot of tech CEOs in November twenty sixteen,

(38:09):
right after the election at Trump Tower, and this was
one of those resident images where you had a dozen
or more top tech industry executives meeting with Trump and
not quite kissing the ring, but more like, well, we're
looking forward to doing business with you, and we have to.
So here we are, and all before cameras and Alex
KRP was there and Teal had set up the meeting.

(38:29):
Trump was praising Teal, but at the time Pallenteer was
a startup that was privately held and not gone public.
It was a valuable startup, but not nearly worth as
much as like Cisco or Facebook or Google or any
of the companies represented there. And now, okay, maybe we'd
understand Alex Carping at the table, but I think if
you sort of track that arc from twenty sixteen to

(38:50):
now where it's it's a publicly traded company with a
market cap of hundreds of billions of dollars, it really
reflects this what this era has become and that right
wing tech and Trump Union has wrought.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
It really seems to me, and you can tell me
if this is an accurate analysis based on your reporting,
that the sort of common thread with all the grievances
that these guys had, whether it was the employees daring
to speak up about like internal practices or contracts that
the companies were involved with that they didn't want, whether
it was personal things like you know, Elon Musk's daughter

(39:24):
being trans whether it was the Biden era policies around
crypto and policies at least some AI regulation, and of
course the antitrust direction with Jonathan Canter and Lena Khan,
the potential threats to you know, deal making and this
actually having to undergo scrutiny, whether it was the COVID lockdowns,
all of this has to do with, like, I can't

(39:47):
just do whatever I want. You are actually like there
is some minor check on the power and fortune that
I can amass, and I find that completely unacceptable. And
so I'm going to you know, what you really sort
of make clear when you dive into the politics in
San Francisco in particular, but other cities as well, is

(40:07):
they see this sort of zeitgeist of Okay, we can
tap into cultural disaffection, but as a way also to
you know, consolidate this right wing shift and consolidate our
own power and really strip back the sort of any
sort of regulatory or other hurdles that are getting in
our in our way. I mean, it seems like, just
to sort of summarize that, it seems like the common

(40:28):
thread here is we want as much power as we
can and even slight, little pesky annoyances within our own
companies or lives or operations are unacceptable, and we're going
to move heaven and earth to push all of those
out of the way.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Yes, someone recently summarizes to me is they don't want
to be governed, and yeah, we see that very much
in practice where they any criticism they cannot tolerate. You
see this especially people like Mark and Dreesen or Musk himself.
You know, some times it is baffling, I think are
striking to most normal people that you know, Like is

(41:07):
this it? Like was did Musk really get so angry
because he wasn't invited to abiden Ev summit? And like, yeah,
like you know, these are I believe them when they
say that, because these are people who are of course
surrounded by the most yes of yes men, and are
you and are not only yeah, as you described, they're
not only just so rich, but they there's a constant,

(41:28):
there's a greed and resource accumulation of drive that is
never ending. I mean, Musc has said that he needs
to be a trillionaire so that he can get to Mars.
I mean the ridiculousness of that vision and the very
much grounded in the laws of physics reasons why it
won't happen is the whole other thing. But like this
is the pretense of why he supposedly needs as much

(41:49):
money as possible, and they are no longer content with
the whatever might be the conventional checks and bounces and
regulations of the democratic system, and they certainly saw that
or thought that the the Biden administration in what we
would probably agree or some pretty modest reforms or you know,
effective in the forms of Lena Kon johnthan Canter. But overall,

(42:10):
you know, they weren't so aggressive. They didn't break any
up any companies are putting on it in prison, besides
some obvious crypto criminals. But this is all unacceptable to
them and they cannot deal with any of that. So,
you know, we talked about exit earlier. You know, they're
pursuing two lanes at once. Some of them want to exit.
At the same time, they're also willing to kind of
control the levers of power because they see a good

(42:32):
return on investment by pouring in money or allowing their
allies in the crypto industry to do the same. And
so that's where I think it ultimately amounts to, like,
you know, it's almost like the the Uber model of
going into a city and basically breaking local laws about
employment and transit applied to politics, that like, we are
just going to do what we want because nothing else

(42:56):
is tolerable. And we also saw that in an example
of Musk he opened that factory in Fremont, California, and said,
you can arrest me if you want. You know, he
did this whole hero thing like, don't arrest my employees,
but you know, arrest me if you need to. And
then a week later the Alameda County folded and allowed
him to basically run the Fremont factory.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
How you were, I mean, it's a story. I'm sure
if you look at all these guys, I mean, Bezos
and Amazon, they also were like, yeah, we just don't
really think that sales tax should be a thing for us,
I mean all of them, you know, they see the
laws as optional at best. And Elon and SpaceX too.
You know, there's obviously, for good reason, a lot of
regulations and a lot of checks with the government and

(43:39):
inspections that you are supposed to go through before you
do massive rocket launches. And at times he was just like, ah,
that's going to take too long. We're not doing that.
So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that they
don't really see themselves as subject to the laws the
way that the rest of us do.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
Yeah, and I think actually there's one particle in the book.
There's this leaked audio from Eric Schmidt, who I talk
about in the book is sort of an authoritarian bridge
figure because he's nominally a Democrat, but I think he's
important to sort of precursor to some of these guys.
And he basically says to a class of Stanford students,
you know, if you want to make your own TikTok clone,
just do it with him ai and then get lawyers

(44:19):
to clean it up later. Like that. That's very much
the attitude. Yeah, that that thought problem among some of
these people, and we see it, you know, manifested everywhere,
and from their desire to have their own money to
their own islands and city states they want out well.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
And the irony of them simultaneously like celebrating actually their
own law breaking and wearing it as a badge of
like were disruptors and we're founders and we're leaders and
all of this and also at the same time fixating
on law and order for you know, the common folk

(44:56):
is an incredible irony. I Mean, one thing I've always
found instructive about Elon Mush is you were talking about
his Mars delusions, Like this is a man not only
does he not think that our laws should apply to him.
He doesn't think that the laws of physics apply to him,
Like that's so much. He has this sort of like
delusions of grandeur and main character syndrome.

Speaker 3 (45:16):
Yeah, and you talk to people like Adam Becker and
astrophysicist and journalists has a good book. You know that
stuff is never going to happen. You can no one
can can live on Mars, and the worst day on
Earth is going to be better than the best day
ever on Mars. But they this is where they become
aristocrats for people who feel entitled to lead or to rule.

(45:38):
And I also think this is where the fascism really emerges,
is that they think that the future that they were
promised has been hasn't been given to them, and that
they were promised you know, the famous line from Tela
and Founder's Fund is we were promised flying cars. We
got one hundred and forty characters like there. And this
is actually you know, you see some some analogs to

(46:00):
this in like nineteen twenties futurism and early proto fascism then,
which is that like this new Industrial Age was supposed
to give us utopia, was supposed to make everything incredible,
and it hasn't, and though they are as rich as
could be, they are very impatient and angry, and they
see the rest of us or any any critics, journalists,

(46:22):
the government, anyone who just doesn't understand and praise them
as impediments to that great future.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
And that.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Also you can see that manifesting now with the refusal
to put any checks on AI or whether at the
state level and policy Trump's executive order, or in the industry,
they all talk about how it concerns about AI safety
or bs like or at least among the like the
right wing tech people like they don't want anything to
be held back because yes, it's about greed, but also

(46:53):
this idea that if only they could do what they
want and pour as much capital into these projects as
they want, somehow that better future might arrive. And and
that's what makes them, I think, or what provides that
final push into fascism in a way, because to do
that they align fully with the state.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
So let's talk a little bit of specifics with the
Trump administration, and you know, starting from the beginning, like
what was DOGE actually about? What did it actually accomplish
because we know that it didn't. I don't know if
they ever really cared about saving money, but it didn't
do that. It did effectively defenestrate and destroy significant parts

(47:32):
of the government. So is I mean, was that the
primary goal was the goal to have lots of data
that Elon could feed into his LM. Like, how do
you see the project of DOGE and how we should
think about it?

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Well, we definitely shouldn't think of it as a failure
by their standards. You know, it's a huge disaster. It
was probably a crime or a number of crimes. Yeah,
and I think that the data side is very important.
That's one way in which it was probably a success
for Musk and others. I mean, there's been some good reporting,
but there's just so much we don't know about what
they were doing inside the government, you know, I think

(48:07):
it's reasonable to we know that data was taken or
exposed in the form of everyone's social security information on
an unsecure server. This is we are of course survealed
by tech comanies all the time, but this is like
really important stuff. Someone who used to work at the
SEC told me, you know what, or texted me earlier
this year and said, dog is supposedly coming to the

(48:29):
SEC today. They are going to get their hands on
so much sensive like private market data, things that the
government knows that industry doesn't know, you know, like important
big picture or even really graining their stuff, you know,
things about the American economy or its people, or you know,
plans for the government, and that I think the value
of that, especially when it can't be gleaned elsewhere, is huge,

(48:54):
and when there is this kind of data war fuel AI.
The other thing I wonder about, and this is you know,
we don't I don't have a lot to go on here,
but was any money taken because you had things like
doge operatives going into core federal payment systems, not just
you know, taking over an agency, but like the systems
that feed that disperse trillions of dollars, and so it's just,

(49:16):
you know, these are the kinds of things that under
normal government would be audited in some way, but obviously
the audits don't matter here. The inspector generals were all
fired illegally at the beginning of the Trump administration. So
I think, you know, it succeeded in creating this disruption.
This may be a proof of concept that I mean,
at least there's some ideas probably that I think that

(49:37):
the tech right has about how to do it better
next time. But it showed that you can launch an
attack on the administry of state, you could profit from it,
you could get out some of the people you don't like,
and there would be no punishment. They you know, a
lot of people we you know, have have had to
be brought back by some of these agencies who they've
deemed them essential or things were just collapsing too much.

(50:00):
But still, you know, there's been especially in the whole
cell example, USA D or some of these other agencies,
but where the now Trump Institute of Peace. But you know,
I think they got a lot of what they wanted
and a lot of I think it's also worth noting
that a lot of those DOGE operatives are still kind
of scattered throughout government agencies or have government jobs. We
don't really know what they're doing. And some of them

(50:22):
are are still twenty two year olds with the resume
of cyber criminals who have incredible access.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Terrifying talk about the meshing of the work of ice
and this, you know, this tech world of palents here
being the most obvious example. But I don't think by
any stretch the only one. You know, why is this
mass deportation effort important? Also for these tech oligarchs, especially

(50:49):
the ones focused on surveillance capitalism.

Speaker 3 (50:51):
They've really discovered a love of government contracts and it's
because of their changing politics and of course because of
the money there and the government can be a very
reliable client. And it has been of course a deep,
you know, an intrinsic part of the tech industry for
many years. But there's such big contracts being handed out now,
not for AI and other purposes, and of course for

(51:15):
any kind of technical services for expanding government agencies, and
that includes border patrol and ice and all the surveillance
and data processes and that goes with it. So you
have companies like Palenteer that are very proud to be
part of this process that can get hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of contracts. Salesforce has been a vendor

(51:37):
for this for the border patrol for years, I think
since at least the first Trump administration maybe And sometimes
you know, this just means like we're going to help
you recruit more people by through online ad campaigns and
ad targeting and stuff like that. I mean, it is,
it is important it's still work. You're still you know,
bringing in bodies for the modern data just stoppot. But
you know, there are all kinds of ways in which

(51:58):
these companies, some of which seems several degrees removed from
actually pulling people off the street. But there are all
kinds of ways in which these tech companies can provide services.
You know, they're all using Microsoft computer products pretty much
can provide services to the government and to agencies like ICE.
So anytime there's a huge growth in one of these
agencies or not just you know there's huge growth in personnel,

(52:22):
but also new technical needs or capabilities, the tech industry
is going to be right there because the moral quandaries
have all been dispensed with, and they you know, they've
chosen kind of a repression over diplomacy with their own
employees who are not all in line with this, and
I think that will be a source of rising friction.
But for now, you know, there's a lot of money

(52:43):
to be made here and they're perfectly happy to do it.
So you see it especially on anything related to data
management with a company like Palenteer, or surveillance and or
just running the day day functions.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, and I think Palestine has been a you know,
a test run or a test and ground for a
lot of this tech as well, because on the level
of mass surveillance of Palestinians is just without parallel. So
you can bring this back home right now with regard
to immigrants, and then I mean, you tell me if
this is too conspiratorial, Jacob. But what these guys want

(53:16):
to do with AI, and perhaps they're delusional, very possible
they're delusional. It all just blows up in some bubble
and we never really get beyond you know, making AI
slot videos or whatever. The night marriage healthscape we live
in right now is, we never get that far beyond that.
But what they want to do is replace all human labor. Effectively.
They want to rip up the entire social contract and

(53:38):
redraw it from scratch for their own ends. They want
to be trillionaires. They want all the power in the world,
you know, they want to consolidate more power than has
ever been possible to consolidate in human history. That is
their goal. And these are not stupid people, so I'm
sure they're thinking about when that happens, people are not

(53:59):
going to be super happy about that. And so we're
going to need massively powerful tools of surveillance and repression
to keep the peasants in line so that you know,
we can all keep our heads.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, I think that. I don't think that's too conspiratorial.
I think it matches a lot of things we've heard
from these people or even you know, reporting from people
like Douglas Rushkov, a longtime tech writer and critic who
has talked to some billionaires about their sort of doomsday
island plans. And you know they do they need to
kill the pilots who fly them to their doomsday bunkers
so no one knows where they are. Like just bonkers stuff.

(54:37):
But you know, Larry Elson has talked about in recent
months that we are going to have perfect always on
everywhere AI powered surveillance and everyone will be on their
best behavior at all times, from you and me to
police officers to anyone else. You know. Do they believe it,
I don't know, but they act like they do. And
in some ways, the nightmare scenario is not necessarily that

(55:00):
we get kind of a perfect AI dystopia and that
no one is working. We're all sort of turned into
goog for the billionaires. But it's in a way and
acceleration of what we have now, I think, which is
that we get this really imperfect version where yeah, we
do have the economic collapse, but it also is taking
a lot of jobs and also is supercharging repression from

(55:21):
you know, on a corporate level of course on a
government federal level. And it's still but it is also
at the same time like deeply dysfunctional. You know, it's
all the AI will still be hallucinating, like it's not
necessarily it won't even be sort of the perfect dystopia.
It's just going to be a mess. And it will
but it will enable forces of repression and fascism. And

(55:45):
I think you're exactly right that they've made a choice.
You know, you can sort of embrace reform, you can
try to make societies safe for capitalism or their vision
of runaway capitalism, or you can choose some kind of repression.
And I think they essentially chosen the latter.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
My last question for you, Jacob, is, you know, is
it sort of too far? Like if you did have
some you know, future president come into office who wants
to check these guys, wants to rein in their power,
what would that look like? You know, do some of
these guys need to go to prison. In my opinion, yes,

(56:22):
do they have any thought in their head about potential
future consequences from you know, an administration that has a
different ideological valance. What is it possible at this point
to rain these guys back in and get them under control.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Well, I think that they to pull out one part.
I think they do fear sort of Democrats, And I mean,
I don't know to what degree now, but we heard
this a lot before the election, like must saying if
she wins, I'm ft, you know, I'm going to prison?
Will my kids be able to visit me? Like they
were breaking a lot of laws, they're probably breaking more now,

(57:00):
I mean. And they also face just a lot of
regulatory and civil litigation Musk especially, that was making their
lives pretty difficult. And I don't think, yeah, their sense
of a binding by the law has gone any better.
The problem is we haven't talked a lot about Democrats here.
I assure people that in my book, you know, I
write a lot about how they've contributed this problem. And
I think the Democrat Party is so fractured on some

(57:21):
of the core questions here of tech power, you know,
is Silicon Valley an adversary, you know, very I think
very few people in the Democratic Party actually see the
industry or as leadership, as an adversary. They see it
as somewhere they based. Does Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Think the base does matter, and I think this will
probably be a litmus test in twenty twenty eight if
I had to guess, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
And I think the question is do you want to
prosecute some of these people, break up the companies, do
a wealth tax? Like you don't have to get too
specific or means tester or wonkish or whatever. It's those
few things, you know, besides also getting big money out
of politics. I mean, there's a lot of wish casting here.
But you know, do you want not want to build
more data centers and instead invest in healthcare and other

(58:05):
public goods? You know, we are actually seeing right now,
as you said, you're referring to a litmus test. We're
seeing in I was in DC recently. There's some sort
of I think it was a makeup election, but I
saw some ads on TV about data centers and the
Democrat advertising himself as against data center construction. Not totally
frauding of the mouth, but mostly you know, against it

(58:27):
from a public interest standpoint, So like.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
Yeah, there are general elections. The Utility Commission Board or
whatever that thing is called. That was probably the clearest
cut data center backlash, and directly because of the way
that electricity prices have been impacted. But yeah, you can
see the politics here really on a cross partisan basis
becoming pretty potent.

Speaker 3 (58:48):
Yeah, I think so. And you know, people don't like
that in their communities, and there's sort of a local
aspect to this, where you know, there are Republicans who
hear their constituents complaining about rising electricity prices or that
the water's going away, and they don't like that either.
But this does connect directly to the authoritarian politics of
the tech industry, where they are coming into like Texas
or Georgia or Virginia and promising these like twenty or

(59:09):
fifty billion dollar projects that are not going to produce
jobs in the long term and are just going to
make most people's lives worse. So you know that that
kind of grassroots backlash as you described is here, and
it's coming or intensifying, and there is a real opportunity
for the Democrats to tap it. You know, the problem is,
of course the Democrats, but Also, the Trump administration has

(59:31):
kind of eroded or just kicked away so many important
load bearing institutions that you know, the rule of law
is really gone, and a lot of criminals have been
just straight up released from prison that you know, there's
so much makeup work to do in a way before
we talk about moving forward or even just like tamping
down the power of these guys. I mean, I hope

(59:53):
those things can be done at once. I hope you know,
there are prosecutions and breakup of companies and wealth taxes,
big sweeping gestures that say there are other ways of
relating to these people, like you don't have to surrender
power to them.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Yeah, it's just really reasserting, you know, a small d
democratic approach. You know that we're we're not going to
just bow to this tech feudalism and you know, surrender
all of our autonomy, even on issues like you know,
local land usage and what we have in our backyards,
you know. And one that's fully nimby when it comes

(01:00:25):
to data centers, and they're trying to build too in
my in my little rural area here. And I've seen
that there's been, you know, a backlash to that, which
is partly you know, from the concerance, the conservative area
I live in. You know, a lot of the concerns
are that are that sort of nimby, like we want
to keep the rural character of the community and we
don't want this big thing built here from you know,

(01:00:46):
Amazon and whoever else is coming in.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
Yeah, and you know, it doesn't really add a lot
to the landscape. You're not like, you know, you're not
really building a factory where even where a lot of
people are working. And and I think that speaks the
idea of like what are we getting for all this
that we've all the political power and the money that
we've delegated to these guys, And I think that actually
provides almost a little note of optimism, which is that

(01:01:09):
they are not that popular and when they're as people,
as individuals and not the most charismatic personalities, a lot
of their policies aren't and their business priorities aren't necessarily
popular and seem to be growing less. So so you know,
that's where I think there is kind of room for
optimism for the future or just political you know, focus
and strategy. Is that like when you explain this stuff

(01:01:30):
to folks or when people see that they're just mostly
getting AI slop and higher energy prices, and you know
jerks on X who think that they should rule everything
for all of this, it's not worth it. And you know,
hopefully the Democrats can tap some of those more kind
of grassroots candidates who get that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
I lie, I do have one more question for you,
which is JD vance like? Is he just I know
Teal was involved with Elon Musk, was influential in getting
him on the ticket. Is he just like a puppet
for these guys effectively? Is that how you see?

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
I think so. I think he's an important bridge figure
for the kind of new right, the religious right, because
he you know, he that as he's taken on multiple identities,
that was one of them. But the VCS really like him.
You know, they pushed hard, of course, to have him
be the VP. They all in front of Doug Bergham.
Apparently there was a dinner at David Sachs's house during

(01:02:25):
the twenty twenty four campaign and the Bergram was kind
of hoping he was a dark horse VP candidate, and
all the tech guys there said, you gotta choose JD.
And you know he is Teal's guy. And he's a
former VC, and so I don't think they see much
you know, daylight between their views and he may not have.
The question I think is like does he have sort

(01:02:46):
of the unifying or rough charisma of Trump to like
unify Nagar, you know, but that there may be abillity
there for something to fall apart. But the tech guys
I think would be perfectly happy unless someone surprising emerges.
You know that they try. They road tested DeSantis and
Ramaswami and a couple other folks, but I think JD
is really their guy. I mean, some of them have

(01:03:07):
money invested in him. Teel put money into his into
JD Vance's venture capital firm.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
Yeah, that reminds me. There are some great scenes there
with the vivig Ramaswami in your first hand experience with
him in the book that people definitely need to check out.
The book Guys is Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the
Radicalization of Silicon Valley. Jacob Silverman, thank you so much.
Fascinating look at these extraordinarily powerful and malevolent, frankly characters.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
Well, thank you so thanks so much for your interest