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

27:03And now, you know, Trump is more garish 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 has encroached on them yet. You know, hasn't washed up on their shores. Quite the opposite, as we talked 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, 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.

27:41So that that works very well with them when they can just, you know, let Trump be Trump. 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? So this is really starting around 2019, 2020, of course. COVID is always a marker here. When tech elites really started 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.

28:18It's actually recovered in a lot of ways in the last few years, depending on what you're measuring. But that's kind of a different topic. But, you know, less a 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 discovered recall politics, really, which is that especially David Sachs, who a lot of us know better now as the crypto and A.I. czar 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.

29:02He was the type of conservative who would donate to Democrats in California just so 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 radicalized, I would say. And first supporting this campaign to recall a couple members of the San Francisco school board, which had never happened before. Or this really became a flashpoint over kind of woke politics, identity politics. And conservatives in San Francisco and the business world there really came out strong and put a lot of money in this recall election. It worked.

29:35And 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 works now. And then you had the recall of Chesa 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 L.A. 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 crimes against Asian Americans during the height of COVID or increase in property crimes.

30:20There 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 Franciscans to die or cared more about cared more about criminals, supposedly, than crime victims. And the establishment right made it a point to 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 monetary leader here donating millions of dollars. I think at one point something like 60 percent or more of all money donated to the recall effort of Boudin was from Sacks.

31:02And 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. But Sachs went on Tucker Carlson, who thanked him for saving democracy. This was on Fox News. He went on Megyn Kelly and said, this is a model that we plan to realize democracy had been saved. That's great news. By a billionaire's cash. And this also, I think, was very reflective. And he went to Megyn 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 in right wing politics, which is that elections are going to be contested everywhere.

31:43You know, there's going to be, of course, the normal electoral process. There'll be disinformation. They'll be at the ballot box, but also afterwards with election denial and then recalls whenever recalls present an opportunity. And that's something that we've seen more nationally. 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 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 model for them to go nationally, both, I would say, rhetorically and as a matter of strategy.

32:26How 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 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 Andreessen has said in interviews that he was speaking to the CEO of one of his portfolio companies, someone he had invested in. And the guy said, you know, I think some of these young people from elite computer science schools like Stanford and Carnegie Mellon are getting jobs at our companies just to destroy them from within because they are Marxists and leftists.

33:08I 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 it from Mark Andreessen talks about communism, too. Like it's this weird, almost 50s throwback, Red Scare throwback kind of thing or even 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 are just very fed up with any visible form of activism. And a great example is that Google, you know, the Don't Be Evil company that they had.

33:44They contributed to something called Project Maven, which still exists. It's a big DoD project related to kind of drone imaging and targeting airstrikes. And in 2018, a number of Google employees signed a petition and protested against Google's participation in this. They were doing image processing, essentially, kind of AI image processing. And Google dropped the contract, 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 Gaza. But this started really in 2024, some of the protests.

34:23And Google fired 40 people in one day who participated in a silent protest in an office that, of course, didn't disrupt anything. So the attitude 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. I've heard of people trying to emerge as whistleblowers because there's a lot of internal surveillance. There are probably violations of labor laws. I mean, all the big tech companies have insider threat programs, which is a term we started hearing after the Snowden revelations, which was something that was supposed to only exist within the NSA or CIA or something like that.

35:03They 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, Palantir, Onduril, and the people we 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 now. can you talk a little about alex carp who's the ceo of palantir um we were just watching some clips of him at some conference where he seemed absolutely oh it was with uh that uh what was it the deal book conference anyway some like new york finance conference or whatever and um i mean just seemed like he was on crack effectively and saying insane things which is kind of par for the course for him he's another one he always pretends like i don't know you can tell me if this is real or not.

35:56But 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? Yeah, he's a really representative figure, I would say, of this type that's this very jingoistic nationalist tech elite type that you see in venture capital and in the more defense aligned 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 Kamala supporter in the last election, which I'm a little dubious about. Or what does that really mean, given also the company he keeps, the work he does?

36:36Yeah. Is there any evidence that you contributed to her or anything like that? Not that I know of, but I should go back and check the donations. Yeah. He anyway, he routinely appears, let's say, very amped in public. And I think also, So, 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 talks about short sellers who want to try to short his company's 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.

37:14Like, 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 around on stage. He originally comes from this background where he was a Ph.D. student in philosophy at a German university. I mean, I believe he got his Ph.D. and they refer to him as Dr. Karp sometimes at Palantir. He supposedly studied under Jürgen Habermas, a great German philosopher and intellectual. I think that relationship has been overblown. But, you know, he was this intellectual of sorts. And somehow he ends up in charge of the startup Palantir, which is comes from Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, I mentioned earlier, and is really I mean, there is a larger history here.

38:01But of the kind of recent defense tech boom, this company could not be more important. I mean, it is now a huge company on its own. One of the most favored companies in Trump world making so much money thanks to the Trump administration. But it exemplifies and in the figure of CARP, 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 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.

38:45You 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 a really rapid rate. 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 we'll be more nimble. And that's part of the appeal as well. They're using that Silicon Valley, the traditional kind of Silicon Valley model, which even Doge use. Right.

39:20Yeah. Which Doge used to 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 and entrenched. And this is something you hear from, you know, some liberal Democrats, more like centrist Democrats or antitrust Democrats even. But they're not, of course, necessarily better than producing their own 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 contracts. One thing I write about my book is that, you know, there was that big meeting of Trump and a lot of tech CEOs in November 2016, right after the election at Trump Tower.

40:02And 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 Karp was there and Teal had set up the meeting. Trump was praising Teal. But at the time, Palantir 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, OK, maybe we'd understand Alex Karpin at the table.

40:38But I think if you sort of track that arc from 2016 to now, where it's a publicly traded company with a market cap of hundreds of billions of dollars, it really reflects what this era has become and what that right wing tech and Trump union has wrought. 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 being trans, whether it was the Biden era policies around crypto and policies, at least some AI regulation.

41:23And, of course, the antitrust direction with Jonathan Cantor and Lena Kahn, 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 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 they see this sort of zeitgeist of, OK, 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 way.

42:15I mean, it seems like just to sort of summarize that, it seems like the common 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. Yeah, someone recently summarized it to me as they don't want to be governed. And we see that very much in practice where they any criticism they cannot tolerate. You see this especially people like Marc Andreessen or Musk himself. You know, sometimes it is baffling, I think, or striking to most normal people that, you know, like, is this it?

42:58Like, was did Musk really get so angry because he was invited to a Biden 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 there's a greed and resource accumulation of drive that is never ending. I mean, Musk 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 a whole other thing.

43:36But like, this is the pretense of why he supposedly needs as much money as possible. And they are no longer content with the whatever might be the conventional checks and balances and regulations of the democratic system. And they certainly saw that or thought that the Biden administration in what we would probably agree are some pretty modest reforms or, you know, effective in the forms of Lena Kahn, Jonathan Cantor. But overall, you know, they weren't so aggressive. They didn't break up any companies or putting one in prison besides some obvious crypto criminals. But this is all unacceptable to them.

44:10And 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. But at the same time, they're also willing to kind of control the levers of power because they see a good 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 Uber model of going into a city and basically breaking local laws about employment or transit applied to politics that like we are just going to do what we want because nothing else is tolerable.

44:47And we also saw that in the example of Musk, he reopened 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 arrest me if you need to. And then a week later, the Alameda County folded and and allowed him to basically run the Fremont factory. 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.

45:23You know, there's obviously, for good reason, a lot of regulations and a lot of checks with the government and inspections that you are supposed to go through before you do massive rocket launches. And at times he was just like, 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. 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 as sort of an authoritarian bridge figure because he's nominally Democrat.

45:58But 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 an AI and then get lawyers to clean it up later. Like that. That's very much the attitude. Yeah, it's a thought process. 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, and the irony of them simultaneously, like, celebrating actually their own lawbreaking and wearing it as a badge of like, we're disruptors and we're founders and we're leaders and all of this.

46:40And also at the same time, fixating on law and order for, you know, the common folk is an incredible irony. One thing I've always found instructive about Elon Musk 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 how much he has this sort of like delusions of grandeur and main character syndrome yeah you talk to people like uh adam becker an astrophysicist turned journalist has a good book uh 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 is going to be better than the best day ever on Mars.

47:21But this is where they become aristocrats or people who feel entitled to lead or to rule. And I also think this is where the fascism really emerges, is that they think that the future that they were promised hasn't been given to them. And that they were promised, you know, the famous line from Teal and Founders Fund is, we were promised flying cars, we got 140 characters. And this is actually, you know, you see some analogs to this in like 1920s 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.

48:04And though they are as rich as could be, they are very impatient and angry and they see the rest of us or any critics, journalists, the government, anyone who just doesn't understand and praise them as impediments to that great future. And that also, you can see that manifesting now with the refusal to put any checks on AI, or whether at the state level on policy, Trump's executive order, or in the industry, they all talk about how concerns about AI safety are BS, or at least among the right-wing tech people. They don't want anything to be held back because, yes, it's about greed, but also 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.

48:52And 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. 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 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 LLM?

49:31Like, how do you see the project of doge and how we should think about it? 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 it's reasonable to we know that data was was taken or exposed in the form of everyone's social security information on an unsecure server.

50:06This is, we are, of course, surveilled by tech companies all the time, but this is like really important stuff. Someone who used to work at the SEC told me, you know, or texted me earlier this year and said, Doge is supposedly coming to the SEC today. They are going to get their hands on so much sensitive like private market data, things that the government knows that industry doesn't know, You know, like important big picture or even really granular 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.

50:45And when there is this kind of data war fueling AI. The other thing I wonder about, and this is, you know, we don't have a lot to go on here, but, you know, 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, you know, these are the kinds of things that under a normal government would be audited in some way. But obviously audits don't matter here. The inspector generals were all fired illegally at the beginning of the Trump administration.

51:19So I think, you know, it succeeded in creating this disruption. This may be a proof of concept. I mean, at least there are some ideas probably that I think that the tech right has about how to do it better next time. But it showed that you can launch an attack on the administrative 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 have had to be brought back by some of these agencies who they've deemed them essential or things were just collapsing too much. But still, you know, there's been, especially in the wholesale example, USAID or some of these other agencies, but or the now named Trump Institute of Peace.

51:59But, 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 are still 22 year olds with the resume of cyber criminals who have incredible access. Terrifying. Talk about the meshing of the work of ICE and this, you know, this tech world. Palantir being the most obvious example, but I don't think by any stretch the only one. And, you know, why is this mass deportation effort important also for these tech oligarchs, especially the ones focused on surveillance capitalism?

52:43They'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 for AI and other purposes and, of course, for any kind of technical services for expanding government agencies. And that includes Border Patrol and ICE and all the surveillance and data processing that goes with it. So you have companies like Palantir that are very proud to be part of this process that can get hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts.

53:23Salesforce has been a vendor 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 through online ad campaigns and ad targeting and stuff like that. I mean, it is important. You're still bringing in bodies for the modern-day Gestapo. But there are all kinds of ways in which 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 products, pretty much, can provide services to the government and to agencies like ICE.

54:06So anytime there's a huge growth in one of these agencies or not just, you know, there's huge growth in personnel, 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'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, there's a lot of money 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 Palantir or surveillance or just running the day-to-day functions.

54:46Yeah. And I think Palestine has been a, you know, a test run or a testing ground for a lot of this tech as well, because 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 to do with AI and perhaps they're delusional, very possible they're delusional and all just blows up in some bubble and we never really get beyond, you know, making AI slot videos or whatever. the nightmarish hellscape we live in right now is. We never get that far beyond that.

55:20But what they want to do is replace all human labor effectively. They want to rip up the entire social contract and 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 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.

56:04Yeah, 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 Rushkoff, a longtime tech writer and critic who has talked to some billionaires about their sort of doomsday island plans. And, you know, do 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. And 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.

56:43You 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 we get kind of a perfect AI dystopia and that no one is working. We're all sort of turned into goo for the billionaires. But it's in a way an 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, 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, all the AI will still be hallucinating.

57:24Like 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 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 society safe for capitalism or their vision of runaway capitalism, or you can choose some kind of repression. And I think they've essentially chosen the latter. 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?

58:09You know, do some of these guys need to go to prison? In my opinion, yes. Do they have any thought in their head about potential future consequences from, you know, an administration that has a different ideological valence? What is it possible at this point to rein these guys back in and get them under control? 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 Musk saying, if she wins, I'm effed, you know, I'm going to prison. Will my kids be able to visit me? Like, they weren't breaking a lot of laws.

58:49They're probably breaking more now. I mean, and they also faced just a lot of regulatory and civil litigation, Musk especially, that was making in their lives pretty difficult. And I don't think their sense of abiding by the law has gotten any better. The problem is we haven't talked a lot about Democrats here. I assure people that in my book, I write a lot about how they've contributed to this problem. And I think the Democratic Party is so fractured on some of the core questions here of tech power. Is Silicon Valley an adversary? I think very few people in the Democratic Party actually see the industry or its leadership as an adversary.

59:24They see it as somewhere that - I think the base does. Elected leaders is another matter. And I think this will probably be a litmus test in 2028 if I had to guess. Yeah, and I think the question is, do you want to prosecute some of these people? Break up the companies, do a wealth tax. You don't have to get too specific or means tested 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 not want to build more data centers and instead invest in health care and other public goods?

59:57You know, we are actually seeing right now, as you said, you're referring to a litmus test. We're seeing in I was in D.C. recently. There's some sort of I think 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 frothing of the mouth, but but mostly, you know, against it from a public interest standpoint. So, like, yeah, the Georgia 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.

1:00:33But, yeah, you can see the politics here really on a cross partisan basis becoming pretty potent. 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 complain about rising electricity prices or that the water is 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 20 or 50 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.

1:01:06So, 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. The problem is, of course, the Democrats, but also the Trump administration has 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.

1:01:43I mean, I hope 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, like, there are other ways of relating to these people. Like, you don't have to surrender power to them. Yeah, it's just really reasserting, you know, a small d democratic approach, you know, that 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. So and one fully NIMBY when it comes to data centers and they're trying to build two in my in my little rural area here.

1:02:21And I've seen that there's been, you know, a backlash to that, which is partly, you know, from 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, Amazon and whoever else is coming in. Yeah. 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 to 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?

1:02:55And I think that actually provides almost a little note of optimism, which is that they are not that popular. And when they're as people, as individuals, they're 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 focus and strategy is that, like, when you explain this stuff 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 this, it's not worth it.

1:03:33And, you know, hopefully the Democrats can tap some of those more kind of grassroots candidates who get that. I lied, I do have one more question for you, which is J.D. Vance. Like, is he just I know Teal was involved, but 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 him? 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.

1:04:12They all in front of Doug Burgum, apparently there was a dinner at David Sachs's house during the 2024 campaign. And Burgum was kind of hoping he was a dark horse VP candidate. And all the tech guys there said, you got to choose J.D. And, you know, he is Teal's guy and he's a former VC. And so I don't think they see much daylight between their views. And he may not have the question, I think, is like, does he have sort of the unifying or rough charisma of Trump to like unify MAGA? You know, but there may be a bill there for something to fall apart. But the tech guys, I think, would be perfectly happy unless someone surprising emerges.

1:04:50You know, they road tested DeSantis and Ramaswamy and a couple other folks. But I think J.D. is really their guy. I mean, some of them have money invested in him. Teal put money into J.D. Vance's venture capital firm. Yeah, that reminds me. There are some great scenes there with Vivek Ramaswamy and your firsthand 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. Well, thank you.

1:05:26Thanks so much for your interest. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments. perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know.

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