The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3668 - Tech Billionaires Pushing 'Abundance' and Waging War on Democracy w/ Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, Gil Duran

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

It's Hump Day on The Majority Report On today's program: JD Vance talks to Megyn Kelly why the whole Memorandum of Understanding has not been released, citing certain cultural sensitivities in the region without explaining what that means. The war hawks are not happy with the leaked sections of the Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran. Former Vice President Mike Pence says on CNN that the preliminary language "smacks of appeasement". Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends shares the same sentiment as Pence but he refuses to criticize the president, insisting to his audience that this is Vance's deal. Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, joins to talk about her piece in The American Prospect: "New Documents Detail Nine-Figure, Silicon Valley–Funded Abundance Movement." Gil Duran, publisher of the Nerd Reich newsletter, joins to discuss John O'Farrell a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz who recently quit the VC firm over their prioritizing of AI hype over the common good. You can preorder Gil's book "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley's Fascism and the War on Democracy" here. In the Fun Half: As Trump's facilities sunset he is having a hard time keeping his inside thoughts inside. At the G7 conference in France, the president couldn't stop talking about world leaders in an erotic fashion. Trump swooned over India's PM Modi's stunning beauty and recounted the time he met Egyptian president el-Sisi in a hotel and fell deeply in love. Trump post another screed to Truth Social, announcing the cancelation of Jay Clayton's U.S Attorney nomination hearing today and the Bill Pulte will remain acting head of DNI. Trump's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Hal Duncan, recites the script and refuses to admit that Joe Biden won the 2020 election but of course freely acknowledges that Trump won the 2024 election. The GOP primary winner for senate in Georgia, Mike Collins, kicks off his campaign by attacking incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff for voting in support of trans rights, much to the ambivalence of the small audience. DSA backed candidate for mayor of Washington D.C., Janeese Lewis George appears to be headed for victory in the democratic primary. On June 11, Trump threatened to have a federal takeover of D.C. is she wins and evidentially that was the best thing to happen to George's campaign. All that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ROCKET MONEY: Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster: RocketMoney.com/MAJORITY RITUAL: Get 25% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/MAJORITY. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.  

The majority report with Sam Cedar. The destiny of America is always safer in the hands of the people than in the conference rooms of any elite. Sam Cedar. They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred. We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The majority report with Sam Cedar. Cedar. Have I get the feeling you've been cheated?

It is Wednesday, June 17, 2016. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Dylan Gouch Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project. Recent piece in the American Prospect, new documents detail nine-figure Silicon Valley-funded abundance movement. Also on the program today, Gil Duran journalist, founder of Nerd Reich, newsletter about tech extremist politics, author of the forthcoming book, Third Reich, Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy.

Also on the program today, terms of the Iran Memorandum of Understanding are leaked, and it perfectly reflects the fact that the U.S. lost its ill-conceived war. Meanwhile, G7 nations support the Iran deal and reiterate support for Ukraine and Russian sanctions. Trump pulls Clayton nomination for DNI says he's sticking with Pulte unless FISA reauthorization includes the Save American Vote Disenfranchisement Act. That's not its real name. Trump's picks win primaries in Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, Ossif will face former Congressman Mike Collins.

Almost 800,000 children have now been bumped from food assistance roles because of the big, beautiful bill. Those lazy, lazy children. Trump is moving special ed and civil rights out of the Department of Education. Robert F. Kennedy

will be in charge of special ed. Oh, they're letting him around. It's okay new report in the journal of American medicine finds COVID vaccine reduces cardiovascular risk brought about by COVID by 60%. Heart attacks. That's not what I heard on a podcast. Heart attacks as a function of COVID. So 40% it fails? Drum drop 40%.

In Ohio, Governor DeWine calls for abolishing the state's death penalty. good for him. Fifteen people charged over being ungovernable and hurting ice thugs feelings in Minnesota. Federal Reserve meets today expected to hold rates as Kevin Warsh

heads his first Fed meeting. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Hump Day. Yes. There.

is. Yes, it is. Is that really what it is? Or is it the day before the parade? That's all I've got on my mind right now, baby. Nixmas Eve. Yep, it's Nixmiss Eve. Tomorrow's going to be fun. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to see anything, but I will be partying it up. And we still will have an episode of the majority report tomorrow. Sam graciously allowed me to take the day off. I'm going to be pre-recorded. I'm sorry, I forgot. I shouldn't be complimenting you. It doesn't go the other way. So why do I intend it? You haven't seen the rider that says you'll have to go to the next Celtics parade.

I haven't seen that, no. But we will have interviews for you tomorrow. No, there's zero chance. There is zero chance. Zero chance. It would sooner die. That's going to win it this year or what? I mean, I don't know.

They didn't show out that well, not that Drake may can read a defense or anything like that. All right. Well, you can leave that for now. Don't poke the bear. It's been so funny. Just the absolute sort of giddiness that you've had, like, continuing on. I've never seen anything like this, but be that as it may. Let's get into this.

The bullet points, or I should say, actually, I mean, not just the bullet points. The actual document of memorandum of understanding has been a, leaked and which is interesting uh i don't know if we have that clip actually maybe uh later uh jvance was talking about like i would love to release the document we really can't because of diplomatic things and uh but the 14 point draft agreement um or i should say the memorandum of understanding has been released and it um very clearly reflects the fact that that the United States lost this war. I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing, frankly.

This is something that should have happened a long time ago. This path has been open with Iran in terms of normalizing long term for over 22 years when they made overtures, not overtures, a specific proposal. to the United States via the Swiss, and the Bush administration was so annoyed that they couldn't maintain their access of evil that they literally sanctioned the Swiss for delivering the message. Never do that again. And the draft basically calls for, obviously, the Strait of Hormuz to be opened up. It doesn't say anything about Iran being able to collect fees, which Iran says that it will. It says in the first bullet point, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States together, with their allies in the current war, that would be Israel, at least, declare upon the signing of this MOU and immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon.

That is a key point. There'll be 60 days to negotiate a final agreement. And it appears that they're trying to do that by Friday. In addition to the Strait of Hormuz opening up, it basically, as far as I can tell, lifts all sanctions on Iran and gives them access on a sort of, it's unclear what the benchmarks are. But if they do certain things, they will be able to, gain access to development fund. So from the Iranian perspective, very well done.

It was reported, like we said yesterday, by Jeremy Scahill in Dropside, that the Iranians were using as part of the negotiation team, the psychiatrists, some of the top psychiatrists. To get true to him. Yes, trying to figure out how you manage someone with his personality disorder. here is J.D. Vance talking to Megan Kelly on why they haven't released the memorandum of understanding. Of course, it ended up being leaked. This is from yesterday. There we go. Sorry, I just got to frame it up. Why can't we all see the MOU right now?

Well, they're, yeah, so first of all, the president said by the latest Friday, possibly as early as tomorrow, we're going to release the memorandum of understanding text. The reason why we haven't released it yet is there are some delicate diplomatic things going on where the Iranians and not just the Iranians, but some of our mediators, the Pakistanis and the Qataris have asked us to sequence this in the right way. I don't frankly fully understand it, but there are sensitivities that exist in the Arab and Muslim world that we're trying to be responsive to. Fundamentally, does it really matter if the deal comes out on Wednesday versus Friday? No, that's why we haven't emphasized it so much is because at the very, at the very, very latest, the text is going to be out on Friday. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you've already signed it, but it's not like legally binding to where you can't undo it. It's a diplomatic agreement. So it's correct. If people freak out, there's an utter meltdown

here in the United States. It could always be undone if you change your minds. Exactly. And I, again, I can see. Oh, now that last part is really important because the reason why it's been leaked is because there are Iran war hawks, both within the administration and within the conservative Republican movement, a significant amount of them. Not to mention some on the Democratic side, folks like Chuck Schumer, don't want anything to do with a side deal or anything like that. And the idea is to try and create pressure on the administration to not sign this. Particularly over Lebanon, particularly over the ensuring of Lebanon's territorial sovereignty and integrity, which is basically why all of the Zionists and media,

are having a total meltdown here because they wanted to continue their ethnic cleansing campaign in southern Lebanon unabated. And Iran, since Trump and this country has lost this war that he started, Iran's leverage has increased to such a degree that they've been able to rope Lebanon's sovereignty and Hezbollah into this deal. It's nuts. here is Brian Kilmead on Fox and Friends this morning, bemoaning this. And he is not the only one who has used this language as to whose deal it is. And let's play this clip. I'll give you our take on why J.D. Vance is both being blamed and I would also argue given credit for this deal.

I also think some of the words are problematic, even with some of the administration. The MAU calls for the straight of Hormuz to be reopened in the near term. All right. The MAU stipulates, quote, that Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days. Hold on here. Best efforts? What do you mean best efforts? Just back out of there.

We'll pick up the minds, not best efforts. That's a specific vague language. And what happens after 60 days? Word is they're going to get together with Oman. And Iran's going to get it with Oman and charge tolls. If that's the case, that's unacceptable for everybody. Well, the good news is gas prices have gone down, so that's great. If the straight is open, that helps.

That helps with gas prices globally. Here's the thing that, Brian, you're reading a list of what you think the deal looks like, possibly. There's another list here in front of me. There's another list here in front of you. What does the real deal say? What I just said was read to me from the... from the memory of understanding from someone who was holding it in his hand. Okay. All right.

That seems very vague, then. Very vague. Very vague. And concerning. All I'm going to say is the vice president was here did a wonderful job on every outlet, including the view. But this is his deal. It's not the president's deal.

And it's his deal and Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner together. I just hope they didn't let the president down because the president's putting a lot of stock in them. Right. And he has to, he can't do everything himself. I just hope they didn't let him down. Mm-hmm. So I've seen some speculation from some reporters on the Middle East independent reporters that I trust that this memorandum of understanding that was leaked isn't exactly identical to the final version, but it was designed to create this freak out amongst Zionist mouthpieces in the media like Brian Kilmead, among others, to get Trump to back out of this deal before Friday. It's also notable, I think, that Friday is the day where they're having this supposed official signing

because Trump knows one thing that he's a savant about, and that is public relations and media. And this is across genres and media. If you want to dump bad news that you don't want a lot of press on, do it on a Friday. And you might want to do it on a Friday where it's Juneteenth, and there are going to be a lot of people that are off work, by the way. I would also add that Trump knows that Kevin. Warren, his pick to chair the Fed was meeting today, and there was real concern that they would react to the inflation, the price of oil, and start to hint at perhaps a rate increase later in the year, which Trump needed to deliver this to Warsh so that he could maintain some type of

neutral stance on inflation and unemployment. But the part where they're saying it's J.D. Vance and Trump doesn't. It's, this is a one and a half page document. And if it is close to what exists, the idea that Trump, I couldn't read it. It was so long. And Arab countries are so mysterious. There's no way to understand.

It's almost like they have a mysticism about them. They're so swarthy. I can't possibly read this. And, but I think that. goes both ways. Insofar as they want to blame Vance, but remember, Vance right now is setting up his 2028 run. And he is aiming for that part of what he thinks exists anyways, of the conservative movement that is anti-war. And so I think he may be getting blamed for this, but I would imagine he also wants the credit and we'll assume more of that credit as we go on. Here is Mike Pence, the last

Donald Trump vice president, the one that they wanted to hang. He has problems with this. And at least what we're hearing echo out of this potential memorandum of this memorandum of understanding. It's smacks of impeachment. I mean, it sounds a bit like what I write about in my book that the producer has long embraced appeasement against our adversaries like Iran, but there are voices on the populist right that would have us pull back from our role as leader in the free world. I don't think this is the time to pull back. I don't think this is a moment for appeasement. And I think I would urge the president to stand firm on the fundamental elements that Iran has to dismantle and abandon its nuclear program, dismantle its ballistic missile program,

announce the support of terrorist organizations and restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, they keep talking about what a good deal it is. Obviously, we have not been able to see it for ourselves. Do you agree with, I mean, you know the president really well. Do you agree with David Urban that if it really was a good deal, the president would stay around to sign it himself publicly and pass out pens like he does with so many executive orders on a daily basis? I'd like to see us be at a place where the president would do just that, and that we would see people in both political parties in this country cheer it on. But look, at least what we're hearing about this. I mean, think about it. The language that has come out, and you're closer to sources there in Geneva than the rest of us,

but the languages have come out. There's no mention of dismantling the nuclear program or the ballistic missile program. There's no commitment to ending support for Hamas. support for Hamas, Hezbollah, or other terrorist organizations. But in contrast to that, there is immediate sanctions relief from the moment the MOU is signed. I mean, that could be upwards to $3 billion a month into the coffers of the Iranian regime. There's a pledge of $100 billion in Iranian frozen assets being freed up at least some of the language that's leaked that it would be released even before a final deal is struck in the event of progress. And then finally, calling

for the United States and others to arrange for a $300 billion reconstruction fund when the IRGC and radical Islamists continue to be at the helm in Iran as deeply ill-advised. And again, I believe it smacks of the kind of impeachment that we saw during the Obama years, the kind of appeasement that Joe Biden tried to accomplish and was ignored by the Iranians? It's not, well, first off, what's fascinating is the use of the word impeasement or appeasement. And you, the dynamic between the United States and Iran should be such that it's impossible for us to appease them, like in the sense that appeasing sounds like a juggernaut. I think he's trying to make it make them sound like the Nazis.

Yes. And the fact is this is not appeasement. It is a surrender. We lost this war. And it's a good thing that it's a surrender. We need the we need to surrender. We shouldn't have started this war in the first place. But it's so funny that the hawks that wanted us to go to war with Iran and have been proven so catastrophically wrong are the same ones that are calling any kind of. of diplomatic end to the debacle that they've always yearned for an act of appeasement. It's almost like the only thing they care about is a continuation of the bombing campaign. Well, the fact of the matter is, I mean, you hit it on the head. It's their fault. If they're upset about these terms, they should have been a little smarter about whether

it was a good idea to wage this war in the first place. There's a reason why over 47 years or whatever it is. no American president has been drawn into a conflict with Iran by Israel, and that is because they realized it was an unwinnable one. And so here we are. The terms of this memorandum of understanding reflect exactly the debacle that the entire war was. It remains to be seen if, you know, Ben Shapiro and Brian Kilmead at all are able to gin up. enough anger to get Trump to sort of reverse himself again. I, you know, who knows?

At 2 a.m., he could be launching into some type of truth social and destroy the whole deal. He may have just done it. I mean, for all we know, it may have been just a function of him trying to get Kevin Warsh not to signal a need to increase rates going forward. we shall see over the next couple of days, I guess, and maybe through the weekend. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Dylan Gouch Lewis. He is a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project.

He's got a recent piece in the American prospect. New documents detail nine-figure Silicon Valley funded abundance movement. And then we'll be talking to Gil Duran, journalist and founder, of nerd Reich, newsletter about tech extremist politics and author of the forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich, we'll be talking to him about Peter

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We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program, Dylan Gouch Lewis, senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project with a recent piece in the American prospect entitled New Documents Detail Nine Figure Silicon Valley. funded abundance movement. Dylan, welcome to the program. I should tell you right up. Like I guess, I don't know, maybe it was six to eight months ago. I had a debate with Ezra Klein around his book.

I don't know if we necessarily thought it would be a debate at the beginning, but it was. And one of the issues that I had with, maybe not even so much the book, although there were other issues I had with the book, but in the way that he, and his co-author were going around talking about it, that the abundance wasn't just a book, it was a movement that was trying to fight essentially for the soul of the Democratic Party.

And my argument at the time was like, this is, a lot of this seems very anti-democratic. The idea that there's a problem with civic groups, with activist groups that are, is somehow, in preventing our government from delivering services in there, there are times we have to make decisions about things, and we shouldn't really have people advocating on behalf of, let's say, I don't know, kids in buildings who might get asthma because of a lack of regulations. And you guys have come across some documents that sort of, I think, bolster the argument that there's some real anti-democratic forces and money.

behind this so-called movement. Yeah, well, first, thank you so much for having me. But, yeah, these are internal fundraising documents from a Bay Area group called Abundance Network that are pretty explicit that they view the problem with American politics as a lack of elite power. They specifically talk about the need for elite. to stop abdicating in the political sphere. There's two or three different places where the authors say that the reason politics has gotten polarized

and dumber is because of small dollar internet fundraising because presumably everything was fine and dandy and everyone was high-minded and enlightened when only high-net-worth individuals were bankrolling it. So they've put together, according to this internal fundraising document, as much as $260 million annually to try and build a political movement across all 50 states to retake control of the Democratic Party. Let's talk about Zach Rosen, who is the one who said small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber. You know, I think that speaks to itself. I mean, obviously he has a problem with candidates who are not beholden to the elite, as he says later,

and the elite as defined by big money, right? I mean, he's not talking about, like, we should have candidates that are beholden to the chair of the government department at at Oberlin or something. No, he's talking about money when he talks about elites. Who is this guy, Zach Rosen? So Zach Rosen is a former tech founder. He started a platform company,

some kind of web hosting platform company. I'm not super clear on which part of the web hosting they do called Pantheon. And he, once he finished, his entrepreneur phase, he bought a bike shop in San Francisco and his call to political action, according to some reporting from a local Seattle outlet, I think, was he started building out the YIMBY movement when he found out that the workers whose salaries he sets couldn't afford to live near the bike shop that he bought in San Francisco, which I just think is a very,

interesting political origin story. And then he founded two groups. One is California Yimbi and the other is Abundance Network, which is the group he's fundraising for in these documents and has been investing heavily in local politics. He takes credit for the moderate faction that took power in the Bay Area in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors elections. And he, he, He says that he's spending $5 million annually, not of his own money, but $5 million per campaign cycle in San Francisco politics. And can you define for people if they're not aware what the YIMB movement means in this context? It means yes, in my backyard as opposed to not in my backyard. But they're not talking about yes, in my backyard, federally subsidized public housing or state subsidized public housing.

is not the orientation of at least this YIMBY faction that funds abundance. Yeah, so YIMB has sort of popped up all over the place in slightly different iterations. This version focuses heavily on, like, private developers. The group that originally obtained these documents called the Phoenix Project, They're a local watchdog group. They have done a lot of influence tracking that shows how real estate has teamed up with Silicon Valley to push this. And really what this sort of specific sub-faction of Yumbian is championing, there's both the housing stuff, but then there's also quite explicitly the we are taking control of local police. political institutions and trying to establish an edge so that democratic oversight can't stop

building. What is the abundance capital stack? Yeah. So the abundance capital stack is the term that Rosen himself uses in the document for a $260 million annual capital inflow. 120 million, he said, came from John Arnold, a former Enron executive energy trader, current Meta board member, 40 million from Dustin Moskowitz, who is one of the co-founders of Facebook or Meta, and 100 million from Steve Balmer, former Microsoft executive, current alleged NBA salary cap of Vater with his team the LA Clippers. And Rosen, when I reached out for comment,

said that the number for John Arnold was wrong. He didn't respond when I asked what the right number was or whether the other numbers were correct. But he did say that active grants were a paltry 40 million a year, which soon that practically nothing at that point. And but the commitments are up to the 260. Is that right? That's my understanding. That's the claim in 2025 when this was written.

Give us a like, you write that the fundraising pitch appears intent on impugning progressives, arguing that voters have been presented a choice between A, this is a quote now, A, MAGA states that are delivering progressive outcomes, or B, blue states that that are claiming progressive values, but probably in increasing inequality and poverty, that doesn't necessarily really bear out, does it? No, it doesn't. And Rosen makes some very specific claims to try and support that.

One is he leans really hard into the Mississippi miracle, which, you know, arguably that's selection bias, Mississippi's fourth grade reading scores skyrocketed, and centrist media types love to attribute that to the reintroduction of phonics instruction. But at roughly the same time, they also just stopped advancing third graders who didn't meet third grade reading benchmarks. So there's a decent case that a lot of it is selection bias. But even if even if That's the criticism I've heard of that of that outcome is that like you know If we take the top students in the class and hold back everybody else

By the time they get to the fourth grade of course they're going to perform well Because they're already chosen to be the top performers Exactly and um rosin you can even set that aside to see where Rosen is wrong there because he says that Mississippi went from the worst state in the nation for education to the best, which his own source doesn't say. His own source says they went from second to last to pretty middle of the pack. And that's also still specific for fourth grade reading. He also talks about California having the highest supplemental poverty rate,

which that one is true. but the idea that MAGA states are doing a lot better doesn't seem accurate when you look at the whole list in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida are the next three highest, and Maine and Minnesota have the best supplemental poverty rates. And they were both under Democratic trifectas in the lead up to when Rosen was writing this. Well, the metrics that, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Sam. You sure? Yes. One way to think about abundance, he writes. One way to think about abundance network, Rosen writes,

is as the liberal answer to the tech elite joining the MAGA faction. What do you think he means by that? And what are the implications of all these documents to wrap up? Yeah. So I think what he means is, you know, there's been the rise of the tech right, Mark Andreessen, Elon Musk, who were once seen as like reliable Democrats.

pivoting and fully embracing Donald Trump. And what Rosen is saying is we shouldn't let them go. We should use abundance to draw them back into the tent and harness their power to materially improve the situation for everyone. Now, the tradeoff for that that he details is that they have to be given the steering wheel when they are let back in. So in terms of what these documents mean, I think the ultimate question is

abundance is going to have to decide whether it's this policy platform that wants to talk about modernizing zoning rules or whether it wants to spend tens of millions of dollars in order to try and take over democratic politics and empower Silicon Valley and other wealthy donors back in the driver's seat of the Democratic Party. Well, this is a perfect launch pad for us.

We're going to be talking to Gil Duran in just a moment. And it feels at the very least like there's something that has come out of San Francisco and the environments there that regardless of where they perceive their political orientation, the one thing they know is that they should be in charge. Dylan Gouch Lewis, thanks so much for your time today. We're going to link to your piece. A very important one at the American prospect. Really appreciate your time.

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks. All right. We've got to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to be talking to Gil Duran. He is the journalist and a founder of Nerd Reich, a newsletter about tech extremist politics, an author of the forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich Silicon Valley, Fascism, and the War on democracy. We'll be right back.

We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Viglin. On the majority report, it is a pleasure to welcome back to the program, Gil Durand, journalist, founder of Nerd Reich, a substack newsletter about tech extremist politics, author of the forthcoming book, The Nerd Reich, Silicon Valley, Fascism, The War on Democracy. Gil, I have an advanced copy. It is sitting on my night table on a stack, and I'm going to get there. Oh, no, you took it from the office. I thought you were, We have another one. We have another one.

Look at this prop here. There it is. The nerd rike. I can't wait to get into it. But the book comes out in, is it August? August 18th. August 18th. And so we will have you back for that.

But we had to, there's so much going on in this tech bro extremist world. We just spoke to Dylan Gouch Lewis. who had written a piece in the American prospect about the sort of, I guess the cousins to the people you write about. And that is other tech elite, by their own definition, who are trying to take the Democratic Party through the abundance movement. what is it about these people who work in tech that they believe that A, they're the elite, and B, that the elite should basically just run everything. Well, I think it's the derangement and psychosis

that results from too much money. These people have gone totally insane, and now they are on a quest, not only to seize all of American political power and establish a monopoly of political power that overthrows our democracy, but a lot of them think they're going to live forever, become transhuman, meld with AI, and travel throughout the universe,

colonizing other galaxies and harvesting the energy of the other stars. So we have a great outbreak, an existential outbreak of delusional thinking in Silicon Valley. And because of the money they have, it's a danger to all of us, because they're trying to buy the entire system, both the Democrats and the Republicans, in order to break the system. And it's not different people, by the way. This is pretty much the same people with some small variations.

You know, you've got Joe Lonsdale, who's a Palantir guy and a total right-wing bomb thrower who said the United States should return to public executions, giving money to Matt Mahan in the gubernatorial race in California, who is supposedly a moderate Democrat. So this is one of the reasons I wrote my book is witnessing this effort to buy both. sides of the political spectrum. Obviously, they'd rather have the Republicans because the Republicans

will do anything. The Democrats is a much slower project, but it heads to the same destination. I mean, this guy, even in this abundance document, basically said that in many respects, small donors are the bane of their existence, because that's the only sort of like bulwark, I guess against the, they're being able to buy Democratic politicians is that Democratic politicians have the option in some circumstances if they pursue a certain platform

to do very well with smaller donors. It's it is fascinating that is coming out there. I mean, you talk about like the money sort of corroding, their brains. I can't remember what's the guy's name on the All In podcast that we just covered in. Chalmers Palpatia. Yes.

Where he was saying the outcome of the mayoral election as a data stats guy, I'm telling you, he was one in trillion. And it was just the most sort of like seventh grade assessment of stats and figures to come up with the idea that it was impossible that Spencer Pratt wouldn't have. made it into the top two in a city of 75% Democrats, these are people who nobody's around them seems to never say like, hey, man, you may want to double check that. Well, part of it's that they're dumb about politics. They're really dumb about things they don't know about, but nobody tells them that because

they're rich. And this is a general affliction of the wealthy that adds to their psychosis and delusion is that everybody wants to placate and please them and be sycophantic. So no one ever says, you know what, that's totally wrong. idiot, you can't say that, right? It's all finding a way to knot along. But the more grim side of this is that this is part of their propaganda game. They know they're lying. They know they're not telling the truth. They're engaged in what some call fifth generation warfare, the new era of propaganda, where you fight over what is basic reality, what is basic facts itself. So they're playing the old

Trump game of just completely fabricating a reality. You know, there's 15% registered Republicans in Los Angeles. Very unlikely you're going to get a Republican mayor in Los Angeles anytime ever again. In fact, anybody who is a Republican become a Democrat to run because that's just the way it works. Now, the Republican Party is pretty much dead in California. So I don't think it's necessarily that they're stupid. I think the other possibilities that they're just lying because this is part of their strategy to create a parallel reality and to operate from that. They've seen with X that you can create these economies of false information that have real world impact. packs. You know, Elon Musk got like 50,000 retweets for also making false claims about the LA

election. So on a certain level, they know what they're doing and they're doing it on purpose. And that makes it more nefarious. And I would say that's a hallmark of fascism, is the creation of an unreality where people can no longer distinguish between fact and fiction, and you can manipulate them from that position of radicalized ignorance. the the age-old debate over stupid and evil and sometimes it can be both um let's talk about peter teal who is sort of the um one of the the godfathers of this uh i guess movement or i don't can you call it really a movement i mean it's it's it's a crew of it seems like just like literally a dozen or two people um they just have so much money they're everywhere um

Peter Thiel, it was just exposed, one of his, like, I guess, I don't know, societies was just exposed. Have you seen much about this dialogue? Yeah, well, the word that Peter Thiel likes to use is cult. And that's also the word I use in my book. Peter Thiel has created a cult of powerful men who think it is their destiny to overthrow democracy in the 21st century using technology and money. And for about 20 years now, Peter Thiel's had this seat. secret cult society called Dialogue, where they have these weird off-the-record conversations with wealthy elites, sort of like a Bilderberg or an eyes wide shut for dorky intellectual subjects, as far as we know.

And this list was just revealed because apparently they had it in the coding of their website, this secretive list. These tech geniuses have this massive security flaw that allows some activists to figure out who's on the list. Now, it's not clear who's a member yet, or some of the members are clear, or who's just participatory. but there are some pretty stunning names on the list. You know, Ezra Klein, Nicholas Thompson of the Atlantic. And you know, I'll have to say, I've wondered why certain people with very large platforms have ignored criticizing these tech billionaires in the way that they should. And no, I'm wondering if we're getting toward an answer here.

But let's let the rest of the story come out. But the point is that Peter Thiel, in his book, Zero to One, says the way to Run your company, the way to run anything is to create a cult. Because that's when you get people who are obsessed and who are dedicated. And the other word, he says for cult, is a mom. mafia. So you want a cult or a mafia. And that means getting a core group of people to become true radicalized believers and spread the message and carry out the project from there. And he actually names Jim Jones and Charles Manson as examples of people who have done this saying, well, that's

kind of bad. You know, you don't want to do that necessarily. At the same time, I'd say that, you know, Manson and Jones killed, you know, over 1,000 people under 1,500. These guys will, are already on track to kill millions through the USA cuts. And if they get their way, they'll kill billions. So we are dealing with a dangerous cult, a radicalized venture capitalist who want to destroy democracy. And what I like to say is that trying to explain what's happening to our country without talking about Peter Thiel's anti-democratic cult is like trying to explain 9-11 without

talking about Al-Qaeda. Well, I mean, we're also, we should also mention like the other, you know, Ellison too, as well and their connections with the IDF and Israel's genocide. if we're talking about death toll right now, Peter Thiel and his technology and a bunch of his buddies that are included in this are literally using their weapons technology to commit genocide right now. Definitely. And while they commit genocide in the Holy Land, Peter Thiel's going off talking about the Antichrist everywhere. He's on a total apocalyptic trip right now, right? And it's all connected. This is a network of people. Another word they use for this is the network state, which I've written about at LinkedIn, which is in my book. this idea that the interconnected wealth, influence, and power of these tech moguls is now more powerful than nations, and that they can act as their own political entity traveling around the world, what Quinn Slobodyan calls a mobile fortress of capital to pursue their own foreign policy, to pursue their own political goals, and even to establish at some point their own little nation states that they will control without laws or regulations or any influence from democracy. So it goes way beyond Teal, but he's sort of like the node of it. He has sort of normalized the thinking, this isn't something to be ashamed of. This is something that is our destiny.

This is something we must do. We have a moral imperative to pursue this monopolistic power of the world. I want to get back to the network state, but in terms of Teal, one thing that is amazing about that is like, you know, you say he's on an Antichrist tour and it sounds like high Herbally, but this is a guy who, in the run up to the 2025, 2024 election, he was going out there on interview shows and saying, we are like at Weimar. Like, people are sick of democracy. He is out there talking about how the biggest problem with that women getting the vote was problematic because it's, ultimately going to lead to socialism. I mean, he is in no way. What's fascinating to me about this guy is that he's not hiding the ball at all.

He's just laying it out there. And for whatever reason, I mean, this guy's got his hand financially in just about all of the major tech that controls just about everything. He essentially birthed J.D. Vance. And I'd like you to speak to that. But this is a very, very powerful guy. going out there and in unabashedly saying we need to have some type of dictator really just so that our group has someone just one person to talk to and they can execute definitely my book is mostly focused on this cult that peter till has created through people like curtis jarvin

who is the main guy behind this idea we should have a CEO and dictator and has become very popular on the right including with jd vance who quoted him during his senate campaign said we need to purge the federal government and install loyalists, which is exactly what they proceeded to do. And, you know, Curtis Jarvin's a guy who sits around dropping acid and reading fascist literature while living off of his wife and his mother creates this fantasy version of fascism and all these billionaires just eat it up. So that's a big problem that Peter Thiel's been able to do this. And part of the reason I wondered at the beginning of researching my book, why do they say these things out loud, right? Because to me, I was in politics for a long time as a comms guy.

You don't say the crazy stuff out loud. There's certain stuff you talk about. not in front of cameras because it's easily exploitable. But the reason they do it is because it's a form of evangelism. It's how you get other people on board with it, how you get other people talking about it. And there was a speech that Peter Thiel gave in 2010 to a group of libertarians where he basically said government is fundamentally evil. It's so evil that to deny the evil of the government is tantamount to denying the existence of the devil.

And this is a guy who started Poundier a few years before with an investment from the CIA and is a major government contractor with law enforcement intelligence agencies. So how are you on the one hand saying that government is fundamentally evil? And on the other hand, getting wealthy and powerful through the same government. There are these conundrums and hypocrisies that, and if you look at Peter Thiel's Antichrist lectures, because he is traveling the globe giving four, four-day-long lectures on the Antichrist, the antichrist he described sounds a lot like Silicon Valley. I don't think that's an accident.

But his main message is we're in existential battle against a. democracy. And he's trying to say basically democracy is the Antichrist, that progressivism is the antichrist. But the antichrist he describes this figure obsessed with using technology to gain power over everyone clearly describes his own portfolio. I have to say, I don't want to be in a position of defending him, but I'm not sure how hypocritical it is for him to be taking money from the national security state and also creating technology to allow the national security state to be oppressive because the part about government, I think that he finds evil is that there is actually at least theoretically and sometimes in practice an opportunity for the plebs to have an impact

and to have a need that government fulfills. I think he loves the idea of like, well, we could, if we just had an army and a police force run by one guy, we would be in, in great shape, I think it would be his perspective. But what, what's going on with him moving to Argentina? Well, he is temporarily relocated to Argentina for a couple of months. Now, Peter Thiel's been collecting passports for decades. He's also a citizen of New Zealand. I think he's pursued a passport in Malta. He really feels the need to have multiple passports. And this traces back to a 1997 book called The Sovereign Individual, which Teal regards his prophecy, this sort of conspiracy theory doom book that said that in the 21st century technology would overthrow nation states,

and that these cognitive elites, a term taken from eugenics, would be able to profit from this by using something called cyber currency to evade government power and authority, and by having, basically, by shopping for jurisdictions where they could move between different countries that would cater to them by giving them no taxes and no regulations and laws. Specifically, the book recommended New Zealand in Argentina among the handful of countries where one should pursue these passports. So as my book spells out, Peter Thiel is obsessed with the sovereign individual, and it explains a lot of what he's doing.

But people were wondering about the Argentina move. Obviously, they have a president, Javier Milet, who's an anarcho-capitalist, totally aligned with these venture capitalist guys, even though his policies have failed and we had to send them $20 billion to basically bail them out. But what happened two weeks ago that really clarified what Peter Thiel's doing is Millet wrote a piece in the Financial Times and op-ed that said that Argentina was going to introduce a law to ban AI regulation and keep taxes very low for venture capital and tech, and also allow for the creation of non-human corporations, basically AI corporations where no human would be liable for the outcomes of this. So this is

some far-out radical experimental stuff. Clearly Peter Thiel had a head. up on that. And once again, he's trying to model behavior and show people, let's put down roots in Argentina, which, just like the sovereign individual said, is now going to allow a menu of options for us to escape from rules and laws we don't like. You know, in the fantasy, Argentina would now become the trillionaire fortress of AI future and become a powerful country where the oligarchs rule. But the positive part of this is that Peter Thiel seems to be betting against the Trump regime. he's very nervous and Curtis Jarvin, his little political guru, has been weeping openly in interviews and saying people need to leave the United States because Trump's going to fail and there's going to be retribution for all the stuff we did right now.

So in a way, you know, it's always a mix of things with teal. He's crazy like a fox. But he seems to be hedging against the Trump administration, but also seeking a place where he can do anything he wants and have total power. What do you, how do you think that translates into what's going on with J.D. Vance? Like, because that is my sentence. And Yarvin's been, Yarvin's been saying that stuff now, it feels like for almost like a year or maybe nine months. Like he said, it's failed, you know, and I hope he's right. I hope he's held the Hill account. I hope that there is retribution in some form for what they have done to the government. But how do you read what's going on with J.D. Vance?

Like, because right now also, I should say, the past two weeks, it feels like this is J.D. Vance pre-launching his 2020-2020 campaign from sort of like half-taking credit for what's going on with the Iran deal to the extent that he can take full credit if it somehow turns out to work out. He is, he, there was a story about the Epstein files that came out in the New York Times. times the other day that quite like it seems quite clear that J.D. Vance was one of the key sources for that piece, or at least coming from him. What do you make of all that? And what's, what's your sense of Peter Thiel's hopes when it comes to J.D. Vance? Well, my book, my chapter on J.D. Vance is called the unicorn, because I view him as a bet that these venture capitalists are making on politics. And he's gotten pretty far. He's gotten all the way to the White House. He's a heartbeat away from the presidency. Fortunately, he has a complete lack of charisma. I'm a

He's highly unpopular, and Republicans are starting to turn against him and distrust him. I think the knives are out for J.D. Vance. And he's in a very tricky position of where he needs to start building a distance from Trump, who's failing and low in the polls. But he can't really do that while he's on Trump's ship. And one weird thing, J.D. Vance went on the view yesterday, and he said that he was concerned. He wanted to release the Epstein files, and he was so concerned how so many wealthy, powerful people were close to Epstein, which was an insane thing for J.D. Vance to say,

given he's the vice president to Jeffrey Epstein's best friend, Donald Trump, but not only that, Vance is entirely a creation of Peter Thiel, who was also in deep with Epstein. In fact, Epstein gave $40 million to one of Peter Thiel's funds, an investment that is now ballooned to $170 million, and according to the New York Times, I believe, is the major chunk of his remaining estate. So here's a guy who's basically, J.D. Vance is a guy who's in an Epstein-Teill-Trump sandwich here.

So it's not clear to me how he's going to be, able to thread that needle convincingly when we can just get a real Republican to run who's actually not in the administration that's so unpopular. But they're definitely going to try, you know, they would put as much money as necessary into advance campaign. And of course, the bigger threat, you know, it's maybe a small percentage possibility. But if Trump doesn't make it through his term, he is falling asleep a lot. His hands are, you know, the color of grape Kool-Aid, then he becomes president by default. And J.D. Vance is a man who will do anything to cling to power.

You know, in the recent New York Times story, he was calling to use the Insurrection Act against protesters, right? He's a big believer in Carl Schmidt, the Nazi philosopher, who was also important to Peter Thiel, who believes that a dictator rises to power by declaring an emergency and changing the rules, which is what Hitler did. And, of course, in J.D. Vance, we have a guy who called Trump, America's Hitler and is now his vice president. Um, can you know, people, people change their minds. Um, the I want it. Since you brought it up, I'm not sure if we discussed it, but I am curious about your thoughts about this Gill, given Peter Thiel showing up in the Epstein files. Um, it is interesting to me that around the time that, uh, Trump was about to start, uh, running. Well, it was actually a Steve Bannon also that was meeting with Epstein. It was revealed in the emails. And Peter Thiel, um, at the time. Um, at the time. Um, uh, at the time. Um, uh,

the time, I think was part of making that connection or maybe I'm misremembering here. But it's interesting to me that Bannon was meeting with Epstein around this time. They were also meeting with the head of 4chan, Epstein was. And that was around the time that the Pizza Gate conspiracy came up, which deflected from the Republicans' ties to Epstein and made it more about Bill Clinton and Democrats and Oprah drinking blood in Comet Pizza. or whatever. You know, I think it's a decent theory that perhaps some of these tech oligarchs in conjunction with the Trump campaign and Epstein themselves were a part of crafting a bit of a

psychological operation that would make sure that people weren't focused on Trump's connections to Epstein at that time. Just wondering if you have kind of any theories yourself. I think there's a lot we still don't know about what happened during that period. And hopefully we'll find out at some point. But it definitely sounds like the propaganda tactic known as argument in the mirror where basically you accuse your opponent of doing the thing that you're actually doing, and it confuses people because people don't know what to believe. It's like the Spider-Man meme where they're all pointing at each other, right? So people don't have the cognitive ability to sort it all out. And when I remember about Pizza Gake, because I worked at the time for Tom Steyer,

the billionaire, working on progressive campaigns in California, he was in some emails. They were talking about a pasta dinner. And there was this whole theory that the power. was code for trafficking and molestation, and which is this bonkers theory with no basis in reality. And here we have Trump in the damn Epstein files, and we know Epstein was a pedophile, and we know he was doing all these things, and his followers don't really believe that that's anything, and Trump denies it. So they were able to create this sort of fictional narrative, and they've done that multiple times. Look at in the past decade how we've had QAnon, Pizagate, the 2020 election conspiracy theories, You know, again, this goes back to the fascist tactic of unreality.

And we're going to see a lot more of that here in the age of AI and oligart control of the media where there are people who believe in complete falsehoods as fact and are motivated to action by that. Those people who raided on January 6th and tried to overthrow democracy were animated by a completely false belief. And I think that's just a precursor of what's to come. And I definitely think that all the people you named have been involved in those kinds of strategies. and they're very, very vested in narrative. Most of venture capital is based on creating narratives.

And another thing I'm curious about your thoughts on, I notice this on social media now. For example, like, you know, because the, I'm a Knicks fan, I've been seeing all of this footage of, and it's all, my whole algorithm now is footage from the celebrations in the streets, right? But then you kind of look at the replies, and now there's these new videos that come 24 hours, hours later and it's like this wasn't fun it was rioting and there's footage and video of

the stuff that's burning and it's the same kind of footage and an emphasis on the 63 arrests or whatever which is nothing in comparison to the size of the city but like when we talk about the network or the the Silicon Valley folks and all of this crime panic that is pushed on these platforms to really kind of I think push some of what we're talking about here that we can't trust democracy, that it's too messy, that people in these cities are just going to lead to chaos, just trust us, the anti-homeless stuff that was being pushed by these tech elites as well. It feels like they are also gaming the algorithms and there's this shadow campaign that is specifically focused on democratic cities that is a way to maybe get their network state

idea a little bit more mainstreamed. Is that a decent theory in your mind? That's the reason I got into this stuff in the first place was covering the politics of San Francisco, which was a beautiful and wonderful city. I lived in Lower Pack Heights, amazingly safe, beautiful, clean place. And I look at the news, the right-wing news especially, and they're describing it as some kind of apocalyptic hellscape. And this just didn't match up at all. Every American city has problems. This is a capitalist society with poverty. Every town you go into, there's a poor part of town where people are suffering and struggling.

There's crime because our system creates crime. not only among the poor, but especially among the wealthy, who are currently engaged in a carnival of crime and corruption and unprecedented scale. But yeah, definitely. They're trying to play on the anxiety against crime, even though crime has been in historic lows in the recent decade. And part of that, again, that's a well-known fascist tactic

to increase anxiety over public safety. When you make people feel fear, it activates the conservative ideas in their brain, makes them more accepting of things like mass incarceration and militarization and surveillance, And that's what we saw in San Francisco. And now we largely see this branching out. And one of the interesting tales here is that they always focus on bad things happening in Democratic cities.

But crime rates are actually much higher in Republican states. And you never hear anything about that. So it's this asymmetrical narrative where the Democratic states that are actually richer and better off than the Republican states are Sodom and Gomorrah Hellscapes. But you never hear the same thing about the red states where crime is off. hook. I think for many years, the number one homicide rate is in Jacksonville, Florida, which has a Republican governor and mayor. But you know, you never hear about that. It's only San Francisco where like, I don't know, they had, you know, less than 100 homicides, maybe under 50. And any city would be happy to have that. So, yeah, that's a part of it. Remember, if you go to

Jason Stanley's 10 characteristics of fascism, the Trump administration of the tech bros, you can, you can fit every single one of them into what they're doing every single day of the week. Yeah, and it just shows like they, this is where these, the talent pool, is. So for all of this freak out, you know, Ken Griffin, because Mom Doni was mean to him, is going to move to Miami. No, the reason that they're threatening that they're going to move to Miami is because

they're not going to move to Miami. They're not going to move out of Silicon Valley because of all this crime that they're alleging. They just want to control the government there in their favor as opposed to it getting in the hands of the messy democracy that's involved there.

So anyway, just fascinating stuff. Go ahead, Sam. All the San Francisco guys said they were moving to Miami and they're still here. Right. We should actually just do the playbook here. You could just put it on one page. All the crap they say, all the crap they do and what actually happens in the end. But the media is easily manipulated.

They know that. You know, your average political journalist is just not very smart. And I mean, what I mean by that is that they don't remember that this trick got played the last time and nothing that they said happened. They just go along with it again like a dog catching a ball. So that's the main problem we have, I think. While we have a media, it was way too weak to deal. with the fascist onslaught. I want to get to some AI developments in a moment,

but just to go back to the network state, I mean, you mentioned Quinn Slobody, and we've had them on the program several times over the past couple of years. But if you go back to Montpeler, I mean, this is the, this is like sort of the, the crystallized version of what Peter Thiel. Peter Thiel adds on some accoutrements

and some more like, explicit, I think, desire for the autocracy or dictatorship or cult leadership or whatever it is. But this idea of a network state, much of what came

out of Montpelrin and developed into genuine libertarian or at least original libertarian thought as opposed to sort of like what is turned into in America, was

this idea of industrialists being unfettered by sovereign nations. And we see this play out, you know, 75 years later in the context of like the TPP or even some provisions in NAFTA, which allow for the industry to have its own sort of like judicial to determine whether a state has in some way impinged upon their future profits because they decided to regulate this product is no longer we consider safe or we're no longer going to use oil or whatever it is. So much of that network state is embedded in that libertarian philosophy coming out of Montpelerin, which I should just say for people was a society that included Friedman and Hayek. and other sort of libertarian economists.

But what's your sense of like how much that ideology is also embraced by people like Mark Andreson? I mean, some of these people really strike me is not that bright. I mean, a guy like Andresen, I just, I'm sort of shocked at a guy like that. But how much of them have bought into this notion? Oh, I think a lot of the most prominent venture capitalists in Silicon Valley and a lot of the tech CEOs, as well, well have become radicalized into these ideas.

I think what began is that a libertarian idea has really morphed into its true nature, which is fascism, right? Because what they don't like about government is democracy. They don't mind having the authority themselves, as we can see from all of their contracts with the government, right? And I think it's Slobodian who has said that the dream is of capitalism without democracy. That's the subtitle to his book, Crack Up Capitalism.

And even before Montpelrin, you had technocracy, you have a long tradition There's never been a time when the fascist idea isn't trying to rise up against this horrific tide of democracy that was sweeping the world and go all the way back to Joseph Demestra, these pre or post-French revolution thinkers who are already trying to find a way back to monarchy and dictatorship and who hated anything resembling the mob having power, all the way back to the ancient Greeks were debating stuff, right? So it goes to these iterations, but libertarianism actually doesn't work at all in reality. And that's the kind of realization Teal came to in the 2010s, which is that there's no hope for the libertarian cause. So libertarian ideas have to find another format. And this is where he starts pursuing seesteading, the network state. How do we exit democracy? How do we use our wealth and our power and our influence that we're going to gain from our technological investments in creations in the 21st century to innovate past democratic structures?

And so that's what you're seeing here. There are some dorky libertarians in Vermont who dream of not paying taxes and think they're somehow above government or New Hampshire, yeah. But, you know, that doesn't work. These guys are not libertarians, and I think one of the mistakes the press has made is to continue calling them that. But if you look at how they are bundling crypto, AI, venture capital, surveillance, defense technology, government power, political power, religion and propaganda into one united bundle, United Campaign, that is, that bundle is fascism. And that's what it has become. This is the final resting place. This is the evolution, the terminal point of the techno-libertarian idea is techno-fascism. Where does AI fit in this? There was just a one of Andresen's, I don't know if he was quite a partner,

but somebody worked in that world basically has left and said, a lot of what's going on here is bad. And, like, sounding the warning here, what, where does that, like, when you look at AI, what is the most, aside from, like, the data centers and what they're doing, you know, from an environmental and from just sort of a cost and from, like, a monopolizing energy, but in the potential for the tool as it exists or as they imagine it will exist, how does that play into this and what is the most dangerous aspect of it from your perspective? The primary purpose of AI right now is to amass as much wealth and power

in the hands of a small number of men as quickly as possible. And that's what we're seeing. There's a lot of speculation about what AI may be able to do, super intelligence, godlike, AI, take all the jobs. You know, those are some speculative possibilities, but they view it as a way to capture wealth and power. They're already doing that, right? Trillions of dollars being invested in making this thing happen,

and now the government itself is dependent on these systems. But when you look at it, I don't worry so much about the longer-term harms because the short-term, the near-term harms are so pronounced. And I think the number one harm, I mean, obviously there's a threat to the environment, to the ecology and to jobs at some point. But it's further empowering and enriching this small group of people who are already trying to destroy democracy with the wealth that they have. And AI is rising at the same moment as crypto has risen, right?

So these guys are just creating their own versions of money and cashing out, you know, the poor or losing while these wealthy handful of elites win. And if you look at the number one purpose of crypto today, it has been to buy off the Trump family, right? Trump became a crypto billionaire on the day he became president. So while crypto is pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into the elections, that small ball compared to the direct enrichment of the Trump family. You know, Trump is now fully all in on crypto.

He's dependent on it. So to me, the harm is the major near-term harm is that this is the massing of ever more wealth and power in the hands of a small group of people. And even without super-intelligent AI, they are already using the tools that they have to destroy democracy and disempower everyone else. So to me, that's the number one harm. And John O'Farrell, the former Andresen Horowitz partner, you mentioned, you know, it's rare to see someone speak out from that world against this stuff.

And he's in position where he can do that. He's super wealthy. He's been more of an advisor to A16Z for the past few years than a day-to-day guy. But it's so rare to see one of these people speak out that it shows that at least the potential for the beginning of a schism for people in Silicon Valley to say this is wrong. Because, again, it's a hedge against the Trump administration. This thing may fail and people may have to answer for some of the things they did during this time, although that may be putting too much faith in Data Center Democrats like Gavin Newsom.

Yeah, let me just touch on Gavin Newsom briefly, actually. That reminds me. here's a guy who actively is campaigning against taxing the elite wealthy in the country. And he's also got, tell us just a little bit about Gavin Newsom's relationship to these guys, because some of his funding, it seems like a big chunk of it is going to be coming from them. It's become very clear that Gavin Newsom is planning to run for president as a Silicon Valley Democrat. He spends all day attacking Trump on Twitter. Never says anything about Peter Thiel.

It doesn't really name names. And this is a state where most of these oligarchs live, right? The Trump regime is held up by California tech moguls. You know, they're the main power behind him at this point in time. And one of the most telling aspects in recent months has been that Chris Larson, who's the founder of Ripple Labs and the executive chairman, this crypto company called Ripple Labs, which has greatly supported Trump, put $4 million into the inauguration, is funding the Epstein Memorial Ballroom at the White House.

And Chris Larson funded Steve Hilton, the Republican who ran for governor. And he also funded Katie Porter, a Democrat who ran for governor. So here's a crypto billionaire funding a Democrat and a Republican. And now he said he'll do anything he can to get Trump, to get Gavin Newsom elected president. I mean, I'm supposing that Larson will also fund a Republican for president. But Chris Larson is interesting because it shows you the mentality of these crypto billionaires. They're going to buy both sides. And, you know, Newsom is somebody who's fighting against regulations for data centers.

He vetoed a bill for AI regulation. And most of the people around Newsom, his political consultants, people I know that most people wouldn't be aware of, they're all working for these guys now. They're all getting paid by venture capital. So beware of Gavin Newsom, he is going to be the avatar of Silicon Valley with a Democratic face in 2028. And I intend to spend a lot of time, Gavin, calling that out over the next couple of years. Well, we may join you in that endeavor, Gil. And we will be talking to you in a couple of months when your book comes out. You can't recommend it enough. Nerd Reich, Silicon Valley,

fascism, and the war on democracy. Can people pre-order that right now? You can definitely pre-order it anywhere you get your books. I highly recommend bookshop to support independent bookstores. All right, Gil Duran, and we will link, of course, to your newsletter, Nerd Reich at Majority.fm and in the podcast and YouTube description. Thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. Thank you, guys. Thank you.

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