Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. We are on vacation, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we don't have a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The nerd Wich newsletter and New Republic contributor Gil Duran
Speaker 1: stops by to talk about why some Silicon Valley leaders
Speaker 1: are advocating an anti democracy agenda. But first we have
Speaker 1: next Gen executive director Arianna Jones about how we get.
Speaker 2: Young voters out to vote for Dems. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Ariana, thanks so much for having.
Speaker 2: Me so explain to us what you do and what
Speaker 2: your organization does.
Speaker 3: I'm the executive director here at next Gen America, which
Speaker 3: is an organization that works primarily on college campuses. So
Speaker 3: we combine year round organizing with issue education, voter registration,
Speaker 3: and get at the vote efforts. I'm really focused on
Speaker 3: building trust and participation over time and not just parachuting
Speaker 3: in election season.
Speaker 2: So what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 3: Forming student clubs on campuses, making sure that we're having
Speaker 3: conversations about the issues long term, not just right when
Speaker 3: it matters, and we are asking them to show up
Speaker 3: at the polls and ensuring we're connecting the dots to
Speaker 3: their everyday lives.
Speaker 2: Give us some of the clubs that your organization starts,
Speaker 2: like what they are, what they're called, etc.
Speaker 3: It's primarily like an organizing tool. We provide the students
Speaker 3: with the opportunity to learn organizing tactics and skills, leadership skills,
Speaker 3: and then we ask them to go out and have
Speaker 3: conversations with their fellow students and discuss just the things
Speaker 3: that are affecting them and connecting the dots and making
Speaker 3: sure that they get registered to vote obviously and that
Speaker 3: they know you know, what dates to show up in.
Speaker 2: Your job, do you talk to a lot of students, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Try to as much as possible. That's the only way
Speaker 3: you can stay relevant, right is to directly speak to
Speaker 3: them about what's concerning.
Speaker 2: Them, what is concerning them. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the Yale and Harvard polls just came out this
Speaker 3: past week. It's pretty much aligned, which is that young
Speaker 3: people think the country is on the wrong track. They
Speaker 3: have high economic insecurity, they have low confidence that they
Speaker 3: will be better off than their parents. Really importantly, trust
Speaker 3: in institutions broadly is very low, but sort of confusingly
Speaker 3: in light of that, support for democracy remains high. So
Speaker 3: you know, we also saw in that pool that there's
Speaker 3: been you know, a drop off and overwhelming disapproval of Trump,
Speaker 3: which is an update to what we had seen previously.
Speaker 3: But ultimately, I mean, what we've learned about young people
Speaker 3: through the course of those polls too, is that because
Speaker 3: of that distrust in institutions, they are responding more to
Speaker 3: concrete policy and issue based you know sort of efforts
Speaker 3: versus partisan branding. So that's something I think we need
Speaker 3: to keep in mind moving forward.
Speaker 1: I'd love you to explain to us we're young people
Speaker 1: more open to trump Ism than previous Republican president.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we have to like take a
Speaker 3: step back and start with what this generation has slipped through. Like,
Speaker 3: if you really nail it down, it's repeated institutional failure. Right,
Speaker 3: There's been school shootings, student debt, housing and stability, climate
Speaker 3: and action. They were basically told, hope, be resilient, wait
Speaker 3: your turn. And I also think at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, they're a generation that's been brought up with
Speaker 3: cell phones in their hands, so they're also extremely fluent
Speaker 3: in you know, marketing performance presentation. So I think you know,
Speaker 3: when they hear polished messaging unlike maybe previous generations, combined
Speaker 3: with a lack of feeling real power, it feels hollow.
Speaker 3: And I think there's been a response to that. But
Speaker 3: I think you know, when it comes to this sort
Speaker 3: of narrative that there's been a right word shift. You know,
Speaker 3: it wasn't proven true in the twenty twenty five elections.
Speaker 3: You know that doesn't really support that story.
Speaker 2: But was it proven true in the twenty four elections.
Speaker 3: I think that's the reason this narrative persists is because, yes,
Speaker 3: I think what we're witnessing is it's volatility. It's not realignment, right,
Speaker 3: So it's essentially saying that they are up for grabs
Speaker 3: and it's up to us to work for it. It's
Speaker 3: not going to be a guarantee. It's not like they
Speaker 3: come over to the Democratic side and they stay there
Speaker 3: because they're leading with issues. I think their participation, their engagement,
Speaker 3: has to be earned, and I think you know what
Speaker 3: we saw obviously the narrative about their being a right
Speaker 3: wood shift. I think specifically with young men, it's more
Speaker 3: in my mind, a cultural one than a political one,
Speaker 3: and there was sort of a gap or a void
Speaker 3: that I think also, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: it's really important to address the fact that this is
Speaker 3: the loneliest generation. We often talk about loneliness as a
Speaker 3: public health crisis, right, which I think is important. It's
Speaker 3: also a political condition in my mind, because you know,
Speaker 3: this is a connected generation. They've had these cell phones
Speaker 3: and the internet, so it's not about access. They have
Speaker 3: access to each other. It's about the absence I think
Speaker 3: of real community. I mean, they also have the conditions
Speaker 3: that were you know, growing up in formative years during COVID,
Speaker 3: where they basically had their social lives put on pause.
Speaker 3: I think that's something that's left, you know, avoid where
Speaker 3: people feel untethered. At the end of the day, people
Speaker 3: who don't feel like they belong somewhere or don't feel
Speaker 3: invested in they are more likely to be targeted.
Speaker 2: For trump ism and extremism.
Speaker 1: Yes, I've talked to people who said there's a disconnect
Speaker 1: that they're sort of like, there's pre pandemic kids and
Speaker 1: post pandemic kids, and the pre pandemic kids tend to
Speaker 1: be a little bit more normally left leaning, and the
Speaker 1: post pandemic kids are angry about school closures and so
Speaker 1: they become more right wing.
Speaker 2: Is that true or not so much?
Speaker 3: I would have to look at the data to make
Speaker 3: a declarative statement on that, just guess. I would guess yes.
Speaker 3: I would also say that we're coming up on a
Speaker 3: generation that they were not necessarily politically aware during Trump's
Speaker 3: first term, right. So I think the other thing, too,
Speaker 3: is that we were trying to message to folks who
Speaker 3: hadn't experienced any of those realities in their day to
Speaker 3: day or necessarily when they were independently sort of operating,
Speaker 3: expecting them to understand those implications too. So I think
Speaker 3: there's an element there of, you know, education that wasn't
Speaker 3: focused on providing them with an alternative, that was focused
Speaker 3: on the issues that matter to them.
Speaker 1: So you have kids who were mad about school closures
Speaker 1: and they voted for Trump or they became right leaning.
Speaker 1: They saw them on the podcast as they bought the sneakers,
Speaker 1: they like the crypto. You think that group still exists
Speaker 1: or you think they've sort of dissipated because like we've
Speaker 1: seen Trump people like the Barstool Sports guy, Like we've
Speaker 1: seen those people express some regret. So do you think
Speaker 1: that is fanning out to include other young people or.
Speaker 3: Now for sure. I mean, I think this was definitely
Speaker 3: highlighted in both the Harvard and Yale polls. The support
Speaker 3: for Trump among young people dropped significantly. I think the
Speaker 3: problem is that that doesn't automatically translate into loyalty to
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party. So it just tells us that they're
Speaker 3: you know, it's not that necessarily that they're vaulting to
Speaker 3: the other team, but they're just I think, withholding trust altogether.
Speaker 2: Isn't everyone like that?
Speaker 1: I understand that Democrats can take those candidates for granted.
Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying, but I also just wonder, like,
Speaker 1: aren't all voters basically you get them for a little
Speaker 1: bit and then they leave you if you don't do
Speaker 1: what they want you to do.
Speaker 3: I mean, I would say yes, but I think there's
Speaker 3: been sort of a sense that there are certain demographics
Speaker 3: blocks that are taken for granted. I mean, I think
Speaker 3: ultimately you look at, for instance, millennials. You know, there
Speaker 3: was a reason that there were books written in the
Speaker 3: Obama era that essentially claimed Democrats were going to have
Speaker 3: success for the next couple of decades. Right. The reality
Speaker 3: is is, I think this is also a generation we
Speaker 3: can't also divorce the reality that this is a generation
Speaker 3: that's consuming differently, meaning like they're a completely fractured media environment.
Speaker 3: There's no more shared collective truth. There's all of these elements,
Speaker 3: you know, coming at play, hitting together at a perfect
Speaker 3: storm that just makes them a unique block that I
Speaker 3: don't think we've dealt with before.
Speaker 2: Frankly, how do you see that fragmenting in the poem line?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's about like where people are
Speaker 3: getting their information. I think it's also you know, this
Speaker 3: is where the right wing sort of where we talk
Speaker 3: about the manisphere, we talk about the channels of cultural
Speaker 3: communication that the writs had success in. There was a
Speaker 3: void essentially there, and it was a place that you know,
Speaker 3: was meeting them where they were. So I think it's
Speaker 3: also a question of just making sure that we're not
Speaker 3: behind the ball on finding where they are and meeting
Speaker 3: them there.
Speaker 2: I think that's right.
Speaker 1: But then if you're in a situation like this where
Speaker 1: you have Trump has advertised to make things cheaper, things
Speaker 1: are not cheaper, things are more expensive. You read a
Speaker 1: conservative news source that tells you, so you're a Fox newsperson,
Speaker 1: but things are more expensive and you were told Trump
Speaker 1: was going to make things cheaper at some point, don't.
Speaker 2: You lose the faith?
Speaker 1: Like readers are not idiots, right, don't they eventually pick
Speaker 1: that put that together?
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, they're feeling the reality that you mentioned. I mean,
Speaker 3: like you can only talking points yourself out of the
Speaker 3: economic reality that they're facing right now. So much right
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, the bank account doesn't lie.
Speaker 3: The talking points might, but I think folks are feeling
Speaker 3: that in a real way where again there isn't as
Speaker 3: much loyalty built up where they're going to stick around
Speaker 3: to be told that the sky is green when it
Speaker 3: is blue.
Speaker 1: Do you think that works for Democrats advantage? Does that
Speaker 1: work for like a truth advantage? Do you think it
Speaker 1: has no effect?
Speaker 3: I mean, I think young people are smart, right, Like,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, we have to treat them,
Speaker 3: you know, with respect that they are intelligent enough to
Speaker 3: see when there is one thing being said and one
Speaker 3: thing actually happening. And I think that you know, this
Speaker 3: is kind of why the approach with us is. You know,
Speaker 3: the lesson I get out of all of this is like,
Speaker 3: it's not about us having better slogans or ads. It's
Speaker 3: about just speaking plainly, naming the problem and inviting them
Speaker 3: into the work, because I think again, part of the
Speaker 3: issue that we're having right now is that people fight
Speaker 3: harder for something that they help build rather than something
Speaker 3: that they're sold. And they also don't need to be
Speaker 3: convinced that things are broken. I think part of our
Speaker 3: messaging has been focused on the brokenness. They very much
Speaker 3: are experiencing that, and they already know it. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the things they're desperate for is
Speaker 3: getting a sense to whether they'll be let in to
Speaker 3: help fix it and accounted for in the discussions about
Speaker 3: how to help fix it. But I mean, I think
Speaker 3: this is an opportunity for Democrats, honestly. I think that
Speaker 3: you know, obviously, when it comes to the economics of
Speaker 3: it all, the plan that will be most beneficial to
Speaker 3: young people will be on that side. It's just a
Speaker 3: question of having a direct, not sleek, heavily produced discussion
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 1: When you talk to these kids, what do they say, like,
Speaker 1: what do they care about? Do you feel like the
Speaker 1: polling is reflective?
Speaker 3: The polling is definitely reflective of what their top concerns are.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the economy at the very top, affordability,
Speaker 3: minimum wage, you know, obviously, and there are still other
Speaker 3: sort of more what you would probably call cultural issues,
Speaker 3: like they're obviously reproductive care, free speech. But I mean,
Speaker 3: I think at the end of the day, the biggest
Speaker 3: thing they're focused on right now, and I think the
Speaker 3: thing that is giving folks the most anxiety is the
Speaker 3: economic reality that they're about to step into.
Speaker 2: Do you think they equate that.
Speaker 3: I think twenty twenty five proofs that they are beginning
Speaker 3: to CNN up those stops.
Speaker 1: It seems like women never really went maga with the
Speaker 1: same speed that men did.
Speaker 2: I love you to talk us through that.
Speaker 3: I think this is one of the things I get
Speaker 3: concerned about when the narrative is primarily focused on the
Speaker 3: young men that have been a pendulum swing now once
Speaker 3: in twenty four and back again in twenty five, is
Speaker 3: that it leaves out a very important block of folks
Speaker 3: who've kept us afloat, which is young women who have
Speaker 3: been loyal to the party and consistently shown up. So
Speaker 3: I also want to make sure that in the course
Speaker 3: of whatever happen next, we don't forget to speak with
Speaker 3: them directly and continue to earn their votes as well.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, young women did not have the same
Speaker 3: reaction as the young men did.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Did they seem much more activated, these young people
Speaker 1: than they did a year ago? And if so, are
Speaker 1: they doing more political activation?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I think one of the reasons why, like Next
Speaker 3: Gen continues to go on campus. I mean, obviously there's
Speaker 3: a lot that we can do, particularly with this group
Speaker 3: of folks online, and that's an important arm or element
Speaker 3: of this. And you know, algorithms are really good at
Speaker 3: mobilizing attention in the attention economy, but they're not as
Speaker 3: good at building trust. You know, organizing creates real world community,
Speaker 3: which again I think a lot of these folks are
Speaker 3: lacking in the current climate, you know, the most lonely generation, right,
Speaker 3: So that isolation again makes them more vulnerable to you know,
Speaker 3: greevance politics, conspiracies, whatever it may be. So the goal
Speaker 3: of having this in person community building is to also
Speaker 3: provide them with a space to socialize. I mean, this
Speaker 3: was one of the in my I mind, one of
Speaker 3: the biggest benefits of the Mandani campaign. And there was
Speaker 3: a great New York Times article about this where they
Speaker 3: wrote about how it became a social tool, not just
Speaker 3: a political one. And I saw the same thing I
Speaker 3: worked on. Bernie saw the same thing. People weren't just
Speaker 3: showing up to canvas. They need friends. They found purpose,
Speaker 3: They experienced what collective action actually feels like, which if
Speaker 3: you've never experienced it, you can't imagine getting things done
Speaker 3: collectively right, collective action, So you know, it wasn't just
Speaker 3: asking for something, it was providing something and giving them something,
Speaker 3: which I feel like is extremely important. And building that
Speaker 3: bridge and giving them those social tools in social spaces
Speaker 3: as well is really important, just because again it's if
Speaker 3: we call it a public health crisis, we should also
Speaker 3: be addressing that when we're talking about young people as well.
Speaker 2: When you're interfacing with these kids, like, what are the
Speaker 2: things they want? What are the things there besides jobs?
Speaker 3: Well, yes, jobs, but a seated at the table. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think that's number one, right when it comes to
Speaker 3: agency over their own future. I mean, I think at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, they're working with them and
Speaker 3: not working on them would probably be one of the
Speaker 3: things I would recommend and that they are looking for.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean it's jobs. It's those jobs having
Speaker 3: wages that are going to actually provide them with what
Speaker 3: they need in dignity and a stable life. A lot
Speaker 3: of these folks. I mean, like, you know, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of young people that take care of family members
Speaker 3: that are you know, sick or not able to take
Speaker 3: care of themselves. Affects their perspective on healthcare, you know,
Speaker 3: even the things that you don't think necessarily affect them
Speaker 3: in college at the time, for instance, healthcare they can
Speaker 3: stand their parents potentially until they're twenty six, but that's
Speaker 3: not necessarily the lived reality for a lot of these people.
Speaker 3: So I would say at the forefront right now, it's
Speaker 3: you know, economics of jobs, but I would say there's
Speaker 3: also an element here of accountability. I think there's a
Speaker 3: big desire for accountability across the board, and I think
Speaker 3: that's across you know, all age demos right now, as
Speaker 3: folks are looking for, you know, people to be held accountable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, accountability. Does that mean like Democrats need to prosecute
Speaker 1: the Trumpers.
Speaker 3: I've been more at a basic level, it's they've gotten
Speaker 3: a lot of promises made to them and then have
Speaker 3: not seen the materialize, and then are being asked to
Speaker 3: get on board and continue to support right. I think
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. That's another factor that
Speaker 3: we have to be honest with ourselves about, is there's
Speaker 3: an element there of if folks are not delivering, there
Speaker 3: should also be accountability. I mean, I think across the
Speaker 3: board there is a sort of lawlessness that it feels
Speaker 3: like is happening right now.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you so much, Aana, thank
Speaker 1: you really appreciate it. We have exciting news over on
Speaker 1: our YouTube channel. The second episode from our Project twenty
Speaker 1: twenty nine.
Speaker 2: Series is out now. It's a reimagining where we examine
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Speaker 1: The first episode dove into the very sexy topic of
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Speaker 1: Gil Duran is a contributor to The New Republican the
Speaker 1: author of the newsletter and upcoming book The nerd Reich.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Gil, thanks for having me. Your
Speaker 2: book is called The nerd Reich.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about these guys I feel like NonStop,
Speaker 1: but also not in the kind of depth we probably
Speaker 1: need to be. So get me going on how you
Speaker 1: started this book, where you got when you started.
Speaker 2: At what was the moment?
Speaker 4: Well, my book will be published in August twenty twenty six,
Speaker 4: but it's based on work I've been doing over the
Speaker 4: past year and a half looking at how a cult
Speaker 4: of venture capitalists has become completely radicalized into an anti
Speaker 4: American ideology that calls for the creation of these weird,
Speaker 4: little corporate run territories around the world that some call
Speaker 4: network states. People have talked about the Dark Enlightenment, the
Speaker 4: whole Curtis Jarvin ideology.
Speaker 5: And they've talked about the neo reactionary movement.
Speaker 4: The network state is a part of that, and it's
Speaker 4: sort of like the business plan for making it a reality.
Speaker 4: I started working on it in San Francisco because three
Speaker 4: years ago I was the editorial page editor of the
Speaker 4: San Francisco Examiner, and I noticed that there was this
Speaker 4: strange sort of right wing radicalization taking place among the
Speaker 4: venture capitalists in our city who were partnering with Republicans
Speaker 4: to fund these recall elections, most of which were wholly unnecessary,
Speaker 4: but they really kind of created this whole panic in
Speaker 4: San Francisco among the voters around the need to save
Speaker 4: San Francisco from a doom loop that was being driven
Speaker 4: by liberal progressive policy. It didn't make a whole lot
Speaker 4: of sense, and it was there that I first got
Speaker 4: the inkling that there was something going on that was weird,
Speaker 4: that didn't make sense. Because I've spent most of my
Speaker 4: career in democratic politics. I know what democrats sound like,
Speaker 4: I know what they believe. These guys were not Democrats.
Speaker 4: They were something else, say, as they say in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 4: a worse third thing.
Speaker 2: This is very interesting because I thought you were going
Speaker 2: to go to like recall actions et cetera. But you're
Speaker 2: actually saying that the group that they were rallying against
Speaker 2: weren't actually Democrats, they were something else.
Speaker 4: Oh No, the group they were rallying against were Democrats.
Speaker 4: The guys who were pushing the recall, one of whom
Speaker 4: was David Sachs, Yes, the Other worlds favorite, Yeah, Gary
Speaker 4: tannet y combinator. They were pushing these ideas. For instance,
Speaker 4: they really demonized Chase A. Boudin, the district attorney, who
Speaker 4: hadn't really done anything wrong. He'd barely been in office
Speaker 4: less than a year, but they pick on one or
Speaker 4: two crimes that happened. And by the way, crime is
Speaker 4: always happening in a city. There's always going to be
Speaker 4: a crime, or so he was prosecuting these crimes, but
Speaker 4: they created the sort of more or panic, we have
Speaker 4: to get rid of this guy. And one of the
Speaker 4: things they were calling for was basically a return to
Speaker 4: mass incarceration policies, which California had largely abandoned ten years
Speaker 4: earlier as part of an era of reform. And the
Speaker 4: people pushing that reform were not Chase A. Boudin, who
Speaker 4: was still in law school at the time. It was
Speaker 4: Jerry Brown, it was Gavin Newsom, it was mainstream Democrats.
Speaker 4: And so the line they were pushing that we need
Speaker 4: to go back toward harsh policies was clearly right wing,
Speaker 4: was clearly out.
Speaker 5: Of step with mainstream democratic policies.
Speaker 4: But what really clued me in was that Gary tan
Speaker 4: who's the CEO of y Combinator, former employee, early employee
Speaker 4: of Palenteer, the guy who designed the Paleteer logo. And
Speaker 4: I didn't know all this at the time, by the way,
Speaker 4: I was very wet behind the ears, didn't know who
Speaker 4: these guys were, just knew there was something weird. He
Speaker 4: kept talking about something called the network state, And when
Speaker 4: I finally looked into that, because this local activist kept
Speaker 4: pushing me to do it, I realized that that was
Speaker 4: sort of the key to understanding this entire body of
Speaker 4: radical thought that was emerging as a force in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: So let's start by talking about the recollections, because it's
Speaker 2: so interesting that that is sort of where David Sachs
Speaker 2: got involved in politics. Is that where David Sacks got
Speaker 2: involved in politics?
Speaker 4: He's always been involved to some degree. Early on at
Speaker 4: Stanford he wrote a book with Peter Teale that diversity myth,
Speaker 4: so he was always trying to position himself as some
Speaker 4: kind of pundit or political type. But it was in
Speaker 4: San Francisco during the recall fever, and even before San
Speaker 4: Francisco actually, you know, remember there was a recall of
Speaker 4: Gavin Newsom because he ate dinner at the French Laundry,
Speaker 4: and this galvanized people who were against the COVID.
Speaker 2: Shutdowns, even though it didn't work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, SAX had put money into that, a lot
Speaker 4: of money, which was stupid because anybody familiar with politics
Speaker 4: knew that the polls showed that thing was going down
Speaker 4: in flames. It was great for the media to play
Speaker 4: it up. It was really humiliating for Newsom, but it
Speaker 4: wasn't gonna win. What it did, though, was it normalized
Speaker 4: the ideas that were, if we're unhappy with our politicians,
Speaker 4: we should recall them. And that had a lot more
Speaker 4: luck in San Francisco, where a movement had sprang up
Speaker 4: to spread panic over everyday crimes and problems in the
Speaker 4: city and to blame four particular elected officials and remove
Speaker 4: them from office, which succeeded. But they're still crime and
Speaker 4: they're still homelesses in San Francisco, but there's nobody paying
Speaker 4: everybody to scream about it all the time. Now now
Speaker 4: they claim it's sort of everything's better, even if it's not.
Speaker 4: And that's kind of how it works. If you have
Speaker 4: enough billionaires show up and make everybody upset and call
Speaker 4: for people's heads, it'll work.
Speaker 5: And if in the absence of that kind of mechanism.
Speaker 4: So what you had was these venture capitalists becoming the
Speaker 4: loudest voices in San Francisco politics and sort of emulating
Speaker 4: Elon Musk in a way, like being angry, being loud,
Speaker 4: calling for people to be pushed out of office, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Did they emulate him or did he emulate them?
Speaker 4: It seemed to me like he was emulating them, because
Speaker 4: I was in Sacramento during the pandemic and got to
Speaker 4: watch Elon's radicalization into anti government and control in real time,
Speaker 4: and suddenly it seemed like once I got to San Francisco,
Speaker 4: all of these guys had become Elon, Like they were
Speaker 4: all using their money and their Twitter accounts to sow discord,
Speaker 4: spread and really pushed these right wing ideas. So that
Speaker 4: was what clued me in when I was writing about
Speaker 4: this last year, I thought this would be a threat
Speaker 4: maybe four or five years down the road. I was like,
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley's doing this thing where they're going to try
Speaker 4: to take over politics. We just saw them do this
Speaker 4: in San Francisco, where they were partially successful, partially not successful.
Speaker 4: Successful enough, however, and unfortunately what happened was Vance got
Speaker 4: on the ticket, and then I realized, wait, Vance is
Speaker 4: one of them. And I wrote an early story that
Speaker 4: tied Vance to Curtis Jarvin to Peter Tiel explained how
Speaker 4: Vance had been quoting Jarvin and Lo and behold here
Speaker 4: we are. I feel like last year people looked at
Speaker 4: me kind of strangely, like why is Gill going down
Speaker 4: this deep rabbit hole and freaking out about Silicon Valley. Now,
Speaker 4: I think everyone's caught up with the early signs of
Speaker 4: what we were seeing, and I wish I had been
Speaker 4: wrong about it. But I think that the radicalization we're
Speaker 4: seeing is only just the beginning. We're not even a
Speaker 4: year into this. They have a lot worse plans to
Speaker 4: try to put in place here.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean they have a lot worse plans,
Speaker 1: And in fact, I want to go back for a
Speaker 1: minute about San Francisco. So where does David Laurie, the
Speaker 1: new mayor, figure into all of that?
Speaker 2: Is he a product of that or not really?
Speaker 1: Because you guys keep having new mayors just for people
Speaker 1: who are not completely read in on San Francisco politics
Speaker 1: San Francisco, you keep having the voters of San Francisco
Speaker 1: reject the mayor.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, we had London Reed before and she was
Speaker 4: in there for a while, but she largely got caught
Speaker 4: up in that rejection cycle. They you know, they got
Speaker 4: rid of three members of the school board, they got
Speaker 4: rid of the DA. I thought at the time it
Speaker 4: was foolish for Breed to support the recalls, which she
Speaker 4: pretty much did, because, in my experience, is the mayor
Speaker 4: who's going to get blamed for everything in the city.
Speaker 4: That was another weird thing about this. Never, in my
Speaker 4: entire experience working in politics for over a decade, has
Speaker 4: anyone ever blamed the DA for anything happening in the city.
Speaker 4: That was an entirely new thing they made up. So
Speaker 4: Breed ends up losing her election despite trying to appease
Speaker 4: these tech guys, pivoting completely one pin eighty against her
Speaker 4: previous position. She had been a real champion for harm
Speaker 4: reduction in dealing with the opioid over those crisis, which
Speaker 4: we know from data and research is the only thing
Speaker 4: that really works the same life and give people off drugs.
Speaker 4: And she completely flipped to being let's lock them up.
Speaker 4: We're going to put him in jail. It was really
Speaker 4: disturbing to watch someone flip so completely. So Lurie was
Speaker 4: not the chosen candidate of these tech guys. They wanted
Speaker 4: Breed to win because she had shown she would completely
Speaker 4: do what they wanted, but luri kind of came out
Speaker 4: of nowhere. Unfortunately, he seems to be following in Breed's
Speaker 4: footsteps by catering to these guys. For instance, Luriy, who
Speaker 4: you know claims to have some progressive bona fides, comes
Speaker 4: from philanthropy, won't criticize Trump. He's decided that his response
Speaker 4: is the mayor of San Francisco in an unprecedented era
Speaker 4: of fascism, is to just be quiet and not have
Speaker 4: any opinion on what's happening nationally. At the same time,
Speaker 4: he's pursuing a lot of the policies these tech guys
Speaker 4: called for, like using jail sales and threats to crack
Speaker 4: down on drug overdose addiction, which nothing has been tried
Speaker 4: more than these failed tactics in San Francisco. You know,
Speaker 4: I wrote a column with the Examiner going back sixty years.
Speaker 4: Everyone's always cracking down on the tenderloin. Everyone's always about
Speaker 4: to clean it all up, and it just never happens
Speaker 4: because they try these failed things. So Lurie, I don't know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't have much experience. It's only a year in
Speaker 4: People seem happy so far. I think they're kind of
Speaker 4: tired of rejecting the politicians for a minute. But give
Speaker 4: them another year or two. All it takes is one
Speaker 4: big crime or another surgeon homelessness, and everyone will be
Speaker 4: searching for the new strongman to clear up the problem
Speaker 4: with magical fake solutions.
Speaker 1: So basically, tech bros have sort of taken over the
Speaker 1: government by using money and as a sort of carrot
Speaker 1: stick on I mean the local government sort of.
Speaker 4: They had some success, but San Francisco is a very
Speaker 4: hard place to try to control. People have their own ideas.
Speaker 4: For example, one of the people who got put into
Speaker 4: office was a guy named Joel Ingardio, who was one
Speaker 4: of these pro tech guy types. But then he took
Speaker 4: a position that pissed off the voters. He closed this
Speaker 4: great highway on the western edge of San Francisco to
Speaker 4: create a park. He voted for this thing, supported it,
Speaker 4: and he just got recalled from office and they were
Speaker 4: very upset by that. And now there's a more progressive
Speaker 4: person in there. So it's an ever shifting situation. You
Speaker 4: can't just ever just get control all at once, and
Speaker 4: the voters are can be very fickle. And also the
Speaker 4: block of people who ousted in Guardio or people who
Speaker 4: voted for the recalls, so it's the same group of voters,
Speaker 4: and that's what the tech rows are discovering. Actually, politics
Speaker 4: is a little complicated and complex, and it's never over,
Speaker 4: and you could just make one mistake and suddenly you
Speaker 4: lose a whole part of your base. And so they're
Speaker 4: not as smart as they think they are. So I
Speaker 4: wouldn't give them credit for having all control. They had
Speaker 4: a victory, and they're learning the hard way that it's
Speaker 4: not so simple. The other big lesson they would learn
Speaker 4: if they get capture all control is that now you're
Speaker 4: responsible for all the problems which will continue to manifest.
Speaker 4: You know, every politician runs to clean everything up and
Speaker 4: it never gets all cleaned up somehow.
Speaker 1: That's sort of the micro But then they have these
Speaker 1: sort of macro plans, these larger plans for authoritarianism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that gets us back to the network state idea.
Speaker 4: And the network state idea was developed by An andresen Horowitz,
Speaker 4: former general partner who was also the former chief technology
Speaker 4: officer of Coinbase, a guy named Bologistrina vasen.
Speaker 2: Oh I know who he is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he came with this idea that democracy's done and
Speaker 4: we need to prepare for what comes after it. The
Speaker 4: United States is an outdated software system and we need
Speaker 4: a new government style for the twenty first century. And
Speaker 4: the network state is this idea that tech oligarchs should
Speaker 4: use their wealth and their influence to a takeover existing
Speaker 4: governments where they can and b create these new territories
Speaker 4: all over the country and the world where they will
Speaker 4: be free of regulation, free of law, free of taxation,
Speaker 4: free of democracy, where they can start their own countries.
Speaker 4: And in Bilogi's homespun theory, this is going to become
Speaker 4: the new governing model after the United States collapses in
Speaker 4: the twenty first century. These networked states run by tech
Speaker 4: oligarchs that will not be democracies, will be the new
Speaker 4: superpower in the world. Now, it's a Kakamami theory in
Speaker 4: many ways, but over half a billion dollars allegedly has
Speaker 4: been invested in creating these things, with investment from people
Speaker 4: like Sam Altman, Teal Mark Andresen and a whole coterie
Speaker 4: of interrelated venture capitalists who definitely seem to see this
Speaker 4: as applausible alternative to reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is this all just pie in the sky or
Speaker 1: do any of these people have sort of have they
Speaker 1: made moves to make this real? I mean, obviously in
Speaker 1: San Francisco they make you real.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, there's one place in Honduras called Prospera that's pretty
Speaker 4: famous on the island of Rotan, and it was kind
Speaker 4: of put in place during a point in Honduras's democracy
Speaker 4: was under great challenge. There was a president Juan Orlando Fernandez,
Speaker 4: who was very supportive of the creation of his thing.
Speaker 4: Gave these tech bros this zone where they can conduct
Speaker 4: unregulated medical experimentation and treatments and things like that. And
Speaker 4: this is the drug trafficking ex president who Trump just pardoned,
Speaker 4: which raised questions about whether these tech guys had something
Speaker 4: to do with it. I'm not sure if they did,
Speaker 4: but Roger Stone, in a memo supporting the pardon, said
Speaker 4: that we can save this freedom city. That's what they're
Speaker 4: calling these things, freedom cities. There's also plans to build
Speaker 4: something called Praxis, a I think, a city of half
Speaker 4: a million somewhere. It was going to be in the Mediterranean,
Speaker 4: there was going to be in Greenland, that it was
Speaker 4: going to be in Santa Barbara than it was going
Speaker 4: to be now they're in South Africa looking around. But
Speaker 4: that guy Dryden Brown claims to have five hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty five million dollars in financing to do this, so
Speaker 4: there does seem to be a move toward making it real.
Speaker 4: The more important part for us, though, is that Trump
Speaker 4: in his campaign plan for twenty twenty four, had a
Speaker 4: plan to build ten so called freedom cities. These would
Speaker 4: be zones that would be given to corporations on federal
Speaker 4: land to build these new regulation free zones. And this
Speaker 4: is exactly how of the Network State playbook to start
Speaker 4: creating these zones that over time can negotiate for sovereignty
Speaker 4: from their host government. And if you look around, this
Speaker 4: is happening in Canada it's happening in the UK and England.
Speaker 4: There's this rush of investors, inventor capitalists to create zones
Speaker 4: where they don't have to play by the rules of democracy.
Speaker 4: At a time when democracies are challenged and when the
Speaker 4: wealth inequality is spiraling out of control, they want. They
Speaker 4: call it exit, like you would exit a company after
Speaker 4: you get enough out of it, like brexit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's their own version of Brexit's the texit.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: They want to get out. We got our money, we
Speaker 4: want to get out and do our own thing. There's
Speaker 4: no reason why we should be connected to you.
Speaker 5: You're going to fail.
Speaker 4: That's their attitude, and it's pretty shocking to see them
Speaker 4: say it out loud. But Bolasystring of Austin's written a
Speaker 4: whole book about this, and you can read it online
Speaker 4: for free.
Speaker 5: It's called The Network State.
Speaker 4: There's even a one sentence version of it, so if
Speaker 4: any of this sounds crazy, you can look it up yourself.
Speaker 4: And that book's been praised by Mark Andriesen and Brian Armstrong,
Speaker 4: the CEO of Coinbase and novel Rabicon. To billionaire investor,
Speaker 4: I mean, these are crazy ideas, but when you have
Speaker 4: billionaires backing them, they become threateningly dangerous and real.
Speaker 2: Right, And also they've had some success with Vance.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about I mean, they put one of
Speaker 1: their guys in as vice president.
Speaker 5: Right, definitely. JD.
Speaker 4: Vance is almost entirely a creation of Peter tel. Ever
Speaker 4: since he got out of law school, his whole career
Speaker 4: has pretty much been supported, funded, bankrolled by Peter Til.
Speaker 4: He became a venture capitalist for a few years, was
Speaker 4: pretty lackluster at that, didn't really do anything massive. And
Speaker 4: then when he decided to run for office, he was
Speaker 4: bankrolled by Peter TiO, who's spent fifteen million dollars to
Speaker 4: get him elected and also made peace between Vance and
Speaker 4: Trump because Vance had previously referred to Trump as America's
Speaker 4: hitler and as an opioid and as someone who's morally
Speaker 4: unfit to hold office, and that's sort of his origin story.
Speaker 4: They got one of their own guys in office, somebody
Speaker 4: who quotes Curtis Jarvin approvingly. Jarbin's idea of purging the
Speaker 4: government and making it into an authoritarian system that serves
Speaker 4: the dictator. Yeah, it's pretty horrifying. And people didn't really
Speaker 4: write about that last year, and they didn't write about
Speaker 4: it until this year, which is shocking because people should
Speaker 4: have known about that before the election. I feel like
Speaker 4: if Curtis Jarvin was black and Kamala Harris was quoting him,
Speaker 4: we would have heard about it NonStop until she was
Speaker 4: pushed off the ticket. It would have been a national,
Speaker 4: international scandal. But Vance just completely skated on that. It's
Speaker 4: pretty shocking.
Speaker 2: I wonder if you could just tell us sort of
Speaker 2: what you think, if you're a person listening to this
Speaker 2: and you're horrified, what you would say they should do.
Speaker 4: Become more aware of this stuff, and I'd say, urge
Speaker 4: your politicians to start speaking out against the radicalization of
Speaker 4: the Silicon Valley. One of the problems we have is
Speaker 4: that politicians won't take these guys on. Everyone's afraid of
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley or worse, they want the billionaire money for
Speaker 4: their campaigns. For a long time, Democrats have told themselves
Speaker 4: a story that Silicon Valley is about innovation and it's
Speaker 4: about the future, and we really need them.
Speaker 5: That has changed.
Speaker 4: Silicon Valley right now is mostly about fascism until further notice,
Speaker 4: and if the politicians won't speak out against it, people
Speaker 4: won't become more aware of it. What's happening is that
Speaker 4: there is a growing awareness. The Financial Times did a
Speaker 4: big story over the weekend about the network state plans
Speaker 4: and the trying to build these cities, and it seems
Speaker 4: like the I did a little sentiment analysis, people are
Speaker 4: mostly horrified and shocked by this, and online some of
Speaker 4: the people who are involved in it, like Paulsishrina Boston,
Speaker 4: have been in a bit of a panic and they're
Speaker 4: afraid there's going to be a backlash to tech and
Speaker 4: it's crazy plans. So everything we can do to encourage
Speaker 4: that backlash is very important because a lot of politics
Speaker 4: of psychological warfare, and I feel like a lot of
Speaker 4: people have been feeling like it's over, We're a fascist country,
Speaker 4: nothing we can do. That's not true at all. Trump
Speaker 4: is failing. His poll numbers are thinking he doesn't have
Speaker 4: the guts to go full authoritarian, even though some of
Speaker 4: these tech bros are urging him to do that. And
Speaker 4: the more we can scare them into realizing they're going
Speaker 4: to fail and they should be afraid of consequences, the
Speaker 4: better off will be. So urge your politicians to talk
Speaker 4: about it, Urge your favorite journalists to write about it.
Speaker 4: People need to understand the degree to which tech fascism
Speaker 4: is guiding the Trump project right now. It's a crucial
Speaker 4: partner with this destructive attack on our democracy, and we
Speaker 4: can't let it slide.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, I think that's really important. Thank you, Gil,
Speaker 2: Thank you.
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