One must not be so cowardly as to deny that materials and technology can be misused or deny that their purpose is of oppression for fear of being attacked by group-thinkers.
"The unexamined life is not worth living" as Socrates put it. So, I invite you not play the usual game of narrowly looking at a single if statement and conclude "there's nothing political in this"; but rather look at the bigger picture... the asymmetry in access to information, resources, weapons, and how that impacts everyone's lives...
If we don't admit that there's a couple dozen people with immeasurable wealth and resources who have questionable intentions and opinions that affect our day-to-day lives, then we won't be able to prevent worse outcomes in a timely manner.
A lot of the uber-nerds are just regular nerds who got lucky, not part of some evil genius cabal. By all means keep an eye on them but I think for the most part they are regular people.
anyone can be evil, anyone can be good, anyone can be both even on the same day or be seen as one contemporarily and the other historically
so perhaps painting specific groups of people as the incarnation of pure evil is not a good idea
unless you're trying to sell a book or get ad revenue
Everyone usually has this stance by default until they think some batshit crazy redlines have been crossed regardless of what end of the political spectrum they reside in and decide to adopt an "us vs them, hope for peace, prepare for war" approach.
I'm sure you have some "if they actually do <xyz> then I'll adopt a more alarmed stance" line in the sand, it's just drawn at a different point probably. That's why it's best to talk specifics of the case instead of declaring an abstract high-road stance.
As a nerd running a startup, I dislike the tendency of many journalists to blanket blame “nerds” for the behavior of nutjobs like Musk. It’s pure “us vs them” thinking, blaming the group for the behavior of a few.
> There is a war between those who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't
- Leonard Cohen, 1974
I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.
a lot of us nerds value physical strength, it's 2025, we're not mouthbreathers anymore.
Well, we can't completely prove that...[0]
Sure, I don't disagree. I just put that in to prevent people from claiming he was a jock now because of that (which would clearly be absurd).
(Who wrote all those 80s movies? Bookworms! Who acted in them? Theater kids!)
My dad died from a heart attack in his fourties and my mom only has 30% lung capacity left thanks to smoking.
Your health always catches up with you and it's better to prevent trouble.
His driving interest was always games (master standard in chess at 13, five-time winner of the all-round world board games championship, video game programmer in his teens then his own studio in his 20s).
He's the end game boss of nerdland.
The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'
Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.
Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".
Though I'm curious what the take of "founders first" type of VCs like YC on the Figma IPO is, after the acquisition by Adobe was blocked. Whatever the stock price of Figma is now, would they specifically argue that of the two outcomes the Figma IPO was worse for the founders? To be clear, if that acquisition wasn't blocked the IPO wouldn't have happened.
If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?
Edit: Oh, wow, mentioning this guy is surely controversial, sorry. However discussing whether he is a nerd, understands engineering on very deep level/gets his hands dirty OR he only manages people - there must be some psychological aspect related, a form of disagreement to discredit or have a hard time believing it can actually be true.
Here is a list of credible persons commenting on Musk whether he understands engineering or not. With all the sources: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...
And possibly a genuine obsession with (rightwing-ish) meme/youth culture, which I think got him a lot of his initial followers on twitter/reddit/4chan/etc.
Smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is. Not good with anything interpersonal. Flair for the dramatic (and dad jokes) at the expense of those working with him.
Spoiler: He is not. But he is very good at faking it.
Anytime he tries to give a serious opinion on anything related to computers: It is laughably bad and out of touch (SQL, compilers, languages, performance, etc... ).
He definitively has a scientific background but definitively not "Tech" as far as computer are concerned.
To be honest, I’m actually interested in this hypothesis: is he legitimately skilled/knowledgeable, or is he indeed faking it? And for either side I would like to see evidence. This question is interesting to me because some of his companies have made substantial contributions to pushing the frontier of technology (reusable landing, high launch cadence, electric cars, energy).
If he is really faking it, that might even be good, because the success of his companies might be replicable and could continue without him. But what if he is not?
On a domain side to nerdery: video games. There is zero doubt he is faking it entirely.
The streams he publishes on game like PoE or Elden Ring, have been long commented on online boards
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/1hwe0id/elo...
And honestly, I can understand it entirely.
He has a public image of "geek/need hero" that is honestly inspiring. And that benefits him a lot because it bring people to trust his decisions. He has all the interest of the world to maintain this image.
People he hired for these companies made contributions.
(Subtle things, like huge firetrucks parked straight across the road.)
The AI isn't good enough. I'm starting to suspect that current ML learning rates can't be good enough in reasonable wall-clock timeframes due to how long it takes between relevant examples for them to learn from.
It's fine to lean on other sensory modalities (including LIDAR, radar, ultrasound, whatever else you fancy) until the AI gets good enough.
I think it's fair to say he at least was a nerd. He was a dweeb getting beaten up in school, burying himself in books and computers at home. His skills are doubtlessly outdated now, but does that really mean much? Woz's skills (which to be perfectly clear, outclassed Musk's by miles) are doubtlessly out of date now too, but nobody would say Woz isn't a nerd.
I think the part where he grew into an unstable dirtbag might be influencing the way people see him now. Saying that is is, or at least was, a genuine nerd shouldn't be seen as any sort of excuse for his scamming, lying, etc.
I do believe he read a lot of sci-fi in his youth, if only because that would fit the pattern of a young boy who doesn't get along well with their peers and turns towards solitary pursuits like computer programming. He seems exactly the sort to have read lots of Heinlein.
The only real crimes are reading/writing someone's brain without permission (at which point others may call you names and stop inviting you to social events) or destroying a consciousness without backups (where you'll get permanent supervision to make sure you don't do it again). Most biological citizens have a full-brain computer interface for backups and general fun, called a "neural lace".
The AI Minds in charge of everything give themselves fanciful names, which Musk has used for his SpaceX drone ships.
For the reverse:
Almost every biological citizen is gender-fluid, can change physical gender by willing it, and there's a certain expectation that you try things both ways around so you know how to be a good lover. They dislike explosive population growth regardless of if it's organic or machine reproduction, and as everyone can get pregnant if they want to (because everyone can be a woman if they want to and it all works), it's considered quite scandalous to have more than one child.
It's sufficiently post-scarcity that money is considered a sign of poverty. They mostly avoid colonising planets, instead living on ships, or on habitats so large that if one was located at any Earth-Sun Lagrange point (including the one on the far side of the sun), we could see it.
Martin Eberhard was the technical co-founder of Tesla and Elon Musk is trying his best to erase his contributions to Tesla.
Eberhard wasn't that technical and was the CEO in the early years.
But that has nothing to do with the valley chips and computer nerdery
Just a savvy investor, and as far as I understand, hasn't really worked on any of it. His contributions were rants until he just took ketamine.
His work was making a yelp clone.
I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.
Lord William Rees-Mogg being the father of Jacob Rees-Mogg, of Brexit fame.
Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
> Interesting how often you meet the same people if you just start digging a little.
Endemic problem in UK politics, and a lot of other countries.
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/60593/1/__lse.ac.uk_storage_LIBRAR...
Not sure "code" belongs here. Even less sure about "illusion".
Take those away and what is left is "dismantled... by capital". Nothing new, really.
It can bolster democracies or undermine them. The real agency lies with those who wield it. And it's rarely the coders. It's the leaders, the platforms, the systems that choose how code is deployed.
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
are more interesting and worth asking.
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just write some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
It’s kind of like asking why are there so many small quakes and why do there have to be great big quakes once in a while? Why don’t we just get millions more small quakes instead?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_says_no
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/3/a-computer-can-never-be...
I do not disagree with the book's argument. I'm just pointing out (or rather expressing my doubt) that the word "code" brings no additional context to the sentence.
As others (and I) rightfully noted - code and modern tech does make things cheaper and easier, but this can be said about all advances.
The "nerd reich" is not possible without code, code is not possible without computers, computers are not possible without abacus etc.
As I see it the word "code" sells this book better than, say, "taxes". Because taxes are boring and obvious.
Of course “code” belongs here.
And isn’t social media that prefers rage over information a danger to democracy?
This is the right question.
I'll quote myself here:
1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?
2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?
Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.
And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).
Same goes for political influence.
Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.
>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) would disagree.
Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.
Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.
My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.
A lot seems about Curtis Yarvin and fans thereof.
It took me a long time to break myself out of it. I think key was getting into the deep details of passing actual policies that would have enough popular support to be sustainable, to realize its ultimately just naive/simplistic thinking, thats another impractical ideology under the hood, dressed up as something more meaningful.
There are a huge number of threats to democracy and the biggest one is probably the total lack of principles and common sense possessed by the median voter. It is a real problem and a bigger one than some billionaire or even the consensus of the billionaires. Sometimes voters and capital come into actual conflict and generally the voters tend to win Pyrrhic victories when that happens.
Hard disagree.
The biggest problem is a misinformed electorate.
An accurate, honest and truthful press is vital for democracy; how else do people know whom to vote for! The fact this is being dismantled (often supplying deliberate misinformation) is truly worrying.
After all, the electorate is entitled to have a lack of principles and no common sense; nobody ever said democracy was perfect. However the electorate needs to be provided with an honest set facts on which they can base their decisions without cries of "fake news". Whatever their political leanings.
I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.
I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.
1) Spare us the US defaultism!
2) If we are going to make this conversation about the USA, didn't US broadcast media have a 'fairness doctrine' that was abolished some years back? Hence the growth in outlets providing heavily biased dishonest news on broadcast media? I suggest this has driven much of the popular rhetoric of which you speak.
Frankly, every country has seen a growth in biased social media "news" sources regardless as to the broadcast media fairness doctrines that still exist in those countries. Deliberate misinformation and a lack of trust in journalism is real.
2. Regarding the power of billionaires vs the power of the median voter, consider that each lever in a system deserves attention before pulling on it or reconfiguring it. How can one determine "the biggest threat to democracy" without digging into the details?
This book appears to be available only for preorder now, not yet published. Nobody here has read it, nobody here can read it, and even if they could, this submission will disappear off the front pages before commenters have a chance to order and read the book. Thus the comments section here is going to be useless (or at least more useless than usual).
The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363
Silicon valley just happened to reside next to the hippies in the first decades
I'm not disagreeing with you completely, but I would like to know more about what other factors you would consider to have been more impactful. I don't know that you really need hippies around to get that kind of 'california capitalist' mentality either tbf.
Recent events prove that there was nothing ideological about it. Once a positive feedback loop is established, it's difficult to break
When you have too much money, it's kinda boring to keep making more of them. You want self-expression to the max extent the society will allow you.
It doesn't, although they would like you to believe so, so you avoid obtaining it.
But it definitely attracts those corrupted.
Power is obtained through meeting people, gaining their favor, entering deals, providing them services, eventually joining their ranks and advancing to the next level on the ordinal scale. Especially in politics, "power corrupts" by definition; by the time you gain any, you're so thoroughly entangled in mutual deals and friendships with other players you're no longer an autonomous entity - and if you're not willing to do that, you will never be given the opportunity to advance.
--
[0] - Yes, there are caveats and strategems one can use to hold on to power - usually by playing people against each other to coerce ongoing support; every history period and every movie with a villain has plenty of examples. It's another discussion; my focus here is on what power is, and where it comes from.
Like it's more a force than a destiny. Gravity pulls the moon down every day yet it doesn't fall on our heads.
I don’t know that I would position the USA in this way.
Different metrics lead to different “winners”:
Longevity: Imperial China
Institutional legacy: Rome
Global reach: British Empire
Scientific/cultural transmission: Islamic Caliphates
Modern dominance: United States
Another lens:
* Rome & China = stability, governance, internal cohesion.
* Britain & the US = networks, capital markets, technology leverage.
* Caliphates = knowledge platforms, cosmopolitan integration.
It's less wildly successful as a political entity than Christianity or Islam.
I haven't read the book but I've read some stuff on a website of the same name, and the way it ties it all together felt very tinfoil hat to me. I think these guys all mutually tolerate each other's insanity in their common lust for ever more power and insatiable egos.
Has anyone? It's got an August 2026 publication date. Is there even a first draft?
I'd guess the book is an expanded version of the blog. (Which I don't recommend - I do think this is conspiracy theory territory and of negative value.)
Can't say I like it, but it has been my position from the very start that this would happen, and as such I'm fresh out of sympathy.
Don't like it? Build your own Silicon Valley.
If the Left (and the Right, for that matter) want to make durable political change, they really need coherent theory beyond who's the Bad Guy of the moment.
...singling out ennemies of the Reich... https://www.google.com/search?q=thiel+antichrist
...democracy aiming to be a fair competition of ideas... https://www.google.com/search?q=thiel+competition+is+for+los...
The excesses of the Weimar Republic did not justify the subsequent events. Not even close.
What's the endgame of a movement that seeks to discredit, overturn, and functionally control elections?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Romanian_presidential_ele...
> Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
In those silicon valley movements mentioned, I see no support per se for a dictatorial leader, or for strong regimentation of society (quite the opposite!), to name just a few.
I find it reasonable to disagree with a lot of those movements, but please use proper arguments. To simply call everything you don't like fascism doesn't help the cause at all.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right...
It makes for a stunning read https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the.... Brett Deveraux (historian) once tried to match US society to those 14 points with the expected result: the US matches all 14. He wrote on his blog about it here: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
Yes the current Trump regime is trying to suppress other opinions, sometimes quite openly. But luckily there is still plenty of room in the US to criticize the sitting president. What do you think would have happened to someone like Seth Meyer under Franco or Hitler?
In what year? 1933? 1937? 1945?
People conflate Nazi Germany with murderous, full-borne authoritarianism, but it took a decade to actually get there. They were just as much fascists at the start as at the end -- it's just that their ideology had room to fully metastasize.
When he finally became head of the government, in 1933, that violence immediately became much more official: the SA was officially deputized as 'Hilfspolizei' and attacks on e.g. communists became legalized. In that same year the first concentration camps were established.
Everyone who donated to the Trump inauguration knew what they were buying into, and it has definitely delivered troops-on-the-streets fascism.
Weren't the 'rules' of the United States of America written by wealthy white males who excluded women, non-whites, and the non-wealthy (eg non-land owning) from participating in the new nation?
As much as the worldwide turn to fascism worries me, I don't see the lives of most people in the world changing very drastically from any other time in history. Maybe the openness by which the privileged exercise their power is a bit higher on the historical scale, but the lives of the non-privileged, world wide, really don't change much over history. Sure, the invention of fire, electricity, etc benefitted all of mankind, but the distinctions of 'how life is lived' between the privileged and the non-privileged has always been dramatic.
It just so happens, tech is were the real money is now. If this was 40+ years ago, they would have ended up on Wall Street or Madison Avenue.