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