It's a good thing the HBO show ended when it did, as it was becoming increasingly clear by that point that the depravity depicted was not even close to the extent of reality, and it wasn't funny or quirky anymore, just dark and bleak. Mike Judge has a real knack for predicting the future it seems.
> Five days after that speech, at President Trump's inauguration, in the seats closest to the president, the ones normally reserved for family and former presidents, sat some of the most powerful men in tech - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai. And later that day, Musk stood behind the presidential seal and made a gesture much of the world read as a Nazi salute.
> Gil Duran's new book, "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism And The War On Democracy," argues that the men behind the president that day were not there to celebrate him. Their presence was proof that 30 years of patient, well-funded work had finally paid off. He writes that some of them were inspired by a 1997 book called "The Sovereign Individual," which predicted digital money would dissolve countries, and with a blogger named Curtis Yarvin, who argued America should be run like a corporation, by a CEO with the powers of a dictator.
...
> DURAN: I think we were witnessing the unmasking of Silicon Valley's true politics. They finally were comfortable to reveal their full selves to everyone. And I think for many years, their democratic alignment was mostly self-interest because we had democratic presidents who had important contracts, government contracts, who had power. And so they needed to get along with whoever had power. And now that Trump was returning to power, they saw an opportunity to align with him and to try to realign the country's politics to something more to their liking. I think it's grown quietly, as we've seen many of these people become billionaires and multibillionaires and even one temporarily become a trillionaire.
> Once you have people who have so much wealth amassed, then they want power. But for some people in Silicon Valley, specifically Peter Thiel, this idea of using technology to amass wealth and then turn that into monopolistic political power is something that was not accidental. It was something that was carefully cultivated over many decades. And as you said, none of my book came from secret documents, or it's not guessing. This is stuff that these guys have been saying on the record very explicitly for decades.
It's a good thing the HBO show ended when it did, as it was becoming increasingly clear by that point that the depravity depicted was not even close to the extent of reality, and it wasn't funny or quirky anymore, just dark and bleak. Mike Judge has a real knack for predicting the future it seems.
Some previous discussion on the book (2025)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46066482
> Five days after that speech, at President Trump's inauguration, in the seats closest to the president, the ones normally reserved for family and former presidents, sat some of the most powerful men in tech - Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai. And later that day, Musk stood behind the presidential seal and made a gesture much of the world read as a Nazi salute.
> Gil Duran's new book, "The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism And The War On Democracy," argues that the men behind the president that day were not there to celebrate him. Their presence was proof that 30 years of patient, well-funded work had finally paid off. He writes that some of them were inspired by a 1997 book called "The Sovereign Individual," which predicted digital money would dissolve countries, and with a blogger named Curtis Yarvin, who argued America should be run like a corporation, by a CEO with the powers of a dictator.
...
> DURAN: I think we were witnessing the unmasking of Silicon Valley's true politics. They finally were comfortable to reveal their full selves to everyone. And I think for many years, their democratic alignment was mostly self-interest because we had democratic presidents who had important contracts, government contracts, who had power. And so they needed to get along with whoever had power. And now that Trump was returning to power, they saw an opportunity to align with him and to try to realign the country's politics to something more to their liking. I think it's grown quietly, as we've seen many of these people become billionaires and multibillionaires and even one temporarily become a trillionaire.
> Once you have people who have so much wealth amassed, then they want power. But for some people in Silicon Valley, specifically Peter Thiel, this idea of using technology to amass wealth and then turn that into monopolistic political power is something that was not accidental. It was something that was carefully cultivated over many decades. And as you said, none of my book came from secret documents, or it's not guessing. This is stuff that these guys have been saying on the record very explicitly for decades.