One of my hopes is that there's a limited lifespan to some of this stuff because there is no positive vision there. Because it is so cruel, and I think the average American voter is not drawn to that.
SPEAKER_00Jacob is the author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, which is coming out in September 2025 from Bloomsbury. It's not available for pre-order yet, but keep your eyes open for it. His book, Easy Money, is also now in paperback. US elections feel like they go on forever, and so we have been watching how Silicon Valley has been engaging in this US election for a while now. But I figured as the vote gets closer and closer, it's probably time to check in on what we have learned about the tech industry through this entire process. Because I feel like it has been a quite revelatory period of time in the politics of many of the people who are the most powerful in Silicon Valley itself. Obviously, we saw someone like Peter Thiel get behind Donald Trump back in 2016, but in this election campaign, it feels like many more of the billionaires and powerful figures in Silicon Valley have come out very openly about the increasingly extreme right-wing politics that they hold. Certainly there are some who do support Kamala Harris and the Democrats and have donated to the party to try to make sure it gets elected, but it feels like there's a lot more energy within the tech industry behind this right-wing project that Donald Trump is trying to bring in that is increasingly shaped, as I've talked to with other guests in the past, by these ideas that come from the tech industry as well. And so I figured as this campaign draws to a close, it's a good time for us to discuss this on the show. And I figured Jacob was the perfect person to discuss it with me. Now, there is a caveat I want to make before we get into the episode. We recorded this on Thursday, October 24th. So a week before many of you will be hearing it. And, you know, because this is an election cycle that is close to voting, things have, of course, been changing in the week since we had this discussion. In particular, we talk a bit about Elon Musk's donations in this campaign and specifically how he has been supporting Donald Trump. Part of that is this attempt to pay voters for signing a petition, including a $1 million giveaway that he has begun to do. In the episode, we criticized the Justice Department for not doing more to try to stop this from happening. They have only warned Elon Musk that his million-dollar giveaway might be against electoral law. But on Monday, October 28th, the district attorney in Philadelphia sued Elon Musk's pack to stop its million-dollar giveaways. So just if you're listening to the episode and you say, hey, something has been done about this, that is why it's not fully up to date. But even with that said, I think that you'll enjoy this conversation where we dig into the bigger picture of what has been happening around this election and the tech industry's engagement in it, because I think it's told us a lot about the politics of the tech billionaires that are shaping so much of our lives. Now, before we get into the episode, I also just wanted to say our Data Vampire series has had a fantastic response now that all four episodes have been released. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, you know, I would obviously ask you to consider signing up to become a Patreon supporter at patreon.com slash tech won't save us because that allows us to keep making the show, but also to make occasional in-depth series like Data Vampires that give you much greater insight on a specific topic. Over the coming months, we'll also be releasing full-length interviews with some of the experts I spoke to for the series. And if you're a Patreon supporter, you'll be able to join a live stream that we'll be doing today, if you're listening to this, October 31st, where I'll be taking supporters' questions on the series, what went into it, and you know, any thoughts that they have around the series or or any lingering questions that were still out there. So I think that's going to be really fun. And if you become a supporter on Patreon, you'll be able to join that as well. So with that said, I hope you enjoyed this episode with Jacob. I certainly did. You can leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice or share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And as I was saying, if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every single week, you can join supporters like Robert Ferrero and Morale in Ireland by going to patreon.com slash TechWon't Save Us, where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Jacob, welcome back to Tech Won't Save Us. Glad to be here. It's always great to speak with you. You know, unfortunately, for the past year it's always been like election-related stuff, I think. But you know, it still provides interesting fodder for discussion to look at what these billionaires that we both pay so much attention to in Silicon Valley are doing, you know, as they embrace these extreme right-wing politics. And so to jump into it, during this election campaign, I feel like we've seen the tech industry very engaged. And I wonder what you think broadly we've learned about the tech industry through this US election cycle.
SPEAKER_01That's an interesting question. I think one thing is a change in attitude, which could be called superficial, but it does have an effect of certainly how we see these people. I mean, there's a much more public and brazen, sort of proud and in many cases troll-ish identification with MAGA, you know, from Musk on down that and people like David Sachs on social media, they delight in provoking us, whether the journalists or or the broader liberal public. And that's something that they maybe get from Trump himself, this politics of resentment and of cultural resentment, and and delighting in making people mad. Now I'm starting to hear about Musk's derangement syndrome, which uh, you know, a few years ago we had Trump derangement syndrome, but it's this sort of all-purpose saying they use when you start criticizing Musk for having too much power or whatever else. So I just think that this openness and and this expressed desire from a lot of these uh senior tech people to change the world in their image, and that they're very angry that they've been held back as they see it from unfettered innovation and transforming society. I mean, the part of that is the effective acceleration people. And they have a lot of money and they have no shame about putting that money forward. And, you know, a few years ago, uh donations to PACs, even in the millions of dollars, might have been a little quieter. You know, there are quarterly reports released about that kind of thing, but now it's bragged about. Like this week, Sean McGuire from Sequoia, who's sort of a musk hanger on, he proudly announced again that he had donated $500,000 to add to his initial donation of, I believe, $300,000. It's this way of operating in the open and this very sort of aggressive, pugnacious attitude because they feel like they're right and that their ideas are ascended.
SPEAKER_00It feels like even when you look at that, right? Like when you're talking about how open they are about these donations and about how engaged they are with this process, to a certain degree, it feels like there's a division then on each like side of the aisle, where when you think about the tech billionaires that are very supportive of Trump, it seems like they often want to go out and like really champion the fact that they are giving this money to the Republican campaign. They want to see Trump elected, they're buying into these issues. And when it comes to the Democratic side, like certainly we have seen some tech billionaires talk about the fact that they've given money. A few of them have been a bit more vocal, people like Reid Hoffman or Vinod Koshla, in part because of certain concessions that they want from Nehara's campaign. But it feels like in that case, you certainly have still a lot of tech billionaires giving money to the Democrats, but it doesn't feel like they are engaging with the process in the same way that you see a lot of these more Republican tech billionaires doing so, at least in this cycle.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think we don't always know what's going on in private and when the money is tabulated at the end of the day, at least the non-dark money, you know, it may end up being pretty close on both sides, just the dollar amounts. On the other hand, you have enormous Republican donors like Timothy Mellon, who's more the old school type. He inherited most of his money and is not seen very much in public, has extreme right-wing views, and he's donated $165 million and is the top Republican donor, I believe, at the moment. But Musk is something else because he's bringing all of his media attention, X, all of his assets to bear. On the Democratic side, you know, Reed Hoffman has funded uh political operations, data firms, and other things like that, not always with a very distinguished record. I mean, there was a Senate race in Alabama where they basically released various fake news or disinformation, choose your term. Eric Schmidt, who uh I think occupies a somewhat troubling position, the nexus of kind of tech power and political power, he's funded similar, mostly Democrat-aligned political operations, especially for Hillary in 2016. So, you know, some of that kind of stuff may be happening behind the scenes on the Democratic side. But, you know, in terms of style, in terms of mode of operation, and at least right now, in terms of what we know, the resources being brought to bear on the Republican side are enormous and maybe unprecedented in some ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I was thinking as well, like Bill Gates, it's been reported, has given to the Harris campaign, but again, like hasn't been going out and like vocally acting in the way that, say, you know, Elon Musk or some of these other folks are in like really championing that cause. But I wanted to pick up on what you were saying about like the trolling there too, right? And the nature of how these people are approaching this campaign, because this feels really novel as well, where you have people like Elon Musk or you know, some of these other folks are really engaged on Twitter X in kind of buying into these different narratives that the Trump campaign is pushing and, you know, the broader kind of extreme right-wing media, and wanting to push these things, wanting to make sure it's shown that they believe in these aspects of it, and wanting to engage in this like discussion of the woke mind virus and, you know, oh, we're trolling the libs or, you know, making people angry and all this kind of stuff. Like, what do you make of that part of it as well? Because that feels like something that we didn't see so much in like previous cycles too. Certainly we've been seeing it a bit more over the past few years, you know, with these tech billionaires, but that seems like a bit of a novel part of how they are engaging in politics in this moment, too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think you could trace the sort of billionaire's public figure over the decades. And Trump obviously was represents a pivotal change because he was a reality TV billionaire, and that's how we started meeting some of these people kind of in the Bush years was through reality TV or kind of or slightly less scripted or somewhat unfiltered uh views. Of course, The Apprentice was very scripted. But in the last five to ten years, we've had billionaires expressing themselves sometimes honestly, I would say, on social media and of course on Twitter slash X since uh Musk took it over, because some of the people we're talking about here are Musk's closest friends. They've invested in him, they advised him on the Twitter takeover. They like to post just like a lot of people. One thing I like to mention is Mark Andreessen, besides being a billionaire, married to a billionaire, owns an unknown number of homes, including three mansions in Malibu. So sometimes when I see him posting his sort of reactionary, I'd like to be a dictator stuff. I wonder which of those Malibu mansions he's posting from. Like, I'm maybe straying a little bit, but I think this gets us into the territory of like why are these guys so angry and so dissatisfied with a world that they've profited from enormously and still have helped shape quite a bit. But this maybe actually speaks to the initial trolling question, which is that they are upset. They are angry at not at the the world is not fully bent their way. And it can be different sort of specific grievances, wokeness or me too, which didn't really fully sweep through tech as it probably should have, or quarantine lockdowns. I mean, even Mark Andreessen said that a proposed tax on capital gains over $100 million was a red line for him. So these guys have their different grievances. And for Musk, I think it's very much worth emphasizing that his child's decision to transition and live as a woman, Vivian, was a huge moment for him and his political awakening. And that's where all the woke mind virus stuff comes from. I mean, he has said this on Jordan Peterson's show or in an interview with him over the summer, with incredible cruelty, saying that he said the mind virus killed my son. It's pretty awful stuff. And Vivian has posted on threads, certainly not on X, about he was a terrible father, he bullied me, you know, he for being queer, all these sorts of things. So I psychologize based on these kinds of facts that are presented to us and some of the things that these people say. And when you are operating from that place of resentment and anger, I think trolling becomes a sort of an easy mode to operate in. It's satisfying, it deals in provocation, it also is in bad faith, and you don't have to debate the issues. Must doesn't have to confront the issue of his trans child if he gives over to more sort of transphobic trolling, this elaborate woke mind virus metaphor and all this stuff. So trolling is immature at times and a kind of a form of protection for them, but it's also a way of expressing their aggression and anger towards the larger political system.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I'm sure focusing on some of those kind of trolling aspects of things makes it easier to try to get people on side because they're playing into these more culture warish sort of narratives instead of saying, like, oh, I want Donald Trump to win so that all of these investigations against my companies can go away so that, you know, I won't be taxed a whole lot. Though, of course, you see Mark Andreessen say something like that. But even then, he like, you know, in his like the little tech manifesto, he kind of couches that in other sort of language to act, like it's this like anti-innovation type of thing, when it's really just like, no, you're like super rich and you should be paying more in taxes, even much more than like the Biden rules are proposing. You know, I'm happy you brought up, of course, what Elon Musk has said about you know about Vivian, because those sorts of statements to me are just like so disqualifying and so like, how can you still look at this man after he says something like that and after the number of things that he has said and done over the years and still like give him any benefit of the doubt and still like be open to engaging with him in any like constructive way, whether that's with his companies or with what he's doing politically or or whatnot. Like I feel like it really forces you to look at these people who still want anything to do with him and be like, who are you? Like, how can you look past this of all things? You know, and and that goes beyond how he's like embracing fascism and all this sort of stuff, right? Like, even if it was just what he was saying about his trans daughter, I think that would be like totally disqualifying and he should be hounded out of public life. But then to add on top of it everything else that he has done and said, you know, not just in the past year or so, but even well before that, I don't know how he still retains the position that he has.
SPEAKER_01I think also for a lot of people, this stuff is repulsive, just in the same way that a lot of people see uh kind of self-evident cruelty and unfeelingness in Trump. But you know, it's worth perhaps noting that there is an audience for this stuff. Partly cultivated on X, where Musk has made various changes to the site to make himself more prominent and elevate the voices of people he agrees with. And maybe this is a core component of the rise of fascism, which is that a lot of people are angry and disaffected and sort of sometimes teetering on nihilism, you know, called being blackpilled or whatever you want. And they see the expressions of someone like Musk or Trump and you know, the obnoxious masculinity and everything else that comes with it, and they identify with that. It doesn't mean they they can't be sort of persuaded away in some way or evolve out of that, but observing the trolling, participating in the trolling, or just the expressions of anger, or of course, outright rage and racism towards migrants and wherever else, that is satisfying for certain people. There's no positive political vision here, but to sort of exercise some of their anger and bigotries, they have found people who at the very top of politics, tech, entertainment who are willing to do that and willing to sometimes to engage with them. And so one of my hopes is that there's a limited lifespan to some of this stuff because there is no positive vision there, because it is so cruel. And I think the average American voter is not drawn to that. That also speaks to also some of these people in tech who are you know very pro-military now, really just want to build defense tech, think drones are cool, they kind of ignore that the war on terror ever happened, and now they want to make a lot of money building cool shit for the government. That's sort of another tranche of this. So, you know, as as disturbing as we all find it and worth articulating and trying to drum up Musk from public life for being this vicious transphobe who you know has rejected his own child, we have to be aware, I think, that there are people there who support this. I mean, you and I, of course, encounter them every day on X.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's really something to be noted about a man who constantly talks about the need to have children and to be a good father and all this kind of stuff and rejects his own daughter because you know she's a transgender woman. I don't know. It it just turns your stomach, really.
SPEAKER_01Even when I hear Reese, like sometimes he'll once in a while post-I mean, this almost seems like trolling too, where he just says, like, you know, it's all love or something like that. You know, he'll he'll post something like that, or like, you know, some random expression of Hallmark good feeling. Like, and I'm like, are you paying attention to anything that you say? And and of course he always has an audience to say, like, yeah, that you know, they just hate you for your political views. That's crazy. Well, it's like, well, what are the political views? And like, you can't just be a kind of vicious monster six and a half days a week and then put up a night a couple of nice posts or defensive posts on Sunday afternoon and and then claim that your enemies are out to get you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly. There was uh an interview he did with Tucker Carlson, I think it was recently, where he joked about how he'll be arrested if Kamala Harris comes to power and he made some quip about how like then he won't be able to see his kids or something like that. And I was like, like you see them anyway, like you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I thought that part of that interview was interesting. I did not watch the whole thing because it was like an hour and a half.
SPEAKER_00Me neither, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I think that was earlier on and that clip went around. I I sort of had two interpretations of it, which are maybe not necessarily exclusionary, but one is that that's just the way he thinks. You know, this is billionaire paranoia that uh if I put myself so out there and I live in this country of lawfare and you know, authoritarian future dictator communist Kamala that she'll put me in prison. I wonder if the other motivation behind that statement is the slightly more rational side of Musk, where he's like, man, I've done a lot of things. I have all these government contracts, I've probably broken some laws, whether it's securities fraud or campaign finance violations, or I mean, I don't think the labor violations will result in any criminal charges, but you know, he's got investigations everywhere, most of them civil or regulatory. But there's no doubt that I think that I mean that someone like him has legal exposure. So I wonder, you know, sort of how seriously he takes that kind of statement or or what inspires it. Because even if he's not recognizing that that more rational interpretation, I mean, I think some of that is real. We don't really live in a country that prosecutes people of his stature, which is, you know, the one impediment to that actually happening.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's very rare, right? The Sam Bankman Fries going to prison are not the kind of thing you see every day.
SPEAKER_01And then I've gone back and looked at the tweets from Sachs and Musk and stuff who said, like, nothing's gonna happen to this guy. And I have my own sort of grievances with some of the outcome. I think the trial outcome is fine. I would have liked to see a second trial. Not that I'm a huge carceral guy, but there were all these other crimes committed, uh, campaign finance, a huge bribe paid to Chinese law enforcement, possible sex trafficking, where they moved around these Thai sex workers and I think gave them to people, or and they also used those women's information to sign up for crypto accounts and move money around. Like there was a lot of criminal and shady stuff at FTX that involved a lot more people than Sam McMahon Fried. But anyway, we don't have to go on that tangent.
SPEAKER_00That's so wild. Yeah, I'll I'll have to like put a link in the show notes for people to find out more about that kind of stuff because yeah, that's a bit beyond our our scope for today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, don't don't let me keep going.
SPEAKER_00But I feel like even when you're talking about that interview, like I completely agree with you, right? Because for a little while I was like, does he really believe this kind of stuff that he might go to prison, that he talks a lot, you know, picking up this kind of Trump line that all these illegals are coming into the country and are voting for Democrats and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, he says that like democracy is going to be over after this election if Kabala Harris wins. Like just the most like outlandish stuff. And part of me, at least initially, was like, is he just saying this stuff because he thinks it appeals to these sort of people? But it does feel like he has really bought into this stuff. Like he has allowed his own platform to really just like totally warp his brain and like how he sees the world. But as you say it, on the other side of things, like I totally think that he is exposed, right? Not just all of the investigations that are going on against his companies, but with everything that he's doing to try to get Trump elected, it feels like he's definitely opening himself to lawsuits about that and potential criminal charges there too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would think so. Um yeah, I mean, uh that that's why I think he's tied his own future, of course, to this election. So no wonder he thinks this is the last election.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, like and like it's his own fault that he's done it, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as always, he he's leveraged himself to the hilt and taking crazy risks.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. The other day, Tim Walls was giving a speech and you know, referred to Elon Musk as Donald Trump's real running mate, and said that, you know, he was jumping around on the stage like a dipshit. And like the first thing that came to my mind was like, Can you imagine in Cycles Past, like a Democrat referring to Elon Musk as a dipshit? Like he was the kind of person who everyone Like, wanted to attract. Like, you know, you even see it in so many countries today where, you know, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you're on, you know, the governing parties and the political parties want to be close to Elon Musk even as he embraces these increasingly like extreme right-wing parties, right? Like the UK Labor Party won't even really crack down on him or say they want nothing to do with him because they still like want to have some like part of that aura of Elon Musk. But to, you know, obviously we know that Joe Biden has not been so hot on Elon Musk for a while, but to see that sentiment spreading among the Democratic Party is, I guess, one, not surprising, but still on some level, like, wow, okay, he really is like destroying his reputation to go all in on this. And that is going to have and is already having consequences, but you have to imagine will have further consequences unless he can protect himself by ensuring that Trump comes to power and can kind of shape the state in his favor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've I've started referring to Musk as the shadow candidate or the shadow president under Trump. I mean, it'll be a loud shadow. The one sort of thing that could stop Musk maybe is if he comes into conflict with Trump. I don't see how if Trump is elected, Musk would have a tremendous amount of power and, you know, could make all the investigations go away, could get all the contracts he wants, privatize whatever he wants, sort of get revenge on some of his political and business enemies. But I would see him eventually clashing with Trump, I think, in some kind of way. I think I don't imagine that the government could really reel him in or what's remaining of the opposition then. And it's something I don't think we've ever really seen, certainly in the United States. I mean, I've been reading a book about Howard Hughes, and he attempted to bribe, actually did bribe every candidate in the 1968 election, and you know, he had lots of people on the payroll, and there was all kinds of dirty tricks and connections to Watergate and stuff, but you never had a billionaire jumping on the stage. You know, it's like it's like if Rupert Murdoch were jumping on the stage with Trump, but also had an even more diversified portfolio of interests. So like merging Murdoch with like Larry Ellison or Richard Branson or just one of these other guys. I mean, it shows how far gone our moneyed politics are, that like they're just billionaires associated with everyone here. Bill Gates throws down $50 million and it's barely noticed. You know, and I wonder if this is how a sort of a certain American form of fascism takes hold. Again, if this happens, and it doesn't mean if it doesn't happen this election, it could happen maybe down the road. But like this celebrity businessman who has an unprecedented fortune and maybe an unprecedented reach into the US government, finds a candidate who he can, if not manipulate, but sort of be in alignment with, and everyone around the candidate loves Musk. You know, someone was asking me the other day, what is this? And I was like, I guess this is f fascism or this is a union of corporate life with the state. It's corporatism. This is how it sort of bubbles up and and comes together.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I completely agree with that. And you know, you're you were talking there about the the types of efforts that Musk is taking, right? Like to me, seeing him on stage with Trump, seeing him jumping around, as you were saying, like really marked a shift for me. You know, we're used to seeing like celebrities come out to support the Democrats or the Republicans, and you know, they're doing that this time as well, and and you get the celebrities giving money to the campaigns and all that kind of stuff. Like, none of that is new, but it does feel like the way that Musking is engaging in this is novel, not just in his like personal appearance and the way that he is using Twitter and and you know his influence to try to get Trump elected, but also the amount of money that he is giving to this campaign and this effort, really. Can you talk a bit about that more like concrete aspect of it? What Musk is actually doing to try to get Trump elected?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we don't have the exact numbers or file numbers, but you know, there are just some Corley campaign financing reports. I think he gave 50 million to America Pack or 75 million, and he's given similar amounts to over the last couple of years to organizations run by Stephen Miller and some other Trump associates. So, you know, we'll see what the final number ends up being, but I would expect you know a couple hundred million in just cash contributions at least.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and just as we're recording on October 24th, the New York Times had a report this morning saying that he spent $134 million, or I think that's the America Pack, on the presidential campaign in 18 congressional races so far, but we're expecting more money to be revealed as part of that.
SPEAKER_01There's a report that in a private conversation, Trump expected $500 million worth of support, I think. So it could get to that. The main vehicle, I think, is this America Pack, which Musk co-founded with Joe Lonsdale and some other sort of PayPal mafia adjacent and right-wing tech figures. And it's gotten money from those guys, but mostly Musk is providing this. And they are doing canvassing, they are doing online data collection, they're doing, as 404 media found, hyper-local ad targeting, where, for example, they were showing different ads to Muslim and Jewish communities in Pennsylvania, I believe it was, both trying to turn them against the Democratic Party, telling the Jews that Kamala doesn't like Israel, and telling the Muslims that the Democrats are killing Palestinians, which is true. But, you know, so it's kind of like every measure of current political trick or best practice, as some might call them. There have been already some reports that things are not going so well, actually. I mean, despite what you might see in the polls, there were some reports of fraud related to their canvassing operation in Arizona and other swing states that, from my understanding, the company that they hired may have just lied about the numbers, like, oh yeah, we went to all those houses to knock on those doors. But they did not go to all those houses. There was already an uh investigation or at least a suggestion that there should be one from some state officials. I think in North Carolina, this was a couple months ago, about the data collection that they were doing. They seem to be misleading people that thought they were signing up to maybe register to vote or to go to a vote registration site. Um, there's of course the more recent issue of offering to pay people a million dollars if they sign a petition, but they apparently the problem is you cannot make that conditional on someone being a registered voter because that is basically a lottery or you know an inducement to register to vote sponsored by a specific political entity. The Justice Department sent a letter to America PAC apparently saying, don't do this. It seems a pretty clear-cut example, something illegal and something where a very rich person is just throwing out money to buy votes. It would be great if the Justice Department actually did something about that, but I doubt they will in the next two weeks, beyond there's certainly word letters. So I'm sure there'll be more of these operations uncovered, maybe some of them too late. But these are the kinds of things that this money goes into. And you see some of it, I'm sure, is done by experienced political operators, but there is a tech Silicon Valley element to this where it's like whatever Musk says goes and kind of throw everything at the wall, see what sticks, smooth fast, and break things, like, you know, ask for forgiveness, not permission. And, you know, that's where it could end up going wrong, I think, both for Trump and perhaps for future legal liability.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and also this real focus on like data, right? And this is obviously not new to um election campaigns, right? You know, you can think back to the Obama era and how it was praised for using data in like new and novel ways to try to get people to go to the polls. And then, of course, the controversy around Trump using, you know, the internet in novel ways as well, um, that were that were not as welcome because, you know, obviously what it brought to power. But there was a report in the New York Times as well that was suggesting that Elon Musk has also registered some other companies that suggest that part of this data collection might be for future political efforts as well, you know, to have this kind of data on voters that they can then use in in other elections that might come in the future. You know, we'll see the outcome and see if what they say about Trump holds true. Or, you know, Kamala Harris, how she's gonna end democracy, right? If you believe Elon Musk and Yeah, who gets to end democracy this time? Yeah, this is what you're voting for, right? It's a real appealing decision. But, you know, putting that to the side for a moment. You were talking there about the Justice Department and the existing investigation or talk about a potential investigation from some of these states where Musk's PAC was initially trying to collect voter data. We know that he's providing these million-dollar contests and also telling people that he'll pay them $47, or I believe that number is increased now, to sign this petition or to refer people to sign the petition. To me, that feels very much like something that would be illegal. I'm obviously not an election expert, you know, certainly on the laws in the United States, but like that idea that you're going to pay people, sure, it's not to vote directly, but you're basically saying, like, you know, I'm paying you to give me this information so I can try to get you to vote for this particular candidate, that feels like a very illegal thing. And that feels like it's one of these places where not just Elon Musk is opening himself to this legal vulnerability. But why do you think the American government isn't acting faster on something like this? It feels like the types of things that you'd want to shut down very quickly because it might compromise an election that's coming very soon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. One answer might be that the government works slowly. I think another possibility might be that it's Elon Musk, and there's a concern about kind of having more open warfare than there already is. I don't really like those kinds of hesitations or political calculations. You know, I think I'm a law and order guy when it comes to the white-collar crime wave. And I'm sure there are people in the DOJ who are worried about seeing that they're going to be doing election interference, as silly as that might be for cracking down on what seems to be patently illegal behavior. I mean, I'm not an expert either, but the election and law experts I've been reading seem to think that this is pretty open and shut, and they quoted the statute and everything. So I guess those are sort of the two main answers is that sometimes things can work slowly, and and also there's a lot of political sensitivity, though I don't think that deserves total respect, I suppose. And maybe they are hoping that you send them the letter and they'll stop, but it doesn't really seem like it, or they're just going to do something else. When we talk about election integrity in the U.S., actually I end up thinking about this kind of stuff, about money, not about people cheating on their ballots or or voting multiple times. I mean, if you want to have an election with some illusion of integrity that we can the closest that we can have in this sort of post-citizens united pay-to-play world, then these are the kinds of things you need to stop immediately. You cannot have publishers' clearinghouse giveaways connected to people voting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's so wild to see. Like, I can't imagine something like that happening in Canada. Like, first of all, anyone even imagining it, but then like being able to continue doing it. And it just feels like, as you're saying, that they're doubling down, right? You know, the the reports that I've been seeing suggest that operations that that Musk is involved in is extending now to other states. They're trying to expand these efforts to, you know, the other potential um swing states and things like that as you know we get closer and closer to election day. And Elon Musk is very committed to trying to ensure that Donald Trump wins the presidency, you know, because of his increasingly unhinged views, but also uh because he sees that it's going to benefit him personally to have that happen.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. And also, I think you allude to this earlier in our conversation, but I think some of these guys seen Trump as their get-out of jail free card. Uh, actually, I've I've really come around on that because it doesn't just mean jail, but you know, but it means for a lot of these billionaires and VCs and whoever, uh, the end of DOJ investigations into crypto, the end of investigations into their companies, certainly Lena Khan being kicked out. But I think some of them worry about criminal exposure. Certainly securities fraud in many cases. Anyone who's been investing billions of dollars in the crypto industry like Andreessen Horowitz. So that justifies everything almost in terms of doubling down or just continuing to do this kind of brazen behavior, because on the other side, Trump is just going to pardon you and make all your troubles go away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I and I think that's a really good kind of bridge to talk about this wider network of what's going on there. Like I remember, you know, a while ago, I can't remember how long ago now, but we were talking a lot about David Sachs, right? And the role that David Sachs was playing in trying to promote Trump, funding Trump, trying to get the tech industry and these other tech billionaires interested in Trump and embracing him in a way that maybe Peter Thiel did in the 2016 cycle and wasn't so much doing this time around. I feel like we don't hear nearly as much about David Sachs anymore. I don't know if that's just because he's more under the radar, because you know, Elon Musk has kind of taken the limelight. But what has happened with these other kind of venture capitalists and influential folks in Silicon Valley who have been pushing Donald Trump really hard? But like what has been going on there?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think if you listen to some of their public statements, they seem to be happy in their position. I mean, happy isn't really a word that describes them, but they they project confidence and security because they think that Trump is going to win. You know, there's always the question of what do people believe and what do they say? But, you know, in this case, like what they say is really what matters, I think, and and how they act in public. So Sachs is still on X, you know, complaining about Ukraine policy or just the latest supposed lie from the left. He's sort of a more right-wing Glenn Greenwald at times, without ever writing anything, I guess. I know he he's written the occasional article. Maybe there are some more parallels there. But they are just sort of trying to hype things, I think, leading into the election from wherever they can, whether it's a new poll. Some of them have gotten really into poly market and the betting markets. Colshi is one of the other ones I've written about the betting markets. I think they're suspicious and they certainly shouldn't be used as reflections of public sentiment. But Musk has been reposting some of these too because these are betting odds. They're not polling or anything like that. But a lot of right-wingers like to bet on Trump or whatever else on these markets, and there's certainly possible market manipulation. So the odds end up showing really strongly in favor of Trump. But again, this is not anyone's voting intention. But you see that kind of thing where they're just promoting these betting markets, they're talking about all the great things that Trump is going to do even as he's rambling on stage. They seem to be very excited about really being unshackled to do the EAC or the do the unfettered innovation and inventing this new world. One other thing that was really big for them recently was the Starship booster rocket, I believe it was, that they were able to catch in that strange sort of clamp and return it to Earth. People on the right were treating that as some one level below the moonwalk, maybe. This was a big moment. This is a return to some kind of greater America where we are investing in heavy industry and by extension military stuff, and American greatness is back. Certainly the people from Andreessen Horowitz were saying that, and they're investors in everything Must does. And I think that's sort of almost the more gentler side of what they hope for from Trumpism is that they're going to be building cool stuff. You know, while they're building that cool stuff, 20 million people are gonna be deported and all kinds of rights are gonna be taken away, and you know, it's gonna be a pretty horrible scene. But I I think that's kind of the future they almost imagine for themselves a year from now is that they'll be as cut off from the rest of the country as they want to be, but they'll have the money and freedom and legal impunity to do what they want.
SPEAKER_00That's so wild. Uh I I didn't realize that about the Starship Launch. Obviously, you know, I saw it and and you know how it was caught and stuff, but I didn't realize it was such a big thing on the right. Like, I wonder what you make of the degree to which that vision of society, the future, like what we should be pursuing, that has really been set out by Musk and some of these tech billionaires has been so deeply and widely adopted by the political right. You know, I think back to the first Trump administration, and he was obviously on hand when SpaceX did that, you know, rocket launch, and it was like, you know, American rockets are bringing astronauts to space again, it's this big deal. And Trump was talking about how we're going to go to the moon and go to Mars again and all this kind of stuff. But it does feel that this time around, there is a much more tight embrace of this vision of the future that is offered by the tech industry. That is obviously one that is very much like innovation is how we solve everything, everything else can be thrown to the wayside, you know, thinking along the lines of this like long-termist kind of thinking. What do you make of how that has shifted over these past few years, too?
SPEAKER_01You know, this might be actually the closest thing they have to a positive vision for the politics or the future is that one, AI is gonna fix everything. You've heard the Eric Schmidt quote, I'm sure you've discussed it. And a lot of people say this that you just you need to do pedal to the metal on AI because it would be irresponsible not to, actually, because you know, lives will be saved and everything will be fixed by this universal solvent. We don't necessarily know how, we can't predict how it's gonna emerge, but AGI or AI is gonna fix everything. I was a little surprised too by the fulsome right-wing embrace and even in the tech industry, too, of that rocket returning. I mean, I know it's important for the space industry to have reusable rockets. It could save money and make launching satellites and other things easier. Certainly make Elon Musk's uh business easier. I think part of the sort of narrative there is that government failed to do this. It wasn't because we defunded NASA or because NASA gave $11 billion to Elon Musk to build the rockets and not develop those internally or with its other private sector partners. It's that government failed, whether it's woke government or liberals, or choose your sort of specific causal entity, but government couldn't do this, but Elon Musk and the tech industry could. And that's the way forward is to empower these great men, really. Don't hear many women in this group, but someone like Katherine Boyle, who's who's a general partner on Dreeson Horowitz, she's very much embraced the American dynamism thing that they talk about. And she wrote a piece for the free press, Barry Weiss's outlet, about praising the launch as this epical moment in recent sort of industrial American history. That and Barry Weiss similarly said it's a return to American greatness. The article was partially paywalled, so I don't know if she acknowledges in the article that she's an investor in SpaceX.
SPEAKER_00I'm guessing no.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, probably not. But it was something I think also that they wanted to imbue with meaning, you know. Someone I mentioned earlier, Sean McGuire, the Sequoia venture capitalist who's an investor in SpaceX too, I believe. He was there, he was filming it. You know, they wanted this kind of revivalist attitude towards this event, which for their sake, hopefully they can repeat it. But it also seemed very strange and novel to just sort of have this rocket coming down and clamp it like that and doesn't actually land on the ground. But I don't know anything about rocketry. So I think they're gonna be looking, though, for more of those kinds of events and exemplars where they can point to something and say, like, Musk really did it. And, you know, your government or the incumbent companies or whoever else can't do this. I mean, even the Optimus event was a little bit of an attempt at that. But, you know, and some people got pretty hyped, but you know, the robots are being remotely controlled. A lot of it seems like bullshit. Are we ever gonna get the cyber cabs? I doubt it. But you know, in terms of constructing these pseudo-events and these moments of celebration, when you come down to it, some of them represent genuine innovation, but some of them are just hype, as in AI. That's kind of what they're looking for to push things forward and to say, like, we have a mission that we have to do, and you have to let us do it because this is important for everybody. So you have to let Musk do that. You have to let the rest of us do AI and all the and whatever other sort of uh boutique startups we have, because this is important for everyone.
SPEAKER_00It does stand out like at hearing you describe that, it makes me think how, like, okay, the Republicans and the extreme right are embracing this vision, right? This vision that Silicon Valley and the tech industry more broadly, if you're in another country that is embracing this as well, is going to drive us into this great and incredible future. You know, you saw Elon Musk once again, it's something he says very commonly at a Trump rally saying that, you know, he kind of wants to make science fiction reality, right? This is kind of underpinning a lot of his vision of the world. But uh a lot of them are embracing that too, and it allows them to say to people who are frustrated, who are angry, who feel like everything is broken, who feel like everything is getting more expensive, like they can't get ahead. That, like, look, the the tech industry, and in particular these people who are tying themselves to the political right, are offering this kind of vision of this future that is very different from what we have today, and that sounds incredible, and that is coming from this guy who we've held up and and kind of put on a pedestal for three decades or whatever now. So there must be something to it, right? You know, there must be something to go with uh with this, and it's not, it doesn't sound anything like what is on offer right now. And then I feel like you look at the Democrats who embraced the tech industry so much in the 2000s and the 2010s. Obama was, as you were saying, you know, kind of uh deregulating the space industry to hand it all over to SpaceX and helping the electric car companies and and Tesla in particular and and all these sorts of things, right? And and it was not just Obama, it was a lot of governments that were that were doing that and and supporting those types of projects. But it feels like you look at the offers that are being made, and it feels like the Democrats don't have this similar kind of message, right? It's you know, it's certainly about protecting people's rights, you know, whether it's the right to abortion, the rights of um LGBTQ people, like all these sorts of things. But it doesn't seem like they have that kind of future offering, like like what is coming next, how is this going to make your life so much better? In part because it's so like we want to be bipartisan, we don't want to turn off too much. Many Republicans and all this kind of stuff, it does seem to stand out, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this is getting actually to a question that I've been thinking about, which is and it's a little simple, but what is progress? You know, is progress getting into space and going to Mars and Jeff Bezos moving all infrastructure off-world as he claims he's gonna do, which you know we don't even need to get into that. It's a little boring and sometimes I feel like a scold, but to me, progress is universal health care or free public transit, more sanitation in New York, a city I love, but that it has trash all over the street and rats everywhere. You know, stuff that makes people live happier, healthier lives, making healthcare decoupling it from employment. And this stuff might seem separate, but of course, politics is about how we distribute resources, budgets, or moral documents. And there are things that we can prioritize, and of course, other countries prioritize things differently, whether you're a time of Scandinavia or even authoritarian China, where they've at least built a lot of trains and brought a lot of people out of poverty. So Musk in particular thinks that he needs to hoard a tremendous amount of resources, an unprecedented amount, like a Napoleonic amount of resources, to take humanity off-world and continue human life, while he increasingly ignores climate change here and treats the people who are immediately working under him horribly. And I think the other thing I hear to that effect is actually sometimes I hear lately people in tech talking about the Kardashev scale. It was this idea come up with by Soviet scientists uh during the Soviet Union that basically there are certain levels, and I couldn't define each level for you, but it measures the advancement of a civilization on a total broad scale. And it's basically your the advancement of a civilization is linked to how much energy you consume. We're not quite there yet, but when you're one level is when you're able to like basically leverage or exploit all of a planet's resources and energy, and then it's like you get a whole star, like a Dyson sphere surrounding a star while you're harnessing all of a star's energy. You know, there are these different levels. I think this idea was inaugurated by nuclear power, but and you hear people in tech saying, Man, I just want to do stuff that lets us move up the Kardashian scale. Like this is science fiction juvenile stuff. Like, look, I love Star Trek, and going to space seems cool in a way, though in some shows it seems a little more grim. I've watched the expanse too. But I also want life down here to be preserved and people to live good lives now, and long-termism does not convince me that we can sort of betray the present in order for some hypothetical better future. And so, but you know, in terms of making science fiction real, like you know, the Kardashian scale is a perhaps a valid kind of scientific model or conception. But in terms of like, that's what we want to do right now to improve our world is like cover it with data centers and solar panels and and nuclear power and in hopes that AI will emerge and then we can go colonize a planet. Like, what are you talking about? That is not the need we need to address. To them, it's not a political vision, but that's not sort of the industrial mode of development, even that we should be pursuing. That that is way off from what is gonna lead to human flourishing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I obviously completely agree. I I just feel like the tech industry is talking about creating this magical future, and what is actually gonna happen is they're gonna turn like Earth into the planet in the matrix.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And like some of them also talk about how AI will breed, and Sam Aldman has said this, I believe, will sort of eventually will produce an era of superabundance. I mean, this is when all our problems will be solved, including climate change. But it's like, do you think that rapacious capitalists who have built their whole careers becoming billionaires and powerful people by being transactional and by being hyper-focused on profit and money and exploitation and the accumulation of power are gonna bring us into a world where there's superabundance and everyone can live equally and have what they need? Like, that is not going to happen. These people are never satisfied. There's never enough. Musk wants a trillion dollars. And where is the superabundance going to come from and why is it gonna be instantly granted to the rest of us? Is Sam Altman gonna suddenly be far more beneficent than he has shown himself to be? Uh, I I just don't buy that. And I don't also don't see how it's physically possible.
SPEAKER_00But Jacob, if you scan your eye in the orb, you might get a crypto basic income.
SPEAKER_01And he, yeah, right, he funded a UBI in Stockton, California, or something like that. But you know, while that's a perhaps a worthwhile experiment, everything else in his career and and and attitude to date makes me think that this is not someone who wants to feed the world.
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think so. And we know explicitly that it's something that Elon Musk doesn't want to do.
SPEAKER_01Um he had the opportunity, right? With the World Food Program. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, it's so wild. But like you're saying, right? Like when you look at the progress vision from the Democrats, they can't offer you, you know, universal health care and and all these sorts of things that would really improve society. And it feels like that is like what is really harming that type of campaign to push against this narrative that is coming from this extremely right-wing side of not just the political spectrum, but the tech industry and and how you know their kind of vision of the future has evolved. And of course, in part because that would require government action. It would require getting the government to actually do things that you know you haven't really seen or or expected the US government to do in a very long time. And the idea of like changing that up, it just seems so beyond the political system that exists in the United States right now that it leaves it open to these grifters like the Trumps and the Musks of the world to take full advantage of that for their own purposes.
SPEAKER_01I agree. I mean, I I think on the right, they're offering something. It's to cleanse the country of migrants, it's to have techno-fascism, basically. And if you're just a MAGA guy in Middle America, you can have your nativism and kind of uh American revanchism. Whereas on the Democratic side, they sort of say that stuff seems bad. We need to keep supporting Israel, we're not going to change any of our policies, we're not going to offer you good stuff like healthcare or public investment because we did some of that during the IRA, the infrastructure act, and it sounds like a giveaway if we're promising it during the campaign. I mean, and we see this, of course, in Michigan with the way that Arab and Muslim voters are being treated there. Like Democrats and liberals are either ignoring them or browbeating them and saying, what, you want Trump? You want the Muslim banned guy? It's like you simply cannot do that. As a politician, you need to try to earn people's votes. It's your responsibility. It's so cynical to treat it otherwise. And you might say, we're going to keep supporting Israel, but you have to extend something to them. At a certain point, the Democrats have to understand that they are perpetuating these wars and supporting them. And like I said, on the other side, at least there is some kind of program. I find it a very grim one. I would I would close it out by saying, as long as the Democrats aren't offering some positive political program or something more than we have better billionaires on our side, I don't see how they can chart a different path than especially when part of the one of the issues throughout this campaign is like sort of the state of cities and migrants and you know a lot of it is fake or premise on lies, but you can't just match that with, oh, we're gonna build a better wall. You have to say, like, there actually is no migrant invasion, or we are going to invest in cities, or we are going to partner with the tech industry in a way that isn't going to erase all of your rights.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a different kind of technology and a different kind of tech industry, uh, right?
SPEAKER_01It might be possible. I don't know. Yeah, maybe not under these Democrats.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly, right. And and as you're saying, like the moral bankruptcy of not even being able to say we will not support Benjamin Netanyahu carrying out a genocide against Palestinian people, and that this guy should be brought up on you know war crime charges, it should be like the very basics.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like table stakes. I mean, I don't even know why they don't even say like this war has to end, like in that broad language, like or something like that. Like, obviously that's a bloodless or sort of amoral statement or whatever, and far from sufficient. But yeah, I think it's amazing. And I don't I wonder even sometimes if the Biden administration knows you know how far they've committed themselves. You know, like that most of the country has a problem with this. A lot of Republicans do. Like Thomas Massey, this conservative uh Republican from Kentucky, I believe, in Congress, posted a video of a building in Lebanon being bombed into rubble and said that if the Israelis want to attack civilian targets, they should pay for it. I mean, I was surprised. That's like you know, besides the squad and a couple other Democrats, you don't hear that on the Democratic side.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and to be clear, like, I don't think Donald Trump would be any better for the people of Gaza or Palestinians, right? But that doesn't mean that the Democrats are also going to be good for protecting their lives or anything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the ch you know, the genocide is happening now, and if that's your family, like how could you possibly countenance voting for for this candidate?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Um so I I just want to end this with uh you know, uh another kind of broad question to kind of sum up what we've been talking about. So the election is getting pretty close. We're talking before um it's going to happen, you know, and again, to be clear, we're talking about a week before people will be hearing this episode, so things can change. You know, right now, people I think it's fair to say are pretty fearful that Trump might actually pull it out and win the election, even after the kind of boost that the Harris campaign and the Democrats had after she replaced Joe Biden as the candidate. And it seems like a lot of that excitement has kind of been squandered for reasons that we've been talking about, right? But if one of these candidates were to take power, if Donald Trump takes power, if Kamala Harris becomes president, what do you think that the next administration is going to look like for the tech industry? Because, you know, obviously we've seen Donald Trump really embrace the tech industry to an even greater degree than 2016 when he was close to Peter Thiel, but you know, he wasn't really bringing in Thiel's picks into his cabinet or anything. But now we have J.D. Vance as the potential vice president.
SPEAKER_01And potential president.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, exactly. And as we've talked about, Elon Musk is basically you know pulling the strings behind the chair there. And then on the other side, we have Kamala Harris, who is with the Democrats. Biden has obviously been very or quite critical of the tech industry. He has allowed these antitrust investigations to move forward. He has obviously been not much of a friend to Elon Musk, though, of course, the government has still given a lot of contracts to SpaceX and things like that. But for on the Tesla side of things, Elon Musk is very mad at him. But it does seem like Kamala Harris would be more pro-tech than Joe Biden and hasn't spoken out, say, for example, in support of Lena Khan. So what do you think both of these paths would mean for the tech industry when one of those people becomes president?
SPEAKER_01I think first with Harris, you're right that she's a little closer to tech. She's from California. It was her brother-in-law, was general counsel for Uber.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he's just taken a little break during the campaign to help her out, and then he'll be going back there.
SPEAKER_01The revolving door is wonderful, isn't it? And that's a very Obama-era thing, too. I feel like Obama and people went to Uber and Amazon elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, David Plough or Plough or whatever his name is. Yeah, he was at Uber.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I don't know if a lot will change for tech. I mean, Lena Khan might be out because Harris doesn't seem to care about trust busting and is maybe just a little friendlier to Silicon Valley. So that would be a big deal for tech. I mean, one thing I I like to point out is that the tech industry has done extraordinarily well in the last two decades, really, um, but has done pretty well under Biden. Uh we've we've they've had two bubbles, crypto and AI.
SPEAKER_00Not to mention the Chips Act and the cracking down on Chinese competition.
SPEAKER_01Yes, which should be a whole other podcast. I'm sure you've done one and I think is actually misguided. But you know, I I do think promoting American uh chip manufacturing is good, but the chip war with China's service never matter. But I think part of this is they don't know how good they have it or have had it. I mean, again, these are elites. This is Mark Andreessen with three mansions in Malibu still complaining on his phone. So there could still potentially be an effort to break up Google, perhaps, or one of the other big giants, which I think would be good for tech. I think it would even be good for the little tech that Andreessen kind of talks about sometimes in bad faith, because you'd have more competition, perhaps more MA opportunities, more acquisitions, they can still sell their startups if they want to. And also one thing we haven't mentioned is the hawkishness against China is somewhat bipartisan, and it's certainly embraced by tech. So I think if Paris is president, you're gonna see the chip war continue, you're gonna see the military buildup continue and the sparring over Taiwan, and the tech industry will want in on that. I mean, they already are, and they're gonna be bidding for every defense tech project that they can relate to China.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it feels notable that she's been making like a lot of very hawkish statements around the military during this campaign.
SPEAKER_01And even uh Palmer Lucky from Onrill, while he's a right-wing ideologue, he said uh a couple months ago, I believe, that, you know, we did pretty well under Biden. I think we'll do we'll do okay under whoever's next president. Like, and that's because the government is buying his stuff, and so he has a reason to feel secure. So I think that's kind of how we might see it. You know, there may be some, there are a lot of investigations that could be needed. I think there are investigations that should be into foreign money uh in Silicon Valley, labor issues. I doubt Harris would be that supportive of unionization the way that Biden to his relative credit has been. So things like that kind of uh, you know, a a kind of maybe less satisfying version of the status quo. I think that if Trump takes office, you will see much more of a union uh between Silicon Valley and the state, which to be clear started under or I mean has always been there since the earliest days, but also increase under Bush with the surveillance state, increase under Obama with after the Snowden revelations, everyone there was a lot of upsetness, and then everyone kind of made nice, save for a couple lawsuits over FISA court stuff. Um, so this this union of of tech and the security state and tech and of the industrial base has only grown despite the grouse th on different sides. And so I think it will continue to grow under Trump with more privatization. But really, again, I think this empowerment of Musk and his circle that feels a lot more like oligarchy in action. That like these people call the shots sometimes publicly, if not just calling up Trump on the phone and telling them what they want.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I obviously think we're facing a very dangerous four years, if not more than that, if Donald Trump returns to power and empowers people like Elon Musk to the degree that they have, and also ensures that these investigations are not going to move forward. And of course, there's the larger threats to, say, the National Labor Relations Board and other regulators, as the Supreme Court has been kind of you know pulling back those things, the Chevron decision and things like that, that some people might be familiar with. But then I also am very fearful that even if the Democrats return to power, if Kamala Harris is president, that by removing LenaCon, by taking the efforts off some of these things that are moving forward at the moment under Biden, by not being as supportive of labor as as Biden was, that you know, we might be in for uh still a pretty grim four years as well, right? Unfortunately.
SPEAKER_01And I think as you well know, I mean, I think the battle over data centers and resources and but more broadly, the AI bubble. I think like the crypto bubble collapsed. It affected some people, but not really the general public or economy. They were able to sort of spin it up again. We have another, in my opinion, fake crypto bubble, and also they repurposed some of that stuff for AI. But you know, AI has touched so much now, and there's you know, even the university I went to uh last year was time on integrating AI all across the university and every department. I was like, what do you what? You know, it's just everywhere. And even though a lot of us know and a lot of working people know that it it hasn't improved their lives or changed their jobs in a positive way very much. So when that bubble inevitably, I think, in some kind of way bursts, like it's gonna be trouble for a lot of people. You know, it's gonna be a disruption to economic life, it's gonna be a disruption to some people's working lives. I mean, maybe this is something you thought about, but I'm not really sure what happens then. You know, we're gonna have a lot of infrastructure to maybe deal with, like sort of dead infrastructure or unused, and a lot of debts being called in and and pr and companies going under.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you know, there's there's so much that could happen. There's so many uncertainties.
SPEAKER_01And it won't be the tech industry's fault. Just know that. It'll be our fault as tech critics.
SPEAKER_00Always, always. Jacob, I could talk to you forever. You know, we didn't even get to the crypto uh, you know, what they were up to in this election, but of course I talked to Molly White about that a couple months ago.
SPEAKER_01We can have a post-mortem later.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. We'll have to do that. Always great to talk to you to pick your brain to dig into what is going on with the extreme right in Silicon Valley. Thanks so much for taking the time.
SPEAKER_01It was fun, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Jacob Silverman is the author of Gilded Rage, which comes out in September of 2025, and also of Easy Money. Tech Won's Save Us is made in partnership with the Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Eric Wickham, and transcripts are by Bridget Pelou Fry. Tech Won't Save Us relies on the support of listeners like you to keep providing critical perspectives on the tech industry. You can join hundreds of other supporters by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and making a pledge of your own. Thanks for listening. Make sure to come back next week.