The Key to Understanding the Disturbing Relationship Between Silicon Valley and the Trump Administration

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There’s not a lot of original reporting in The Nerd Reich, but Durán assembles relevant info from scores of journalists and scholars, as well as providing a valuable dive into the fringy sources for some of the Valley’s most menacing ideas. Thiel, the supervillain in this story, was profoundly shaped by a 1997 book by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg, The Sovereign Individual . One of the countless titles published every year predicting some form of imminent social or economic collapse and offering advice on how to survive it, The Sovereign Individual struck Thiel as prescient, a prophecy of the coming invention of both cryptocurrency and A.I. , the subsequent downfall of nation-states, and the rise of individuals as complete masters of their own fates—or, at least, those individuals smart, and therefore rich, enough to command such power.

Through a network of protégés and via his own vast wealth and the influence of his venture capital firm, Thiel has spread these and a hodgepodge of other often incoherent ideas throughout both industry and government. “The most important thing to understand about J.D. Vance,” Durán writes of the vice president, “is that he is almost entirely a creation of Peter Thiel.” In this light, some of the more baffling obsessions of the current administration—such as its desire to acquire Greenland —become more intelligible as manifestations of Silicon Valley ambitions and lobbying. A key element of what Durán refers to as TESCREALism—after an acronym coined by computer scientist Timnit Gebru and philosopher Émile P. Torres —is a plan to set up “network cities,” independent and regulation-free polities in which the supermen of Big Tech will be allowed to do whatever they like. Several such projects are currently in the works in locations ranging from Honduras to Sonoma County , though they have mostly encountered the strenuous opposition of the locals. Many advocates of network cities have their eye on Greenland, with its rich lodes of minerals and rare earth materials, as a potential site.

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TESCREAL, Durán writes, stands for a conglomeration of “seven overlapping ideological movements: transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism.” Transhumanists believe that emerging technologies will transform people into “post-human robots” with superior physical and cognitive abilities. Extropians believe that technology will improve the human condition until we attain immortality. Singularitarians believe that the moment when humanity merges with machines, “the singularity,” will arrive at any moment. Cosmists want to revive the project of settling in outer space .