{"id":15630,"date":"2025-03-27T06:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T10:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=15630"},"modified":"2025-03-27T06:51:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-27T10:51:17","slug":"trumps-tyrannical-totalitarian-technocracy-surreptitiously-takes-over-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.info\/?p=15630","title":{"rendered":"

Trump’s tyrannical totalitarian technocracy surreptitiously takes over<\/span> (Part II)<\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Dark MAGA Gov-Corp Technate \u2014 Part 2<\/strong><\/h1>\n

In continuing to unpack the ideologies of the oligarchs who are part of the new Trump administration, Iain Davis examines how their ideas are being translated into policy. He considers the consequent infrastructure rollout that is preparing the US and the world for an imminent Gov-corp Technate within a multipolar world.<\/h3>\n

by Iain Davis<\/p>\n

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In Part 1 of this series, we explored the political philosophies that have long been adopted and promoted by Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and considered the implications, given both men\u2019s obvious influence on the Trump administration. Musk is a high-profile advocate of Technocracy, and Peter Thiel is an accelerationist neoreactionary who favours, in particular, the Dark Enlightenment. Before you read this article (Part 2), I urge you to familiarise yourself with the explanations of Technocracy and the NRx (the neoreactionary movement) provided in Part 1. Otherwise, many of the references here will lack context.<\/p>\n

As we noted in Part 1, Thiel and Musk are part of the oligarchic class by virtue of being invited to join a network led by other oligarchs whose stratospheric wealth\u00a0far surpasses<\/a>\u00a0that of the names published on the \u201crichest people in the world\u201d lists. Welcomed into their exclusive club, Thiel and Musk are made men. In Part 2, we will explore how the political philosophies and the associated economic theories of Thiel and Musk are shaping public policy. Keep in mind that these two men are far from alone in attempting to create an American gov-corp Technate.<\/p>\n

Libertarian Technocrats?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Although they borrow some libertarian ideas, there is nothing truly \u201clibertarian\u201d about either technocrats or accelerationist neoreactionaries. Their convoluted theories, once applied, could not be more authoritarian, more anti-liberty. Just as it is an oxymoron to describe Musk as a \u201clibertarian technocrat,\u201d so is it absurd to think of Peter Thiel as an \u201canarcho-capitalist.\u201d Yet propagandists persist in encouraging us to see them in these terms. Witness a 2014 article in\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/a>\u00a0titled \u201cThe Libertarian Capitalist\u2019s Case for State Power and Making No Money.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is possible that people like Thiel and Musk self-identify as libertarians because they think \u201cliberty\u201d means freedom granted by \u2014 and to \u2014 the oligarchy.<\/p>\n

In Part 1, we referenced the\u00a0Venetian Republic<\/a>. The Doge of Venice was the ruler of the banking, finance, and commercial empire of the Venetian Republic. That is to say, the Doge was given the liberty to rule by the oligarchs of the day.\u00a0<\/a>We might wonder if the naming of the Department of Government Efficiency (the DOGE) that Musk leads deliberately references the Venetian magistrate. Some say it does, while others suggest another possibility.<\/p>\n

Created\u00a0as a joke<\/a>\u00a0in 2013 by cryptographers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, the Dogecoin, a memecoin, has seen its price and market cap soar and fluctuate wildly thanks in no small measure to Elon Musk\u2019s comments about it. Much of Musk\u2019s talk about Dogecoin has been deliberately provocative. For example, in 2019 he declared himself the \u201cformer CEO of Dogecoin,\u201d though that was never the case. His social media posts alone have provoked major changes in the price of Dogecoin. Musk has also aggressively hiked its value by, for instance, hinting it might become the basis of the proposed \u201cX pay\u201d payment system on his newly acquired \u2018X\u2019 platform \u2014 formerly Twitter.<\/p>\n

Musk encouraged bullish investment in Dogecoin. Of course, just because someone encourages you to do something that doesn\u2019t negate your personal responsibility to conduct due diligence. When some investors lost their shirts, as Dogecoin prices tumbled, they tried to sue Musk in 2022 with a potential $258 billion class action lawsuit. The case was\u00a0dismissed last year<\/a>. The judge ruled that Musk\u2019s comments were just \u201caspirational and puffery, not factual and susceptible to being falsified.\u201d Though it is worth noting the offhand comments of one man took the Dogecoin from a literal joke \u2014 a crypto parody \u2014 to achieving a market capitalisation of $14.5 billion in 2021.<\/p>\n

If there is an\u00a0in-joke<\/em>\u00a0to the naming of the DOGE, nominally led by Elon Musk, some argue it is Musk\u2019s fondness for the Dogecoin that is reflected in the D.O.G.E acronym. Yet, the symbolism of \u201cthe Doge \u201d\u2014 one who is granted the liberty to rule by oligarchs \u2014 is perhaps more conspicuous. Just as with the term \u201cAccelerator\u201d \u2014 meaning high-impact investment to accelerate the growth of a startup \u2014 an obvious underpinning ideology is implied, even if rarely discussed.<\/p>\n

In the introduction to his 2012 treatise, \u201cThe Dark Enlightenment<\/a>,\u201d political philosopher Nick Land highlighted the importance of an article written three years earlier by oligarch Thiel.<\/p>\n

Land wrote:<\/p>\n

One milestone was the April 2009 discussion hosted at Cato Unbound among libertarian thinkers (including Patri Friedman and Peter Thiel) in which disillusionment with the direction and possibilities of democratic politics was expressed with unusual forthrightness. Thiel summarized the trend bluntly: \u201cI no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In a related article Thiel penned, titled \u201cThe Education of a Libertarian<\/a>,\u201d he was describing himself, and yet the personal philosophy he outlined in it was pure accelerationist neoreactionism.<\/p>\n

Thiel opined that \u201cthe prospects for a libertarian politics appear grim indeed,\u201d given that the government\u2019s response to every crisis was \u201cmore government.\u201d He also claimed that the post-WWI deflationary depression in Western nations was the last \u201csharp but short\u201d shock to have allowed the alleged advantages of Schumpeterian \u201ccreative destruction\u201d to flourish. After that depression, he said, so-called \u201cdemocratic\u201d politics had stifled the opportunities to capitalise on crises. As a result, Thiel said he no longer believed \u201cthat politics encompasses all possible futures of our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asserting, in so many words, that democracies were useless, Thiel announced he had found a new life goal:<\/p>\n

In our time, the great task for libertarians is to find an escape from politics in all its forms \u2014 from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called \u201csocial democracy.\u201d The critical question then becomes one of means, of how to escape not via politics but beyond it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For Thiel, the \u201cunthinking demos\u201d is us: the holders of the \u201cneo-puritan faith\u201d in progressive \u201csocial democracy\u201d \u2014 the acolytes of the Cathedral (and the people whom Nick Land\u00a0considers<\/a>\u00a0\u201cinarticulate proles\u201d). In Thiel\u2019s view, we must embrace our \u201ctechnoplastic\u201d future, become intelligible, move beyond politics, and liberate capitalist innovation by swearing fealty to the gov-corp model.<\/p>\n

To this end, Thiel identified three \u201ctechnological frontiers\u201d upon which he could construct his darkly enlightened aristocracy.<\/p>\n

[1] Cyberspace was the first frontier he identified. There, Thiel focused on creating \u201ca new world currency, free from all government control and dilution.\u201d Cyberspace would enable \u201cnew modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states\u201d \u2014 and would result in a new world that would \u201cforce change on the existing social and political order.\u201d<\/p>\n

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[2] Outer space would be another Thiel frontier, where the \u201clibertarian future of classic science fiction\u201d could be built.<\/p>\n

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[3]\u00a0Seasteading<\/a>\u00a0would be his interim frontier, where the\u00a0unclaimed oceans<\/a>\u00a0could be settled by humans. He called seasteading \u201cmore tentative than the Internet, but much more realistic than space travel.\u201d Seasteading would at least give us the time to develop the outer-space ideas on earth, prior to colonising the stars.<\/p>\n

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These frontiers are necessary, Thiel insisted, because \u201cwe are in a deadly race between politics and technology.\u201d He concluded:<\/p>\n

We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount.\u00a0The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person [Trump?]\u00a0<\/strong>who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism. [Emphasis added.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Between 2006 and 2012, Thiel was instrumental in organising the Singularity Summits convened by the Machine Intelligence Research Institute \u2014 originally the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) \u2014 in partnership with Stanford University. Thiel provided much of the funding.<\/p>\n

Thiel cannot be both an advocate of accelerationist neoreaction and simultaneously an anarcho-capitalist \u2014 a libertarian. The two philosophies are mutually exclusive.<\/p>\n

In Part 1, we noted the technocrats\u2019 rejection of the notion that \u201call men are created equal.\u201d In a similar vein, Land, Yarvin, Fisher, and other accelerationists consider it essential to have a ruling entity, which can only be comprised of a few human beings exercising an\u00a0unequal<\/em>, additional right to rule. Both the technocrats and the accelerationists fundamentally misunderstand, or misinterpret, what the Preamble to\u00a0The Declaration of Independence<\/a>\u00a0means. They completely ignore the second clause of the relevant declaration \u2014 namely, \u201cthat they [human beings] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEquality,\u201d in\u00a0real<\/em>\u00a0libertarian thinking, does not infer a held belief that everyone is the same \u2014 though that is certainly how technocrats interpret the word.<\/p>\n

Libertarian \u201cequality\u201d doesn\u2019t deny that people have relative strengths and weaknesses. It is not a rejection of either leadership or possible forms of meritocracy. It\u00a0self-evidently<\/em>\u00a0means that every human being has an equal right to \u201cLife, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d These rights are unalienable \u2014 or\u00a0inalienable<\/a>. Our rights are not decided for us by others or limited by others, and no one on earth has any more or any fewer \u201cequal rights\u201d than anyone else.<\/p>\n

This idea is not difficult to grasp. It is central to the political philosophy of\u00a0anarcho-capitalism<\/a>, as clearly enunciated by Murray Rothbard (1926\u20131995):<\/p>\n

[N]o man or group of men may aggress against the person or property of anyone else. This may be called the \u201cnonaggression axiom.\u201d \u201cAggression\u201d is defined as the initiation of the use or threat of physical violence against the person or property of anyone else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anarcho-capitalism wholeheartedly rejects the initiation of the use of force \u2014 the aggressive imposition of claimed authority \u2014 by the state to coerce individual persons or seize their property. An example is the threat of fining or imprisoning someone who hasn\u2019t paid taxes to the \u201cproper\u201d authorities. Anarcho-capitalism resoundingly rejects the state and all its dictatorial demands.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the proponents of Technocracy and the proponents of the Dark Enlightenment, such as Musk and Thiel, are not interested in restricting state power, though they may say otherwise. Instead they wish to move the state from the public to the private sector and expand its power once sufficiently privatized. True, they oppose \u201crepresentative democracy\u201d and characterise it as both a \u201cdemocracy\u201d (which it isn\u2019t) and a bureaucratic system riddled with problems (which it is), but the\u00a0solutions<\/em>\u00a0they offer, to all intents and purposes, magnify the power of the very state they supposedly condemn.<\/p>\n

What the believers in Technocracy and the believers in the Dark Enlightenment both propose are compartmentalised, hierarchical sociopolitical power structures that couldn\u2019t be\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0state-like or\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0authoritarian. They seek to expand and maximise the power of the state, though in slightly different ways. Calling their new model of the state either a Technate (as technocrats do) or a gov-corp (as accelerationist neoreactionaries do) doesn\u2019t change the nature of the tyrannical statism they desire to foist on the rest of us.<\/p>\n

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The Flag of Dark Enlightenment \u2013\u00a0Source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Technopopulist Myth<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The term \u201ctechnopopulism<\/a>,\u201d coined by political theorists Christopher Bickerton and Carlo Accetti, has increasingly been\u00a0bandied about<\/a>. While the US voters who elected Trump were offered technopopulist promises, this was clearly a sales pitch to entice them to support a gov-corp Technate.<\/p>\n

\u201cPopulism\u201d can be broadly\u00a0defined<\/a>\u00a0as a political attempt to \u201cappeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.\u201d \u201cTechnocracy\u201d is commonly said to\u00a0mean<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca government or social system that is controlled or influenced by experts in science or technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neither left-wing nor right-wing, technopopulism promises a new kind of politics based on the belief that the more limited role of elected politicians is to put the appropriate teams of experts together to guide policy and to find technological solutions to social and economic problems, thereby benefiting \u201cordinary people.\u201d But the apparent technopopulist offer to retain democratic accountability in the US is a deceit.<\/p>\n

The technopopulists say they want to unleash \u201ctechnocracy\u201d \u2014 with a small \u201ct\u201d \u2014 for the public good. But the new government system they propose is constructing \u201cTechnocracy\u201d \u2014 with a big \u201cT\u201d \u2014 to serve the interests of the \u201cAmerican elites.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is evident from The Heritage Foundation\u2019s Project 2025 (aka The 2025 Presidential Transition Project),\u00a0Promise to America<\/a>. It claims its purpose is to \u201cdefang and defund the woke culture warriors who have infiltrated every last institution in America.\u201d While defanging and defunding woke warriors holds allure for American voters, the Project 2025 methodology actually\u00a0subverts<\/em>\u00a0US \u201crepresentative democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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TrumpED 2025: School Choice Corporatization, Social Impact Finance, and the Dismantling of the Department of Education<\/div>\n
In alignment with Project 2025, Trump pledges to eliminate the Dpt. of Ed and replace it with \u201cschool choice.\u201d Rather than end federal control of education, Project 2025 education policy threatens to expand both government and corporate control of schooling in order to streamline ed-technocracy for the 4IR.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Trump administration is evidently closely allied with Project 2025 \u2014 denials notwithstanding. One such obvious tie: Trump has nominated Russell Vought to return to the post of director of the\u00a0Office of Management and Budget<\/a>\u00a0(OMB), and, by no coincidence, Vought was a\u00a0key figure<\/a>\u00a0in convening the Project 2025 initiative. Project 2025 contributors were influential in Trump\u2019s first administration and are no less conspicuous in his current\u00a0picks for office<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Project 2025 sets a presidential agenda for the first 180 days in office that seeks to empower the executive branch to meet these key goals: dramatically reduce the size of the public sector bureaucracy; privatise and deregulate the functions of the state; and liberate American technological innovation by \u201cshuttering\u201d it off from the China tech sector\u2019s alleged infiltration.<\/p>\n

Thus, according to Project 2025, US technology can, if applied properly, be used to resolve all manner of social problems\u2014from anti-American inequality of opportunity in the education system to woke propaganda infesting the media. In other words, American technology produced by Americans and for Americans can supply every long-sought answer to America\u2019s ills. The power of American AI\u00a0can be set free<\/a>\u00a0to, for example, police social media and tackle abuses such as Medicare fraud. Project 2025 offers the additional justification that the US is in an AI arms race with China and, therefore, must invest in AI accordingly.<\/p>\n

Trump issued a slew of executive orders following his inauguration. These days, this is not an unusual practice for an incoming US president. However, Trump\u2019s EOs were clearly heavily influenced by\u00a0Project 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ironically, The Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 are bankrolled by some of the \u201celites\u201d the project accuses of betraying Americans. The Coors, Koch, Uihlein, Barre Seid, Bradley, and Scaiffe families are among the financial backers of both the Foundation and Project 2025.<\/p>\n

Rather than technopopulists it is the \u201cTechnoKings\u201d (see Part 1) who have been \u201cassisting\u201d Trumps selection of his administration\u2019s personnel. Musk\u2019s influence is well known but Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz,\u00a0is another\u00a0influencer<\/em><\/a>. Andreessen has not just been involved in making Trump\u2019s picks for technology and economic related positions \u2014 areas where he perhaps has some expertise \u2014 but also for US\u00a0defense and intelligence posts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Andreessen\u2019s Machiavellian reasons for supporting Trump are obvious. As reported by\u00a0the Verge<\/a>, in July 2024 Andreessen spelled out that he and his partners were backing Trump, not because they shared any of the concerns voiced by Republican voters, but because they could use the Trump administration to deliver the regulatory environment they wanted for their project to succeed.<\/p>\n

That project is a gov-corp Technate. Not technopopulism but Techno-Optimism.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Marc Andreessen published\u00a0The Techno-Optimist Manifesto<\/a>. He explained precisely why he and his TechKing partners have seized their opportunity:<\/p>\n

We can advance to a far superior way of living, and of being. [. . .] We believe that there is no material problem \u2013 whether created by nature or by technology \u2013 that cannot be solved with more technology. [. . .] We have a problem of poverty, so we invent technology to create abundance. Give us a real world problem, and we can invent technology that will solve it.<\/p>\n

[. . .] Combine technology and markets and you get what Nick Land has termed the techno-capital machine, the engine of perpetual material creation, growth, and abundance.[. . .] We believe in accelerationism \u2013 the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development \u2013 to [. . .] ensure the techno-capital upward spiral continues forever. [. . .]<\/p>\n

We believe intelligence is in an upward spiral, [. . .] as people form symbiotic relationships with machines into new cybernetic systems. [. . .] We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher\u2019s Stone. [. . .] We believe in Augmented Intelligence just as much as we believe in Artificial Intelligence. Intelligent machines augment intelligent humans, driving a geometric expansion of what humans can do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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