The Nerd Reich – Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy

When I watch Ex-machina the degree to which I loathed Oscar Isaac's character surprised me. While much of it was because the character was objectively loathsome, part of it was because the type of person he represented was infecting the tech world.

The thing that seemed really inconguous to me was that he actually made the amazing tech. I don't think I have ever encountered a personality like that who actually made things. Certainly I've seen them talking about how great the thing they made is, but invariably, to them, I made means 'my employees made'

Which is not to say that there aren't toxic people who do actually make things. They exist, but it presents somewhat differently to the 'Tech bro' archetype.

> maybe you can count Zuckerberg

I think that you definitely need to count him. He's always been a massive nerd, his attempts to bulk up and become a MMA competitor notwithstanding.

It shouldn't matter whether the leaders are actual technical nerds. They are highly focused and motivated individuals who are harnessing tech for the stated purpose. Maybe this is by design and a coordinated movement - or maybe it is the inevitable consequence of uncontrolled and unregulated capitalism.

If profit maximisation is the ultimate goal every smart individual chases, the current trajectory seems inevitable?

Carmack? Also ended up drifting right, but you can't fault his technical credentials.

Wozniak is still alive and seemingly not in the rightwing set, although also too retired to count as "leadership".

Zuckerberg? The genius coder according to the movie. Programming in PHP.

Elon Musk must be one. Seems enough techy to me: Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink - software being used for the hardware in innovative ways.

You're replying to a single-sentence comment that both calls out the ridiculousness of this book's argument and its funny title. Clearly I can hold two ideas in my head at once and maybe, just maybe, other people can too.

I struggle to imagine that anyone not already sympathetic to the high school classic "nerds suck" world view is going to suddenly be swayed by this funny book title.

Classic example of motivated reasoning as stop think. Condescend at your own peril.

Does open source code count as "capital"? It also has a real and significant effect.

That's my point. Any tech can (and is) used for this. There's really no point in putting word "code" there. It adds very little additional context. Only in my opinion mostly serves the other goal - to sell.

I take parent's meaning to be that "code" is redundant in the repetition not blameless.

It would be great if you have tried to express yourself other than some weird implications.

>And how did they get those capital, for instance the CEO of Meta?

This is the right question.

I'll quote myself here:

1. How come people are able to accumulate so much capital?

2. How come people are able to use the capital to influence life of other people in all ways possible to their liking?

Yes code and capital are both "tools". But you can't just right some code and install cameras at every corner. You need some political influence to do so. And capital buys you this influence.

And to get this capital you should have laws that allow you to do so (tax rates, evasion etc).

Same goes for political influence.

>Are facial recognition models, AI LLMs to spew out spam and addictive social media algorithms not backed by code?

Sure, just like tank is backed by metallurgy and engineers.

>The kings and dictators of the past had a lot more capital than Silicon Valley, but could only dream of building such surveillance and propaganda capabilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Richelieu (and not only him most likely) would disagree.

Soviet union had surveillance and propaganda capabilities you can't even imagine without any of LLM etc.

Surely new tech makes things easier and cheeper, but doesn't change the basic principles.

My point is exactly this: code makes things move faster for everyone, so you can really remove if from the sentence and nothing will change. In adds no meaningful context. It mostly sells.

Israeli companies are selling facial recognition software that has false positives in the low sub 0.0x %.

And their tracking works even if you try to masquerade your looks with beards, hats or glasses.[1]

It is used by agencies from all around the world, with only few admitting to it such as the essex police in UK. [2]

Albeit, if you talk with representatives of these companies behind the scenes you will find that the amount of customers is massive, and includes police forces and governments from all around the world.

You can rest assured that if you've ever taken an international flight (and likely even if you haven't), if you're roaming a random place on the other end of the world a decade later, everybody knows that, phone or no phone, whether there's traces of your trip or not, you are going to be recognized and recorded.

And fighting crime seems to be as much of a concern as is fighting political dissent and journalism.

E.g. in Italy there's a massive amount of journalists that have found they were being spied on through backdoors like Paragon's Graphite or fake 5g/phone antennas intercepting their signals.

Various (mostly Israeli) security companies claim to be able to decrypt encryption keys of any network-connected device at a distance with a machine of some sort (a bit huge, but still small enough to fit a luggage).

And their customers are primarily governments and police forces, more often than not breaching their own countries' laws.

Seriously, nothing grinds my nerves like the gaslighting we get with the China boogeyman, I'm more and more convinced this is all brainwashing to create the impression that we should worry about a borderline non-existing threat, when our own governments and agencies everyday are entering our data, manipulating it, and leveraging it for their political and financial gains.

And to some extent, the same applies to US big tech. It's an easy scapegoat globally for privacy breaches, and takes a lot of light off the very serious consequences of what our own governments do.

Our liberties and freedom are being eroded quickly and massively every day, yet the constant privacy narrative of focusing on big tech or borderline non-existing foreign threats is giving our own governments the means to control our societies with ease and with very serious and immediate consequences.

[1] https://www.corsight.ai/

[2] https://www.essex.police.uk/police-forces/essex-police/areas...

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The person who submitted the link already explained the submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46068363

I don't know if you will find a time in US history where the press was accurate, honest, and truthful.

I agree with GP that a primary missing feature is a principled public - without principles people swing wildly in opinion depending on the topic and popular rhetoric.

I see this with much of my own family. They mostly consider themselves conservatives and Republicans of the small government and balanced budget era. Those presumed values go out the window though and when a particular political topic of the day comes up they seem to completely contradict it. The most egregious example in my family is a Ron Paul libertarian that somehow still holds those opinions while supporting virtually everything Trump does.

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I'm not talking about the number of impoverished converts or believers. In terms of prosperity and global power, no religion or former empire has come close.

Most people who complains about Musk was celebrating whan Facebook, twitter and youtube where silencing the other side when the democrats where in power.

The truth is, big capital doing what big capital likes to do: accumulating power and trying to steer opinions via media. Not the first time, wont be the last. The us had a business insurrection with proto facist characteristics in the 30's that did not succeeded and in the only reason the people in charge where not arrested was because the country had barely ended the latest grand recession, and doing so would break the market again.

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It's at least a little bit amusing that, five or ten years ago, if you opposed big corporate tech allying with government to impose undemocratic political programs, then you were a fascist, while all good thinkers supported that partnership. Only to have that valence switch on a dime when the context changed.

If the Left (and the Right, for that matter) want to make durable political change, they really need coherent theory beyond who's the Bad Guy of the moment.

Not trying to say that you or Gil Duran is wrong, but any anti vaxxer or flat earther can say the same about their "theory" and their well respected writers.