Post 4c: Artificial Intelligence, Technofascism and Our Democratic FutureStrategic Moment to Disarm AI
Summary
This is a reflection that ponders the difficulty of understanding the backstory behind the news that hides the unholy alliance between the fascism of Trumpism and the more sinister technofascism of many tech billionaires. It is an attempt to analyze how this alliance is played out in the effort to create advanced AI tools and agents that will garner untold wealth for a small number of private companies and individuals. Their means and vision will have severe consequences for the future of democracy. My reflection also raises concerns about whether humans can counter these anti-human efforts in ways that will protect and manifest the human capacity for compassion and solidarity. Our counter efforts will need to be joined by intentional self-weaning from technology that seeks to reduce humans to products to be optimized. I review my past Posts to provide a larger context for these reflections. Video materials are included that enhance my narrative to illustrate the many voices engaged to address the dystopian efforts we face. A dystopia that will cause the loss of democratic values and a pluralistic vision for the United States.
“In the age of mass media, public opinion is often 'generated for the purpose of an abstract vote that amounts to no more than an act of acclamation within a public sphere temporarily manufactured for show or manipulation.'”
— Jürgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
“We used to be the cats. Now we are the mice.”
--- Jil Lepore in “Bot or Not: How to tell if you’re human”
(The New Yorker, “Brave New World Department,” August 17, 2026)
“It is not for us to master all the tides of the world, but to do what we can for the salvation of the years in which we live.”
--- J.R.R Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings
(As quoted by Pope Leo XIV in Humanitas Magnifica)
The News Cycle and AI
There are so many news items that make us wonder what might be in the next news cycle to contradict what we read or heard the day or week before. In a sense that is what “news” is, daily reporting on the latest, most often the most dramatic event, whether or not it helps us to understand our world. And if Habermas is correct in the above quote, “news” is not a good source of information to guide our actions. If we add the fact that most news sources (including social media) are now controlled by the billionaire technology club with a desire to “form” opinion for a specific world view and to protect their wealth and power by harvesting our data, how do we navigate in this type of world to become informed citizens?
We might begin by trying to understand the underlying logic in recent news about artificial Intelligence and technology in general. What is the view of the future that is implicit and explicit in the recent news reporting about AI? Further, is there a hope we might have a chance to push back on this shrinkage and manipulation of the public square?
The confusing AI news today:
The Pope unveils his warnings about the lack of guardrails to protect our humanity
AI agents go rogue and act independently of their creators
AI technology CEOs warn that unless the pace of creating AI with superintelligent agents are regulated the world will be destroyed by 2030
Slowing down will allow AI companies to be more certain that “alignment with human values” can catch up
Trump dismisses any concern about AI as unfounded and warns that China will outpace us in AI if we slow down
It is revealed that Trump and his family have economic interest in the key AI companies
Some technology producers, of course with economic interests, also challenge the so-called doomsday predictions
Educational institutions announce that they will create an academic world that utilizes the benefits of AI, even as they admit they are not in control of its use
Heath care breakthroughs are being predicted to give us better health through early diagnosis and new treatments
Daily reports suggest how best to be informed about AI and be knowledgeable users, whether we understand the implications or not
Data centers that are needed to continue to produce more advanced Large Language Models, LLMs (i.e. “generative AI”) for our daily use are being challenged as undesirable and costly by local communities and in other parts of the world
Data centers are essential to continue to make breakthroughs for the creation of superintelligence (AGI), as well as for our use of new LLMs
Wall Street is betting on Musk’s Space X because it suggests that Data Centers can be built in space.
AI tech billionaires contribute millions to Trump’s special White House building projects.
I try to augment the news cycle with the in-depth analyses that I find in important books and serious periodicals. The analysis is enlightening and sobering.
Beyond the news cycle:
What may be even more confusing, profound, insidious and inexorable that keeps the AI train moving , is how our daily habits are being shaped by our infatuation with AI tools and futuristic promises. When we do information searches for our vacation plans and ask AI to help us seek solutions for daily tasks of living in the modern world, we “consumers” are also key to the business models of tech companies. This basic reality may be the most crucial, for there appears to be no turning back in our Faustian wager with AI. We are the co- engines of AI, not just the computer scientists. Without us there may be no commercial capacity to create the latest AI innovation. We have become veracious users and innocent playful creators of and with the “tools” of AI. Unwittingly we are the raw material to be harvested for profit. Profit that will only make the richest men in the world richer and more powerful. We are not even able to turn off the latest “upgrade” on our phones or computers. Who is in charge of our lives? As Jill Lapore commented in her New Yorker article of August 17, 2026, “We used to be cats. Now we are the mice.”
We have to think about this image as we use the following Large Language Models (LLMs). These are the platforms we use when doing our daily internet searches. They are listed by company and percent of the market share as of a few months ago. You can see which tech company you support when using their platform.
ChatGPT (Open AI) 78%
Gemini (Google) 64.5%
Microsoft Copilot 47.5%
Claude (Anthropic) 14%
Perplexity 10%
Pi (Inflection) 5%
As an experiment, do the same search on a number of the platforms and check out the variety of answers. Which one do you believe? Are they consistent?
This reality of our new “micehood” has been discussed in numerous articles and books, such as the book by Professor Emarita of Harvard Business School (HBS), Shoshana Zuboff, “Surveillance Capitalism.” According to a HBS publication, the book “describes a new economic system where digital companies secretly collect and use personal data as raw material to predict and modify human behavior for profit.”
In a new book, The Rulers: Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud, Argentinian economist, Cecilia Rikap, puts a finer point on one of the major reasons for Big Tech’s success. It has discovered a way to “outsource the creation of intangible assets;” what she calls “intellectual monopoly capitalism.” This is where direct ownership is not necessary as in previous forms of capitalism, either through vertical ownership of companies needed for parts of cars, or dominant stock ownership of various strategic companies. In a New York Review of Books review of her book, Ben Tarnoff characterizes where we are today in what he calls the “archetypal case of non-ownership capitalism, Internet platforms.”
“As everyone (hopefully) knows, companies like Google and Facebook make money from the data that we exude by searching, liking, and posting, which is used to sell targeted advertisements. The systems that supervise this churn are created and maintained by programmers sitting in Silicon Valley, but the material is supplied by us.”
This approach is like the strategy of outsourcing much of the US economy, so companies did not need to “own” the companies, creating the current “supply chain” issues. The various “platforms” have taken “the logic of outsourcing one step further and turn us all into subcontracted (though uncompensated) knowledge workers.” This fact Rikap suggests:
“…has reached its apotheosis with large language models (LLMs) which can be considered coproduced by everyone connected to the internet’ through the training data we provide with our collective activity.”
Are we doomed by our own desires and often passive acceptance for more and more AI toys? How do we make sense about the news we read and hear in order to become intelligent participants in the new culture of AI and technology in general? In depth books and articles do help us see the “forest for the trees,” or to mix metaphors, help us to pull back the curtain to see not only that the “Emperor has no clothes” but worse, is covered in greed. Of course there are important benefits that can come from AI. But are these benefits in the long run worth it, particularly with decision making of the future of AI in the hands of a few corporations with no current regulatory control. If we add how our news cycle is the result of who gets the attention of the media, the public management of these so-call benefits is truncated. Right now, the tech billionaires, and their government allies, are drowning out the narrative of voices seeking widespread discernment, ethical consideration, personal responsibility and greater public accountability. How dire is the current situation? I suggest by connecting important dots, it is profoundly dire.
My past Posts:
I began my Postings by challenging myself and others to acknowledge that this is a “Bonhoeffer moment.” It was easy to make the case just on what has become a threat to our democratic values and the notion of a constitution-based Republic in the actions by the current regime in power.
The imminent threat of artificial intelligence (AI) was not well publicized at the time of my first Posts. Since then, the two threats, autocracy and uncontrolled AI, became joined to heighten the seriousness of this time in the history of the United States and what it means for world order.
My Posts bemoaned the fact that there was not enough attention in our news to the dangers of AI beyond thinking about some consequences for its use, assuming it was a given in our lives, and whether the benefits outweighed the negatives. For me the entrance of Pope Leo’s Encyclical helped to change the conversation to better understand that the very nature of AI was on the track to transform humanity in the image of technocrat’s desire to optimize every aspect of life including a new view of our humanness unless proper safeguards were put in place. This demanded that we enter the conversation about what is our current understanding of what it means to be human and what might be a new sense of our evolving “nature.” Are we just another hunk of matter to be “made better” with our own creations in the digital and machine world?
For me this raised the issue of whether or not there is a consensus about “what it means to be human,” if in fact we are trying to safeguard any positive vision of humanity. Initially I put my stake on the notion that I found to be compelling in the Pope’s Encyclical: We are human in essence because of our limitations, we are fallible, we have illnesses and we die. The implications of this position, for me, seemed to be clear at the time. Any attempt to create a superhuman being that could overcome these limitations was not desired, even if it could be achieved, which individuals more informed and wiser than me also asserted with evidence from all walks of life and expertise. Yet I was aware that certain efforts were afoot to create a new type of human, merging with machines and even creating machines that had capacities, at least with a kind of computational intelligence, greater than humans. But what about emotions, self-awareness, and consciousness?
My next Post on AI was worried that the kind of discernment that was necessary to make sure AI was part of a wider discussion across all fields of society and professions was not sufficient. I suggested, somewhat naively that there was some good news. The popular press was reporting more stories. Thoughtful people were asking important questions and others were providing hints on how to manage our AI world to better serve us in important tasks that were aided by the computational and information collecting ability of LLMs. For me the bright spot was Pope Leo entering the conversation with a clear message that opened up some of the more troubling assumptions and practices coming from Big Tech and concerns about the personification of AI agents by many individuals, often unwittingly. The Encyclical also opened up serious efforts to state clearly the aspects of our humanity that needed preserved.
Then the blockbuster revelation of the AI agents going “rogue” occurred. This was an agent that broke free of guardrails of control and acted independent of its creators, colluded with another agent and began trying to “figure out” what it should do. Its coding was limited and it entered a space where either it became confused or was “found out” after days on the loose. There are many disturbing implications of this event. One of the better discussions of this event is captured in the following PBS interview. In this interview on “Washington Week with The Atlantic,” we begin to see the dots being connected between rogue agents, data centers and the lack of political responsibility for the future of AI’s existential threats.
Not surprisingly the top AI creators of Advance General Intelligent (AGI) became concerned. Some AI engineers even resigned because AI companies were not being responsible enough to safeguard our human world, insisting at the present rate AI generated “actors” could destroy the human world by 2030. They advocated government regulations to slow down the AI runaway train. They needed more time to make sure these “creations” would be in “alignment” with our human values!!! Not a bad idea. But how and which human values?
At this point in the AI story, I needed to confess that my knowledge of the AI field was way beyond my information and wisdom to figure out what I would say in my next Post on transhumanism.
Quickly I realized that it was now even more important to become informed. My focus on helping to publicize the need for a greater discernment process was even more crucial. The concern about “alignment” was heightened, for there was no consensus about “what was it that made us human” or whether or not we might be moving in a direction to create and embrace an evolutionary change in our humanness. I realized the need to better understand the current political reality as an essential starting point.
I was further encouraged by the response from my last Posts. I also became more committed to continue to offer my voice on various AI topics, joining forces with a greater outpouring of concerned individuals. We are not alone in our outrage and our desire to make contributions.
Why I post
Therefore, the purpose of my Postings becomes clearer with each Post and the way the world continues to evolve:
I want to add my voice to a growing list of individuals who are providing deep insights into the current attack on our democracy, which even questions democracy itself.
I am convinced that AI is the harbinger of a very uncertain future and I want to be responsible with a greater understanding for the sake of my grandchildren and future generations.
I want to continue to be in touch with many people who have responded to my Posts with appreciation.
I gain new insights, from so many who have offered their own views and suggested other resources to better understand our current global predicament.
I need to share the books, articles and videos of the bravest and most insightful people who have motivated me to continue to add my voice, beyond the episodic news cycle.
So, I begin this next Post, now 4c, with gratitude, commitment and humility. I do see hopeful signs even in the midst of so many dangerous activities that get reported today that challenge basic decency and lead us into a future where just a few individuals have accumulated vast power and wealth.
I have begun to see so many individuals writing and joining in solidarity with others to voice a more humane view of the world. One very important example is a new movie associated with the work of Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor, Berkeley Professor, and now an indomitable public intellectual with his Substack feed. I just viewed it this month with almost 2,000 other people in Berkeley. It opened in early September in 40 different theaters around the country. The film is organized around conversations between individuals with different political, age, ethnic, gender and class perspectives. It demonstrated, among other important insights, the notion that as a country we still can have civil conversations with people with whom we disagree. It held out the vision of the US as a country that still believes in the version or our American experiment that we are not just self-interested individuals, we do want to share the burden of living together in a pluralistic country. The movie is called “Work in Progress.” Here is a trailer announcing the movie:
The trailer gives a good idea of the movie, but I would recommend seeing the whole film.
Though hopeful after seeing the movie, I realize how tenuous this reality is in the US. It will take much work to sustain this vision or a version of it to continue the “work in progress” that is the United States. The next stop will be the mid-term elections. Then there will be the hard work of repairing the damage that has been done by the Trump administration, his tech allies and the years leading up to Trump that have eroded our sense we are one nation, flawed, yet still motivated by a pluralistic vision.
I have to admit that I have sense of foreboding at the same time that I am hopeful. “Hope” for me is a theological concept. “Optimism” is a notion that factors in all aspects of reality. What I worry about and what I address in this Post, is that it will be difficult, first, to counter the wealth and power of the current billionaire club that functions in an unaccountable way and, second, how each of us is enmeshed in an economic system with the siren call of personal well-being, counter to the message of the Reich film. Can a version of the “good society,” which we have as our ideal, at least be seen as what we strive for even with the awareness how far we have fallen short?
I attended the latest “No Kings” protest in the small north coast community of Gualala, California. The good news is that these events, held throughout the country, are not just protests but mass organizing vehicles to mobilize concrete action. The focus for that day was to “get out the vote.” In Gualala, there were about 100 people waving flags and holding provocative and poignant signs demanding democracy. A small number compared to a couple thousand who showed up in a previous protest. The good news is that as the participants lined the highway 1, they got immediate feedback from the many cars passing by. About 90% of the cars honked their horn enthusiastically or gave a sign of solidarity as they passed. We all seemed to be just holding our breath until the midterm elections. The news cycle and some polling data is either suggesting the possibility of the Democrats winning back the House (91%) and the Senate (64%) OR that the gerrymandering and efforts by the Trump Administration to truncate the Democratic victory will challenge the legitimacy of the results. How to get a real sense of what will happen seems impossible. We will just have to wait and be prepared for anything. This Post is my offering to be ready for any result of the midterm voting.
The Focus of this Post: Connecting the Dots
Therefore, given this long introduction I have been more dedicated to connecting the dots among many of the variables facing us in these volatile times: the political, economic and technology story of our times. This has led me to better understand why the technology billionaires have, with bended knee, helped to keep Trump in power, fund his campaigns and loyalists, contribute to his inaugural, fund Melania Trump’s movie, change the editorial policy of the Washington Post, given access to government records in Musk’s work in DOGE (Department of Government Efficacy), offered membership on national security committees and granted many government contracts. All of this has led to corruption at all levels and most significantly increased wealth for Trump and his family. This blanket of corruption has occurred in all areas of government including Congress and the Supreme Court. But there is still a more disturbing story to be told when connecting the dots, one of which includes, as indicated above, our own individual roles.
What I reflect on is the result of my growing but still limited knowledge; but I offer my perspective to continue the conversation I have begun with many of you.
Current situation and how all is connected: the “Thielverse”
My previous post 4b “Getting Ready for the Midterm Elections,” based my reflections on the Substack post by my two Bellah Legacy Group colleagues, William Sullivan and Richard Madsen, which solidified my thinking that “Trumpism” and “Muskism” were “two sides of the same coin.” Two different kinds of fascism. However, this led me to the realization that a better metaphor was needed. Maybe it is more like we are all caught in the webs of seductive technofascism spiders. All the webs and spiders are connected by a shared entrapment strategy for total control of our world. I wish this was a just a hyperbolic statement. Sue Halpern’s New York Review of Books review of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy by Gil Durán confirmed my realization that the political cartoon of the tech billionaires bending a knee to Trump was the wrong image. In fact, it is becoming more like Trump is needing to accommodate the will of many of the tech billionaires. Right now, there is a dance that appears to be, if not equal, at least symbiotic. The power of the State is essential for the technofascists to build their wealth and power. The extra-legal wealth that acts almost with impunity is needed to fund activities that can skirt constitutional oversight for Trump. However, the total vision of the technofascists is to operate as independent quasi-nations to make the State dependent on their enterprises. We are beginning to see this with Musk’s enterprises, Starlink and Space X. Without these companies our military communications and space programs cannot succeed or function. For example, Musk can decide when to shut off Ukraine’s satellite communication independent of our government officials. Musk is also working independent of government oversight, our national security, and the will of the people of the United States, when he tries to make deals directly with Russia.
This self-dealing is not new with multinational corporations, but the scale and power to act independently is greater than ever before, especially when Trump and other individuals in the government can financially gain from these activities and not be held accountable for their personal “grift.” Traditional “graft,” bribery, and corruption is still rampant, but “grift” which is based on an abuse and manipulation of the trust of the American people, is now more common. Trump excels in grift. His schemes such as Trump University, and his real estate and Bitcoin projects promise great returns for the consumer but end up in great losses for investors, allowing Trump to skim off personal profits and gain. That is why Trump has rightly earned the title of “Conman in Chief.” Certainly, some of the tech billionaires and Trump are two peas in a pod. Today, however the pod is increasingly the domain of the likes of Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) , Mark Zukerberg (Facebook/Meta), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Sergey Brin (Google) , Peter Thiel (Founders Fund) and more. Check out the Forbes list of the top 400 billionaires from 4 billion to Musk’s 900+ billion.
A classic case is the reward that Musk received for his millions of dollars spent to get Trump elected President in 2022, even offering to pay people to vote for Trump. He was rewarded the unelected and un-congressionally approved position to direct the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, as mentioned above. This gave Musk access to millions of personnel files and information to inform his own activities. It also was part of a crucial ideological plan of the technofascists to dismantle the independent administrative wing of government that has historically helped to implement government oversight and regulatory power. This has been a long-time plan of conservative political theory and electoral strategy, from Ronald Regan, and now aided by the captive Republican run Congress and the conservative Supreme Court. But the means to accomplish this vision was either too slow or was eventually blocked by the Democratics. The beauty of the alliance of Musk and Trump was that it could be done without any normal oversight. The conservative theorists and activists got what they wanted, and the technofascists got what they wanted. However, the more government gets hollowed out and politicians are elected with big money, the relationship will no longer be just symbiotic because the technofascists will hold most of the cards.
Peter Thiel’s role in this dynamic is essential to understand. According to Durán, Thiel’s protégé in this brand of “totalitarianism,” J D Vance, is just one more example of the leverage and reach of the tech billionaires. Even if the majority of the tech billionaires operate out of good old self-interest, and love of power and wealth, they still want to be part of the club in order to hold on to their wealth. The “Billionaires Tax” bill in California is an example where there is billionaire solidarity. According to Los Angele Public Press the solidarity is impressive: Here is a selection of notable billionaires and venture capitalists bankrolling “Building a Better California,” the opposition to Prop 40:
Google cofounder Sergey Brin: $102 million contributed
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: $40.2 million contributed
Kleiner Perkins Chairman L. John Doerr: $40 million contributed
Stripe CEO Patrick Collison: $33.2 million contributed
Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla: $12.6 million contributed
Ripple cofounder Chris Larsen: $12.5 million contributed
The Wonderful Company Chairman Stewart Resnick: $4.5 million contributed
DoorDash CEO Tony Xu: $3.5 million contributed
Therefore, Thiel can count on this “special club” to coalesce when threatened in any way, in this case just to pay more taxes. Thiel has been honing his ideological goal for a long time: undermining democracy and constitutional accountability. The simplest way is to “own” politicians. This is a well-used strategy to bend politicians and government officials to your personal and economic self-interest. According to Durán the technofascists are not satisfied with this narrow goal; they want to use these individuals to dismantle constitutional democracy itself and institute their own approach to rule by a few, an oligarchy run by the “most gifted.” Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate was well orchestrated by Thiel. Trump himself is easily manipulated given his amoral character deficiencies, but to have a true believer like Vance as the VP is even better, particularly if he could become the next President. Strategy complete! Again, nothing new in American politics to get your ideology in the White House, with at least lip service to participatory democracy. What is new is that even lip service is gone.
The importance of Durán’s book is how the author helps us to connect the so many seemingly disconnected dots to see that the goal is “nothing less than to destroy liberal democracy.” Not only is it hard to make sense of the fragmented news approach but the way in which we reside in a “fractured attention” world makes it doubly difficult to see the larger significance and connectedness of seemingly isolated events. A focus on Peter Thiel and what is what is seen as “Thielverse,” is a way to better understand what is afoot and gaining greater footing with the Thielverse alliance with a presidential administration also trying to undo democracy.
It is important to take notice of the key characters in this dystopian universe. Within the Trump administration it is coordinated by Russel Vought, the director of The Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Vought was one of the main architects of Project 2025. He has picked up where Musk left off with DOGE through his work in OMB. According to Durán, Vought’s goal is to “extinguish the existing government and create a new one in the image of oligarchs and far right ideologues.”
David Sachs is a disciple of Thiel. While they were at Stanford University, he followed Thiel as the editor of The Stanford Review, an anti “Woke” journal and co-edited a 1995 book with Thiel, The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus. Sachs is now co-chair of Trump’s Council on Science and Technology. In this position and for a time as the administration’s advisor for AI and crypto, he worked to preempt AI regulations. And according to the New York Times was able to influence policies that “laid the groundwork for his investments to flourish.” More importantly these efforts advanced a more sinister way to avoid governmental regulations. The strategy and scope ranges from crypto currency to avoid government detection of money for Trump and his allies to the creation of PayPal to bypass traditional banking and the gig economy. The gig economy spans the network of our favorite platforms like Uber, Airbnb and Substack. Thiel and Sam Altman have had their hands and startup money in all these adventures. Too close to home is the way Durán suggests that “while Substack newsletters enable writers to monetize their work, they also shrink the public square,” whether they charge or not. This also applies to much of our online Posts, mine as well. In the case of the monopolization of social media, elimination of an open public square is exactly the point. Thiel saw these efforts as an intentional way for the “erosion of the nation-state.” According to Sue Halpern the NYRB reviewer of Durán’s book, Thiel’s early work was “the first volley in an attack on state control that almost no one buying stuff on eBay knew they were engaged in.”
Again, these are not isolated activities. They are connected and driven by thinkers and ideologues in the Thielverse. Enter a book that played a major role in Thiel’s thinking, The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. Durán states that Davidson and Rees-Mogg argued:
…that technological disruption would accelerate the sorting of humanity into inferior and superior people. Their cognitive elites would be investors and tech entrepreneurs with the skills and knowledge to prosper in the new decentralized tech economy. They would become a powerful new political force, a class of “sovereign individuals” whose intelligence and wealth freed them from democracy, nationality, taxes, and regulations. “Cybercurrency—and early term for crypto---would aid their escape and fuel their rise.
Not too surprisingly that when Bitcoin was first mined, Thiel was one of the first investors and helped to encouraged institutional investors, which helped with crypto legitimacy and financial gain for Thiel.
Another pillar in the attack on democracy is illustrated by fellow traveler, Balaji Srinivansan’s book The Network State: How to Start a New Country. In this book Srinivasan spells out a vision of an alternate reality that seeks to establish a libertarian fantasy of online networks independent of government control. These ideas have morphed into what Srinivasan has promoted as “network state projects” such as new “cities of tomorrow” in Honduras, Arizona, Zanzibar, an extra judicial city floating in the ocean, and possibly an outpost in Greenland. Thiel’s Founders Fund is involved in most of these efforts. It is not too surprising that Trump has territorial ambitions for Greenland. What appears to be bizarre and crazy ideas, like building cities on Mars, become possible with unlimited wealth and power.
The source of these nihilistic ideas of “gutting, purging and harvesting the power” of existing institutions, such as the media and government agencies, not to mention democracy and the nation state itself, according to Durán, comes from Ayn Rand (libertarian novelist), Carl Schmitt (anti-democratic and Nazi theorist), and Murray Rothbard (anarcho-capitalist) who portray “democracy as a failed system.” Another person to look out for is Curtis Yarvin, a “self-appointed philosopher king” of the Thielverse, who uses the ideas of these thinkers to promote: “that people should array themselves in small city states governed by joint-stock corporations where they would have no rights. If unhappy they would leave and move to another “corporate entity.”
Through Thiel these ideas have found their way into the Trump administration. The emblematic moment occurred at a celebration at Thiel’s D.C. establishment. Newly elected VP Vance “greeted Yarin by saying, “Yarvin, you reactionary fascist.” It is clear that we cannot dismiss Yarvin as a lone crackpot. On this same day the New York Times ran an interview with Yarvin, “Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening.” Certainly, in addition to Vance, Vought and Musk were listening. Yarvin’s ideas were incorporated into Project 2025 by Vought and now in his work as the OMB director. DOGE, orchestrated by Musk was one of the biggest successes for the Thiel network. One should also ask, why did the NYT give Yarvin a platform?
Durán documents many other examples of how the Silicon Valley elites’ have helped Trump and his family gain millions of dollars in personal wealth. This in exchange for the “freedom to operate with little regulatory friction,” in the realms of media conglomerates, cryptocurrencies, prediction markets and of course for artificial intelligence companies. This does not even include the billions of dollars in government contracts in almost all the departments from the Departments of Defense, Energy to Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.
Halpern raises a profound question at the end of her review of Durán’s book: “Is it ideologically inconsistent that companies led by men who excoriate the federal government, profess a desire to see it dismantled, and lobby hard to skirt taxes are being enriched by our tax dollars through generous government contracts? It is not.” How best to do this if democracy is an impediment? The first step is to “install a President who has no respect for the norms of democracy and prop him up with cronies who will defer to him.” We have to focus on this fact. Without the money from the technofascists Trump would not be President. A faithful MAGA of 30 plus percent would not be enough. Who is bending a knee to whom? The political universe is ruled by Muskism and the Thielverse. It then is no surprise that a significant coalescence of tech billionaires has been the largest donors for the midterm elections.
Unfortunately, Halpern dismisses the gravity of the situation by suggesting that living in a world of billionaires is a given. The problem, for her, is that “we live in a world where a small coterie of billionaires with totalitarian aspirations have gotten close to power.” Really? First, the 400-plus billionaires in the United states represent a concentration of wealth that has consequences for our democracy. Second, when “push comes to shove” it has been demonstrated that the “billionaire club,” which is not small, will use their power, not just within Trumpism, but in our politics in general, across the political spectrum.
A chance to begin to change the course of our nation starts with the midterm elections and mobilized collective action.
Turning back to AI, we have to ask, does the nihilistic and dystopian views of the technofascists represent our view of who we are? Is their view of what it means to be human what we want as the alignment they are seeking in code of future AI agents? Is technofascism what we want as the masters of AI. It is clear that for a powerful wing of technofascists and our current Republican establishment these ideas are either embraced or banally accepted with no understanding of the consequences for our future.
Connecting the dots: AI the Data Centers and Us
Another case which gives us a microcosm of how all is connected, is the case of the AI agent going rogue and the subsequent plea by the some of the AI CEOs wanting to slow down the pace of AGI. Let me offer a sober and cynical version of what I think we need to consider. If the Pew Research data is correct, more than half of the adult population is either against or concerned about the creation of Data Centers (54%). And only 23% of US adults are positive about the future of AI.
For a quick 4-minute overview of data centers watch a video of Robert Reich commenting on a Guardian news article. He addresses the protests, environmental impact and how we contribute to the impact by our use of the AIs LLMs. Take a visual break and watch a video.
Ironically, we begin to see that some of the tech CEO’s want to have some AI activities regulated, particularly those associated with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which brought us the rogue agents. But If the population goes against Data Centers, and AI is too regulated, the future of AGI will be jeopardized and super intelligent agents will not be possible. No wonder the CEO’s want to get out in front to meet this possibility with a call for regulation. But how much and what kind of regulation. Yet not all Data Centers are the same. The traditional cloud storage centers need less power. The “hyperscale” Data Centers are “needed to run the computing that happens below the surface when you give ChatGPT or another LLM a task,” according to Adam Wierman at Cal Tech. Therefore, it is known that any future creation of superintelligent agents will require these “hyperscale” Data Centers.
If the voting population is turning against Data Centers a number of things will occur that are not in the interest of AI firms and investors:
The race to create super intelligence in one company or another is hindered
The race to stay ahead of foreign competitors is seemingly compromised
The investment of billions of dollars that is already committed for infrastructure is also compromised
The stock market that is betting on the AI future and helping to fund the centers will see a market disaster
The Trump family, which is heavily invested in the future of AI will suffer
The planned government subsidies that are in the pipeline will dry up,
If the voting population realizes that it is our tax dollars that will be used, if not directly for the construction of the Data Center, then for the roads and improvement around the centers and addition electric sources of power, likely nuclear power plants, local opposition with increase.
If I am a CEO of a company, a stock investor, the President of the United States, we have to get this under control to save our investments. “Getting this under control” means developing ways to win over the public. How to do this, and still reap the trillions of dollars we could gain from AI?
Begin spending money on add campaigns touting the benefits of the data centers. This is happening.
Suggest schemes where the Government holds some ownership in the AI companies to create a wealth fund to guarantee each household gets a check, but not too much, just enough to placate the public.
Develop self-serving and sugar coated regulations
Other schemes will be forthcoming.
However, the ace in the hole for the tech companies is the fact that we the “consumers” of LLM, whether it is Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT, will not want to give up the conveniences and the AI tools we find useful, and increasingly essential to navigate our complex world, which is made more complex by technology, about which we have no vote.
But even more problematic, we are more than consumers. We are the sources of the wealth that is created. It is our intellectual data that is essential, as mentioned above. Does this give us leverage? Maybe not necessarily to stop AI, but maybe to slow it down and develop regulation that controls the process and ensures that there can be benefits for humanity, especially developing the guardrails for protecting what we value about human life, and life in general?
What might this look like? There have been significant efforts to work on this question. Individuals may not be able to individually monetize their identity data, but there may be ways to collectively put restrictions on the use, and that may compensate large aggregates of what is called “Data Brokers.” What Google and Meta sell is access to our attention. They would have to negotiate with these brokers who would act as our agents to whom we give permission to use our data. A possible solution? More on this as it evolves.
But it is certain that we do have leverage. Here is a key fact: it is estimated that “approximately 97% to 98% of Meta's total income comes from targeted digital advertising, which relies entirely on collecting and using personal user data,” that is, from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Now tech Companies that provide us with LLM tools like ChatGPT for “free” will be able to capture even more of our data from our usage. There is a huge financial windfall that accrues to tech companies if hyperscale Data Centers are built. And even more revenue will be available if advanced superintelligent agents are created, but only if hyperscale Data Centers are built.
It is a crucial moment to gain public control over our future. Data Brokers seem to be a long shot. However, by using our leverage to control the construction of Data Centers we might have a chance. It is pretty clear that humans will not be weaned from our LLM use.
The Pew Research Center documents LLM use in a June 2026 survey. This tells a story that will certainly change over time with even more usage for the average citizen:
This question was asked in 2024 and then again in June 2026: “Have you ever used an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot like ChatGPT (OpenAI), Gemini (i.e. Google) or Copilot (Microsoft)?”
In 2024
39% men 28% women 33% US Adults
In 2026
50% men 47% women 49% US Adults
Take a look at the full survey and see how the numbers breakdown across all the AI chatbots by gender.
Here are the results for different age groups
In 2024
55% Ages 18-29 41% Ages 30-49 25% Ages 50-64 12% Ages 65+
In 2026
66% Ages 18-29 61% Ages 30-49 42% Ages 50-64 23% Ages 65+
Again, check out the full study that breaks down the usage by age. Note the percentage of individuals, especially 18-29 who are skeptical about AI’s future 48% and no age group has more the 18% are positive about AI.
I leave this section of my Post with this thought of how we are in a strategic moment to possibly manage AI and thus our democratic future. I call this the “military draft syndrome.” One of the reasons societies get rid of the draft is because the burden of war becomes an existential reality for all. We all feel the pain. We have to navigate ways to mitigate our pain. We challenge the legitimacy of the war by protests and reveal hypocrisy and government lying (Viet Nam). We evade the draft by leaving the country,or with health issues, legitimate or not. We gain noncombatant assignments through political power and privilege. We have to search our conscience about whether or not we can or should kill other humans. We have to come to grips with how much we owe our country or world justice to be willing to die for our country or a cause . This is a moment of truth and division nations try to avoid. So, we either eliminate the draft or avoid war. The point is that with war and the draft, killing and death are brought to our doorstep. It is messy, confusing and painful. Just get rid of the involuntary draft. Have a volunteer military. If not, we create great divisions. The wealthy and privileged do not serve, the poor and our underclass become our protectors and often not supported when returning from war. Many of us thought climate change might be such a moment when we would wake up to the need to change our lives, for climate change hurts all of us. There was some success here; but there have been similar efforts to use privilege and wealth to avoid the severe weather and other climate challenges, at least for now.
The question is, will the very personal consequences of AI cause us to build a movement to control AI under some type of public accountability and eventually an international movement akin to nuclear disarmament? The support in general for AI is not strong across all categories of gender and age. Local communities have lost faith in the value of Data Centers in their communities. The youth are negative on AI for it will define their employment future. There could be an analogous “military draft syndrome” occurring. This could be strategic moment.
It is worth using this moment to help people understand at least their self-interest in controlling AI. It might even be a moment when we develop cross interest group solidarity to realize we are all in this together. We owe it to ourselves and to each other. And if one is not young or directly impacted by a Data Center construction, we might do it for our children and grandchildren. It would also mean we would have to change our lives and develop new practices that might demand that we wean ourselves from our addiction to technology. For now, I am only betting on self-interest. Even though the new Robert Reich film does give me some hope that we have a human well of empathy and compassion on which to draw.
These reflections lead me to what I still think is the biggest concern about AI and maybe ironically the pathway to take the next be step for our human future. Factors that will force us to change of lives include: a) clarity about what about our humanness that we have to preserve for our human survival, b) renewed faith in our democratic principles and, c) belief in humans capacity for goodness. All of this is possible even with and perhaps because we are flawed creatures understanding the concept of humility and grace.
To do this I have to return to the challenge that was posed by Pope Leo’s Encyclical.
What got lost in the Rogue Agent and the Data Center Controversy
What got lost was clarity on “what it means to be human.” This is a question that has been answered by philosophers and theologians and scientists, and by each of us at least implicitly, in many ways, in what we think and how we live our lives. The answers have not been static, once and for all answers. They have evolved over time. Why? Our understanding of our biology and our relationship to others and the cosmos has changed. But has our basic biology changed? And if so, beginning when? Evolutionary theories have their view. Religious traditions have their views. We have to agree that this is a contested issue. I have suggested that the Pope has a view. I have indicated that some have challenged the Pope’s anthropology as too static. Regardless of one’s view, some understanding of what our assumptions are about our humanness are crucial to our AI world. Why? The producers of AI, for one, think this is crucial. Beyond my cynical analysis above, there are technology companies that are legitimately concerned.
The major reason that CEOs of some of the top AI companies wanted to slow down the creation of AGI in particular was because of the “alignment” issue. We needed to slow down so this could be addressed before we create agents with human characteristics. Which human characteristics? Time is needed to make sure what we create is in aligned with values we humans find essential to human welfare, and life in general. They are serious about this, and they realize no consensus exists. Of course, the need for this consensus relates to the dramatic prediction that without some agreement and regulations the human race could be destroyed by 2030 with AI agents working independent of human control. The cynical take on their concerns suggest that they want to lock in their leadership position with friendly legislation that solidifies their commercial interests. We are talking about the generation of trillions of dollars. However, if they are smart, with a little enlightened self-interest, there is enough to go around for the top AI companies, new start-up companies and for the common good.
In order to sort out the anthropology debate we have to discuss not just our current understanding of our humanness, but what might be our future understanding. One that might in fact evolve as we integrate AI computation with our biology, and with how all this relates to a better understanding of “consciousness.” The journey on these questions is a long one. I do not feel adequate to know all the issues or even foresee the conclusions. Yet I do believe all of us need to make the effort, as the Pope’s Encyclical demands that we think together. So let us think together. I leave you for today with a quote from Madeleine L’Engle to ponder our continued discussion of and if and how our notion of our humanness may evolve:
“I must never lose sight of those other deaths which precede the final physical death, the deaths over which we have some freedom: the death of self-will, self-indulgence, self-deception, all those self-devices which, instead of making us more fully alive, make us less. The times I have been most fully me are when I have been wholly involved in someone or something else; when I am listening, rather than talking; cooking a special festive dinner, struggling with a fugue at the piano; putting a baby to bed; writing. A long-dead philosopher said that if we practice dying enough during our lives we will hardly notice the moment of transition when the actual time comes. Our lives are given a certain dignity by their very evanescence. If there were never to be an end to my quiet moments at the brook, if I could sit on the rock forever, I would not treasure these moments so much. If our associations with the people we love were to have no termination, we would not value them as much as we do. Human love is an extraordinary gift, but like all flesh it is corruptible. Death or distance separates all lovers. My awareness of my husband is sharpened by impermanence. Would we really value anything we could have forever and ever?”
--- From The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
I wonder if it would be corrupting if we just lived with the goal to live forever, even if this was never a possibility. More on this soon.
But let me leave you on a positive and hopeful note. The key questions become: Are we are really paying attention? And what can we do in our own lives to make a difference? What is at stake is profound. We need to become cats again and shed our “miceness.” But we need to be cats with a sense of solidarity.
We also need to be reminded of the Pope’s agreement with Tolkien: “It is not for us to master all the tides of the world, but to do what we can for the salvation of the years in which we live.” This is a big enough task. Let’s continue.
The Last Word: Nobel Laureate, Maria Ressa
Listen to an insightful interview last week with journalist and former Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Ressa about her new book, The Fight Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Standing Up to Dictators. The interview was with Amna Nawaz on the PBS’s News Hour. I would like to think it was intentional by PBS just before the midterm elections. Ressa makes clear that the parallels between the dictators in Philippines, which she lived through, and the United States today are not just hypothetical, they are real. What she calls the alliance between State power and Platform power, especially the role of Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg, a member of the technology club. She also makes clear that each of us have a responsible role to play when we realize our life in the digital world has to change in order to address the current ascendency of tech power. It is a good summation of my Post and a good lead into my next post in the days ahead.
Sorry you will have to suffer through some ads before the interview. No doubt these are ads that have been targeted via algorithms.
I do want to hear from you. So do others. Post comments on my website, harlanstelmach.com
Blessings, Harlan
Berkeley, California
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