How AI Broligarchs Plan to Profit from Collapse | Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor

Naomi Klein (0:00)

I think that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction.

SPEAKER_2 (0:06)

You know, bad times are very good for Palantir.

SPEAKER_3 (0:08)

And where the fortunate few, This $50 million bunker is designed to look like you're not in a bunker.

Astra Taylor (0:13)

pay top dollar for both protection and escape. I think there's a lot of continuities with what I've called disaster capitalism in the past.

SPEAKER_5 (0:22)

What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the End Times, okay.

SPEAKER_2 (0:29)

The future of civilization could hang on this election.

Astra Taylor (0:33)

We call them traitors, but not traitors to nation, not traitors to a flag or border, but traitors to creation, like traitors to life. We didn't write the book because we think these people are fascinating. I mean, we wrote this book because we want people to fight them and beat them.

John Johnston (0:48)

Hi, everyone. JJ here. Welcome back to The Lounge. Well, I've been talking a lot recently about Gil Durand's new book, The Nerd Rike, Silicon Valley, Fascism and the War on Democracy. Well, there's another new high profile book. I'm sure it's going to be a bestseller and a companion video, which we'll take a look at in a second. So this is End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. This is part of the video that was released, How Modern Fascism Works, End Times Fascism. They're calling it and you'll see on screen one of the people that I've talked about, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and those other Brolygarchs, the AI Brolygarchs. Let's start with Peter Thiel and an excerpt from their own video here.

SPEAKER_8 (1:35)

The apocalyptic prophecies are just a prediction of what humans are likely to do.

Astra Taylor (1:43)

Today's far right is united.

Naomi Klein (1:45)

I mean, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper.

Astra Taylor (1:48)

By their belief in variations of this age old apocalyptic myth.

SPEAKER_5 (1:52)

What I'm trying to focus on is doing as much of God's work as possible right now. And if that leads to the End Times, okay.

Astra Taylor (2:00)

This is the dark core of the rising threat and ideology that we call company that thrives in bad times.

SPEAKER_2 (2:10)

And we are, you know, bad times are very good for Palantir.

Astra Taylor (2:14)

An ominous evolution is underway on the internationally networked hard right.

Naomi Klein (2:19)

The future of civilization could hang on this election We weathered the storm and today we are the storm.

SPEAKER_2 (2:28)

Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you.

SPEAKER_3 (2:32)

You either fight back or you die.

Astra Taylor (2:35)

A shift related to the reality that humanity has entered an era of global scale existential crises.

Astra Taylor (2:44)

A world where pandemics, climate emergencies, resource wars and rogue tech are routine. And where politics stirs the pot.

Astra Taylor (2:53)

A world where the growing masses of unruly poor must be constantly tracked and contained.

Naomi Klein (3:00)

Welcome to billionaire bunkers.

SPEAKER_8 (3:01)

This is crazy.

Astra Taylor (3:02)

And where the fortunate few.

SPEAKER_3 (3:04)

This $50 million bunker is designed to look like you're not in a bunker.

Astra Taylor (3:07)

Paid top dollar for both protection and escape.

John Johnston (3:12)

And so you'll recognize if you're regular on my pod, the people involved Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Palantir, Alex Carp have talked about all these people and the topics that I have been discussing as well for quite a long time. It's good to see this book. And Naomi and Astra did an interview with Democracy Now, of course. And this is the primer on that. A little bit more about what the book's about.

Naomi Klein (3:34)

So it's not at all an exaggeration to say that the people who are involved with both founding these companies and building the tech believe there is a possibility of human extinction. And many of the people who are sort of deep in the weeds on actually coding the thing believe that there is like a greater than 10% chance or even even greater, some smaller, but they all have different numbers for a probability that humans might die. And they will keep this in their head on a daily basis while working on the technology.

SPEAKER_10 (4:02)

In an essay, he wrote that within six to twelve months, a swarm of AI agents could be capable of taking over the entire Internet and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. He wrote, quote, The scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guard rails, unquote. But President Trump has rejected growing calls for placing regulatory guard rails on the AI industry and his call concerns over AI a hoax.