Your Tech CEO Doesn't Want to Fix Democracy. He Wants to End It. (ft. Gil Durán)

**Gil Durán** (0:00)
So you all know by Combinator, Gary Tan actually went to something called the Network State Conference, because every year they have a conference where they talk about this stuff for like nine hours straight, and said that what happened in San Francisco had been an expression of the Network State ideology, and crowed about the fact that Elon Musk capturing X was another big victory for this movement. And Tan claims to be a Democrat, and how is a Democrat happy that Elon Musk captured X, right?
And then I realized, okay, he just made this about the Network State. And so then I really started taking it seriously. And I wrote a five-part series for The New Republic, about this Network State ideology. But what I didn't know then was that the rabbit hole went even deeper than I thought.

**Katelyn Burns** (0:45)
Christine, do you remember when technology was exciting?

**Christine Grimaldi** (0:50)
Yeah. Remember when Facebook debuted, maybe it was that freshman year of college for me, and you would take your digital camera and plug it into the computer and just create an album.

**Katelyn Burns** (1:03)
Was Facebook exciting? I don't know. I was out of college when that came out. So it was fun for me for like two minutes when I was catching up on old high school friends. And I was like, oh, I don't want this anymore.

**Christine Grimaldi** (1:14)
Yeah. The algorithm quickly took over.

**Katelyn Burns** (1:16)
I remember getting my first smartphone.
Oh, really? That probably set me down the path of coming out as trans actually.

**Christine Grimaldi** (1:26)
How so?

**Katelyn Burns** (1:27)
Well, that's when I joined Twitter and I learned that trans women were actually cool and could be successful maybe.

**Christine Grimaldi** (1:35)
That was when Twitter was good.

**Katelyn Burns** (1:37)
And now Twitter is bad and is owned by a fascist. So on that note, who are we canceling today?

**Christine Grimaldi** (1:46)
We are canceling The Nerd Reich.

**Katelyn Burns** (1:49)
The Nerd Reich. That sounds like the title of a book I read recently. Hey everyone, I'm Katelyn Burns.

**Christine Grimaldi** (1:57)
And I'm Christine Grimaldi.

**Katelyn Burns** (1:58)
And you're listening to Cancel Me, Daddy.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:02)
The show where we take a closer look at all the panic around political media.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:06)
And with that, full analysis.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:08)
And verbal shitposting.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:11)
So we kind of teased it in the lead, but we have a very exciting show today. We are talking to author and journalist, Gil Durán.
And he has just released a new book called The Nerd Reich. And it's all about how like our tech billionaire overlords are all turning fascist at seemingly the same time.

**Christine Grimaldi** (2:37)
And this goes back longer than we thought it did. But it's been particularly pronounced since the last presidential election.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:48)
Let's get into it with Gil. Gil, welcome to Cancel Me, Daddy.

**Gil Durán** (2:53)
Thanks for having me.

**Katelyn Burns** (2:55)
We're very excited about your book. This is an area that we've been covering on this show for a very long time. So you certainly fit in with the theme of what we're doing here. I've been reading up on your book. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. But what is the network state and why are so many tech billionaires sort of obsessed with it?

**Gil Durán** (3:19)
The network state is this cultish idea that in the 21st century, Silicon Valley billionaires will take control of the planet and completely change the way it's governed. They'll get rid of democracy, essentially. It comes from this 2022 book called The Network State, How to Start a New Country, which is free to read online. You can search it, you'll find it. There's a one-sentence version, a one-paragraph version, a one-page version, and then a 400-page version. That spells out this fantasy of how the United States will collapse and be replaced by basically tech-authoritarian government, or government by corporation at the very least. And it seems like a very strange, fringe, niche idea until you realize that we're starting to see this idea tried all around the world. There's actually a venture capital firm, Pronomos Capital, that is funding these projects all over the world. There's a plan to build one at Greenland, if Donald Trump takes Greenland. There's a proposal to build one on the ruins of genocide in Gaza. Donald Trump even tweeted a AI generated video showing a Trump Casino and Resort on the beach in Gaza, with money raining from the sky and Elon Musk hanging out with scantily clad women. There's a prototype project in Honduras called Prospera, where some billionaires bought some land on an island off a Honduras center, trying to have their own regime with their own rules and regulations. Donald Trump has said he's going to create 10 new freedom cities on federal land.