Commonwealth Club: Gil Durán and Wajahat Ali: The Rise of "The Nerd Reich"

When Silicon Valley says it is “moving fast and breaking things,” the world interprets the chaos as a necessary cost of innovation. In his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, Gil Durán argues that something far more sinister is at work: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule. Durán chronicles what he calls the “tech-authoritarian movement” from its early days in San Francisco politics to its current moment on the international stage, exploring the wild and dystopian ambition of the technocrats at its center, and offering his road map to resistance. Drawing on insider political experience and new investigations, he traces this ideology from its philosophical roots in The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg. He introduces its modern apostles—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan and Elon Musk—and argues that the promise of technological liberation has transformed into a global movement for digital feudalism, powered by cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the algorithmic propaganda of social media. Durán explains the origins, strategies and ambitions of Silicon Valley’s “war on democracy.” Join us as Durán will be in conversation by acclaimed author and former Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, editor of the “Left Hook” Substack.