Why do tech oligarchs keep proclaiming that the end is nigh? From Elon Musk warning of the civilizational-level threat of the “woke mind virus,” to Marc Andreessen declaring that “any deceleration of AI will cost lives,” to Peter Thiel’s fixation with the Antichrist, billionaires are insistent that the stakes of their ventures are nothing less than apocalyptic.
To better understand the paranoia of Silicon Valley overlords, Travis, Jake, and Julian are joined by Chris Marquis, Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management at the University of Cambridge and author of the book The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs.
Christopher Marquis
https://chrismarquis.com/
Christopher Marquis at Jacobin
https://jacobin.com/author/christopher-marquis
The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-profiteers-how-business-privatizes-profits-and-socializes-costs-christopher-marquis/ecaf3d412fe119c2
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The first two episodes of Annie Kelly’s new podcast miniseries “Truly, Tradly, Deeply” will be released on the Cursed Media podcast network on the 29th of October.
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SOURCES
Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/10/peter-thiel-lectures-antichrist
Inside billionaire Peter Thiel’s private lectures: Warnings of ‘the Antichrist’ and U.S. destruction
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/10/peter-thiel-antichrist-lectures-leaked/
The Techno-Optimist Manifesto - Marc Andreessen
https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
Welcome to the QA podcast, episode 346, the tech billionaire doomsday preachers.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakotansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
The oldest and most primal mass paranoia is fear of the apocalypse.
The worry that the world as we know it is on the cusp of being destroyed either permanently or as a step towards the path of creating a new world is in some of the oldest religious traditions and techs.
But in the 21st century, the most widely followed doomsday preachers aren't hyper-religious.
They're billionaires who made their fortune in Silicon Valley.
They say that civilization is dangerously fragile and the only way to avoid total disaster and instead put humanity on the path towards universal prosperity is by never regulating tech or regulating tech on their terms, never increasing their taxes or really never saying anything bad about them ever.
Probably the most colorful example of this is Peter Thiel's obsession with the Antichrist, though people like Elon Musk and Mark Andreession have also repeatedly warned that humanity is on the path to destruction.
This reminds me of like one of my favorite literary phrases in French, Il se fétare de prison prutat.
And it's it's just it's getting later, later and later.
And as we see the waning light in our own lives, we can't help but wish on some level that the world would go with us.
Now, to better understand this phenomenon, today we are joined by Christopher Marquis.
He is the Xinyi Professor of Chinese Management at Cambridge Judge Business School and a leading scholar of sustainable enterprise and the politics of business.
He's the author of The Profiteers, How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs and other books and has written about the political goals of tech billionaires for Jacobin magazine.
Christopher, thank you so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks so much.
Great to be with you.
Yeah.
So before we go into the specific questions I have for you about this weird phenomenon, I'm curious, like just generally, like why do you think our tech oligarchs sound so paranoid and weird?
I think it used to be like when titans of industry allowed their like personal kind of like paranoia and neuroses to consume them.
They like went the route of like William Randolph Hearst and bought more art and artifacts than they could afford in like this ludicrously massive estate or like Howard Hughes, you know, who isolated himself in his hotel suite and like stored his urine in bottles or even like just Henry Ford.
He just did the anti-Semitism.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You could just become an anti-Semitism.
No, but this, this makes perfect fucking sense.
It's like, if you're going to go through a midlife crisis, if you're going to face your death, your actual extinction, the extinction of your, your very consciousness, it's going to be way worse when these people have access to levers that can affect millions.
You know, like we're all going to be affected by these men having the DMT rerun of their entire shitty lives.
But, you know, it seems like, you know, our modern, our modern tech billionaires, they sound like a cliche, like the doomsday preacher with a sandwich board saying like the end is nigh.
Like just generally, like, what do you think this is about?
I mean, I think a lot of it is, I mean, they had all this success early on and they got really sort of confident in their own sort of ideas and opinion and place in the world.
And everyone's telling them how great they are.
And I think that they really are about very much sort of self-preservation of that.
I mean, part of it is, you know, they have these public companies with tons of sort of pressure from investors.
And they see, you know, the only way to really, you know, take control is by having themselves in charge and having, you know, I think, you know, Peter Thiel, who we'll talk about, has a lot of sort of off-the-charts crazy ideas about Antichrist and other things.
But I think people like Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Andreessen, Elon Musk, I mean, it is about sort of cementing their sort of control, you know, on the economy and society and protecting their businesses.
I'm really like kind of torn on whether it's better to have the kind of French king who thinks he's appointed by God or these fucking assholes who essentially just got really good at the game of capitalism because neither are particularly interesting, you know, or really relevant to like evolution on Earth.
They're not particularly smart or, you know, like I said, like interesting.
So, you know what?
Should we get Louis Quettal's back?
Like, I'm not sure.
Maybe.
Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that I would choose the French king over the tech oligarchs.
Yeah, I think these guys are trying to buy the god DLC.
You know, it's like, I can't imagine what it's like to get everything you want and to, in fact, live as a king.
You know, staffs of hundreds, I'm sure.
I got a buddy who lives next door to Mark Zuckerberg's like end of the world compound in Hawaii.
And it's like, you know, it's like something out of a out of like a John Cusack end of the world movie.
I say that like there's like a bunch of those movies, but I'm just referencing one.
I think we need to force them back into the conditions that the kings had.
So like, okay, you have like several incurable diseases, like syphilis.
You're sleeping with like 18 people in your bed, you know, of various different genders, and you have to go poop in like a large kind of like wooden contraption.
Well, Chris and Travis, wasn't it Peter Thiel who really was like kind of doing adrena crump?
Like I remember a long time ago, Ambrosia, Ambrosia.
He was injecting, he was injecting teenage blood.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He looks great.
Yeah, you look great, man.
Hey, it worked out for you.
It worked out for you, brother.
He looks like a human tendon.
Like, he looks like he's always made of only sinew.
Peter, Peter, who's your child bank, by the way?
Who do you have?
Who do you have like tubed up in your basement?
Who's your fantasy child team?
Like, you know, like betting on your fan is like the most powerful children.
These are the most powerful children.
They're going to feed us the best.
And then, ah, man, I just lost $100 to my buds.
Like I said, I think this is part of this weird doomsday apocalyptic rhetoric.
It's part of, I think, a general trend among tech billionaires.
But I think it's in the news recently because of Peter Thiel.
And he has been talking about the Antichrist for a couple years now.
And then recently he decided to give a series of lectures in San Francisco, sort of like philosophizing about like who the Antichrist could be warning that Armageddon is coming.
Very kind of like unusual pastime for someone in his station.
Travis, it's obviously Greta Thunberg.
It's obviously like the young woman who cares about anything.
We're going to get that.
It's obviously the only person with like the tiny shred of soul.
He's like, oh man, she really bothers me.
That must be a thorn.
That is really the thorn in his lion's paw.
It's like anyone who cares, anyone who has a fucking soul.
I thought this was kind of more like a Tim Robinson, like in the hot dog costume situation where he's up on stage being like, who could possibly be the Antichrist?
Who did this?
Who possibly did this?
He just drove the Antichrist mobile through like front window of humanity.
He's like, I don't know who did this.
Yeah.
You know, it's funny.
There's a, there is, there's a, there's a weird, uh, there's a theory going around that this was a sort of an SEO play because people kept calling Peter Thiel the Antichrist.
And so he decided to do a bunch of lectures and start engaging with Antichrist.
Of course.
So when people Google Peter Thiel Antichrist, then all of a sudden they get all this stuff instead of like people theorizing like, man, this guy, this guy's like, it's like, oh, this guy's about to put the mark of the beast on us.
This guy sounds like the Antichrist.
Can you fucking imagine being so worried that you might actually be the Antichrist that you have to do like defensive talks?
And you're probably not even religious.
And you're still like, ah, man, this shoe fits.
So Thiel, he actually, he describes himself as a small O orthodox Christian.
I don't know what the hell that means.
And he believes that the harboringer of the end of the world could already be in our midst.
The Antichrist is already here and that things like international agencies, environmentalism, and guardrails on technology could quicken its rise.
Oh, yeah, that's the problem for sure.
Yeah, the stuff slowing down the Antichrist is definitely the Antichrist.
So tickets to these lectures were $200 each.
And they were quickly sold out.
Like one condition was that you couldn't record.
Obviously, people recorded, leaked it to, linked it to the press, which is why we know about them.
I would love to pay for $200 to hear Tom Cruise explain how he's not gay.
So he defined the Antichrist as an evil king or tyrant or anti-messiah who appears in the end times.
Well, then why are you talking about the little girl who got like fucking dragged around by like Israelis?
Like, what the fuck are you on about?
You are the guy.
You're running the whole fucking ship.
You're fucking, you control so much.
Of course it's the little girl who doesn't do anything like that that affects you.
The person who puts their body on the line.
God, I would.
Well, I've been told that I shouldn't do any because the death threats have been too much lately.
So I won't say anything.
So yeah, yeah.
He's like, I'm just curious about like, yeah, like his weird is targets for the Antichrist.
I'm going to read a couple of exact quotes from his lectures.
Like, Jake, could you take this one?
All right.
I got to put on a voice like my jugular vein is like trying to get out of my neck.
No, it's too much.
Okay.
I'm just going to, you guys can imagine listeners.
No, just you imagine.
You imagine how bad he sounds.
My thesis is that in the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil, crazy science.
He's so stupid.
He's so dumb.
He doesn't even know how to talk.
Dumbass.
In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science.
It's someone like Greta or Elizer.
Wait, who's Elizer?
That's Alezer Yurdkovsky.
This is a AI critic that a lot of Silicon Valley hate a lot.
Oh my God.
Yeah, you know who it is?
It's the people who criticize me.
It turns out, fucking.
It turns out that's who it was all along.
The people who bother me, like again, the tiny thorn in my big lion paw.
That's the problem.
I want to read like one more sentence from his lecture before I get your take on this, Christopher.
So this is this one also was interesting.
In late modernity, where science has become scary and apocalyptic and the legionnaires of the antichrist like Elizer Yudowski, Nick Bostrom, and Greta Dunberg argue for world government to stop science, the Antichrist has somehow become anti-science.
But okay, can you at least point out how your science, the thing that they're anti-is going to lead us anywhere good?
Because they never have an actual positive solution, right?
They're just like, stop slowing us down.
And it's like, well, you're wrecking the entire fucking world.
You're clearly draining us of our blood.
And they're like, you know what the problem is?
We had to reduce blood drainage by 5%.
It was like, yeah, right.
It's just, it's like, it's like, these are, I think, very strange people for someone with the amount of wealth that Teal has, the amount of connections that Teal has to be worried about.
Yeah.
Eliezer Yurdkovsky, just an AI critic, Nick Bossom.
There's a Swedish philosopher who talks about the anthropic principle.
And yeah, activist Greta Thunberg.
You know what the problem is, Travis?
There's too many mirrors in this room.
I got a cloth on it.
Why do I keep seeing myself?
Why does a person with a soul keep making me feel like I maybe am completely fucking gone and lost?
I think most people in like Thiel's station wouldn't be, wouldn't be worried about like people who like talk about, you know, environmentalism or like, you know, who have criticisms for AI, but he seems very, very like almost religiously paranoid about these kinds of people.
Where do you think this is coming from, Chris?
I mean, I think part of it is what's been just talked about.
I mean, it's very like self-defensive that, you know, he, you know, clearly these are things that threaten him.
And it's not just about, I think, with a lot of these guys, not just Peter Thiel, their business interests, but they are very like thin-skinned and take these things very, very personally.
And so, you know, sort of Elon Musk, he doesn't get invited to some event at the White House and he just goes crazy and gives $290 million something to Trump.
I mean, that's a simplistic way to put it.
But I do think that there is this like very thin skin defensiveness that's part of it.
And the thing that's amazing to me about the Teal example, you know, I had heard about him talking about the Antichrist and I always thought it was similar, you know, like maybe some SEO type of thing or, you know, some sort of like tongue-in-cheek almost, but it is very, very literal.
If you read these quotes from this event, I mean, it just, I mean, it's absolutely absurd.
Things like, you know, not just, you know, Greta and other people, but like Mark Andreessen, people asked him, oh, is Mark Andreessen the Antichrist?
And he said, well, you know, probably not, because the Antichrist would be popular.
Yeah, the Antichrist would have a shape of head that makes more sense.
He wouldn't look like an egg.
Yeah.
So anyway, so it's, it's, I mean, I think it's, it is very much this sort of thin skin defensiveness.
And this is not just about, you know, the Antichrist.
A lot of the other sort of sort of philosophy and ideas that he has or Mark Andreessen has or, you know, Elon Musk is putting out, you know, are very much about, you know, trying to defend things like Palantir or Facebook.
So, you know, he is all, you know, anti-sort of China's surveillance state and, you know, integration of tech with the military.
I mean, and you think, like, did he not actually look at the company that he co-founded?
So I think so much of what they say is so clearly a way to distract from actually the problems of their own business model.
It's so awesome to name your company like the Wicked Witch of the West and then be like, I don't understand.
I don't understand the criticism here.
Yeah.
The problem is that people are getting in the way of my company, Mordor, like the evil eye of Satan himself.
Like, what the fuck?
Well, yeah, you have, I imagine that you have to have a thin skin to want to become a billionaire, right?
Because if 999 million isn't enough, you know, there's got to be something.
I remember I, uh, old boss doesn't listen to the show.
Maybe he does.
I don't know.
If you're listening, this one's for you.
Who told, who once told me one of the most brilliant things that I've ever heard.
And this is from, he was very wealthy, very successful guy.
And I was asking him for advice.
And he goes, I'll tell you what.
He goes, if there's something broken inside of you, the money's not going to fix it.
And I was like, oh, man, that's like, yeah, that's really heavy.
And, you know, I think about that over the years.
And what I've taken it to sort of mean is that if you are basing your self-worth on how much money you have, there's nothing worse than getting the thing you want and that you think is going to fix you and make you whole again, getting it and realizing that it hasn't, you know?
And I think a lot of these guys, it's like, once they've conquered the physical world, they move on to the spiritual because like, what else is there?
It's like boring to talk about.
No, they can't have access to the spiritual.
Yeah.
It's still the physical world.
It's still like, I didn't get invited to the party.
This one person said something bad about me.
They have no access to heaven, Jake.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
I think that's it.
I think that's part of it.
There's like, yeah, that they internally they feel, you know, no stairway, no stairway.
Yeah, we have to deal with the small insecurities of these big baby men.
We, our entire society is ruled, totally swayed, fucking honestly like devastated by the tiny insecurities of men who have it all.
And all we can do is point out what big babies they are.
Well, it does make them furious, so at least that's funny.
It does make them furious.
What do you mean I paid for my Path of Exile 2 character?
Yeah, I want to go back to the quotes that were revealed about his lectures in The Guardian.
And one of the person that he proposed, which was possibly the Antichrist, which he ultimately dismisses, is Bill Gates.
He seems to have a lot of beef with Bill Gates.
He's like, wait a second.
There's too many similarities.
I actually don't want to call this guy the Antichrist.
It has to be someone poor, like who makes no money.
One thing I wanted to point out that was sort of like that, that kind of like the way in which he uses the rhetoric of the Antichrist, that deviates the way that kind of like American evangelicals did in the 20th century.
You know, there was this, especially after in the middle of the Cold War, and there were preachers like Hal Lindsay, who wrote that late Great Panel Earth, who revived prophecy talk based upon the Bible, the Antichrist.
And there was a lot of fear about technology, specifically the fear that they paid a lot of attention to the verse that talks about how there would be a mark on your hand or your forehead and no one could buy or sell anything without this mark.
And a lot of people thought that this was like, oh, this might be credit cards or this indicates that our tech overlords are going to microchip us.
But, you know, like it's very strange that Thiel kind of like takes this sort of like on its head.
It's not, it's not people who are pushing all pervasive technology in all parts of life who are the Antichrist.
It's actually people who oppose, you know, this, especially, especially strange for Teal, who's like the, you know, part owner of Palantir, which is so involved in like surveillance and government activity.
But yeah, well, why, why is exactly, it was like, what do you make of the fact that he's turning, sort of like turning the sort of like the rhetoric of Christian paranoia in the 20th century kind of like on its head and saying it's actually anti-technology that's going to bring about the Antichrist, not pervasive mandatory technology.
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, my, my sort of great grade school sort of Bible study, I've forgotten most of the actual like sort of real sort of focus on the Antichrist, but I think it's very similar to what we were, what we were talking about.
I mean, I think that anything that he sees as a threat, he's obviously sort of standing on, you know, PayPal and Palantir and his investment in Meta.
And so these are things that he thinks are going to save the world.
I think that he really may actually believe that, you know, he is some historically unique figure.
Certainly people like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg think this.
And that things that actually impede his progress must actually be somehow sort of anti-civilization or anti-the world.
So I think, you know, it's, again, he's viewing this very much through his own personal neuroses, basically, an interest in controlling or in elevating what he's actually done.
I'd also argue that like, I think American secularism is actually Protestantism in disguise, that like so many of the structures, I think, of like how Protestantism processes things like, you know, the apocalypse or virtue have actually just transferred almost directly over.
And that people who have moved on to science as their kind of new God or technology as their new God, they're just replicating the exact same insane patterns.
And that this country, you know, the United States specifically is kind of guided by extreme religiosity and paranoia.
The same thing that kind of founded the country is now visible in these like supposedly secular and non-religious entities.
Yeah, well put.
One of the things that also kind of like worries me that it's like, it's like if just someone like, you know, you met on the street said the world is on a path to a total destruction, dystopia.
But how, however, I know how to get us back on the path to prosperity.
And if you give me everything I want and never question me and never sort of like question my motives, then we can go back onto a path of like great universal prosperity.
I would think most people will recognize that that's just a, that's just a sort of like a real boilerplate doomsday cult.
That's like, that's just, that's just, that's just Heaven's Gate.
That's the basic form of like every of every kind of doomsday cult is that like, you know, everything's going to be terrible and all those ignorant people out there are going to face disaster.
But if you follow me, then everything's going to be fine.
Yeah, I almost left out the other thing that defines the United States, which is grifting and, you know, making a profit, like being a snake oil salesman.
That's obviously very present as well.
Yeah, when Peter Thiel like stops you, you know, on the side of the road and opens like his little packet of magical beans to shake into your hand after he's taken your, after he's taken your cow.
It's just like a bunch of like apps.
It's just like a bunch of like apps and like software solutions.
After he's taken your cow.
You know the best thing I've ever heard.
Your cow's already gone, by the way.
You've already signed it over and you don't need your cow anymore.
In the new world, you don't have to go to the open source.
You open this shitty fucking packet of beans and it's just a couple apps and like some software like falls out.
You're just like, God damn it, I can't fucking climb up to the sky with this shit.
Do they even understand that the rest of the world lives in like physical reality?
Like that software and like laptop jobs are like our little bubbles like existence.
This is not how most people live.
Most people don't even have fucking plumbing.
Like they don't really, I don't think, grasp like how far gone they are.
They're so, it's like the 1% doesn't even describe it.
These people are clearly just, they're living in like a liminal bubble above the world.
They have no fucking idea what the average person goes through.
Everybody is a toy to them.
They're playing SimCity.
It's a game to them and their own importance is of paramount, you know, like existential, you know, level.
And it's like, yeah, no, of course you're not that important.
Of course you're just a product of a bubble.
Of course you're just another rich man who was funneled to the top, not because you're special, but because you're capable of doing the most insane cruelty to others, that you have no regard for anybody and that capitalism rewards that.
Yeah, going more into like his teal antichrist lectures, yeah, like he has a special animus for Bill Gates, which I mean, obviously there's lots of criticism of Bill Gates, especially of his sort of his image as a philanthropist.
But it is weird that he sort of like seemed to be sort of like talking about really sort of intra-billionaire beef in these lectures.
But here's another quote from these lectures that were recorded.
One of my friends was telling me that I should not pass up on the opportunity to tell those people in San Francisco that Bill Gates is the Antichrist.
I will concede that he is certainly a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde type character.
The public Mr. Rogers, the neighborhood character.
I saw the Mr. Hyde version about a year ago where it was just a non-stop Tourette's yelling swear words, almost incomprehensible what was going on.
He's not a political leader.
He's not broadly popular.
And again, perhaps to Gates' credit, he's still stuck in the 18th century alongside people like Richard Dawkins, who believe that science and atheism are compatible.
I don't think even someone like Bill Gates, who I think is a very, very awful person, is remotely able to be the Antichrist.
This is such a, I mean, first of all, I don't like Richard Dawkins.
I don't like Gates and I don't like Teal.
All of them are fucked in the head.
But this is so amazing saying that they believe that science and atheism are compatible.
So you're saying essentially that you're like in some sort of like techno-mysticism, like that you are now thinking that science allows you to fucking bestow genuinely cosmic and like religious, like you can name gods, you can name devils.
A truly insane man.
And Bill Gates is, I think what he doesn't like about Bill Gates is that Bill Gates isn't like a kind of human vein.
Like he's not like a throbbing human vein.
He's genuinely autistic and an insecure little piece of shit that basically sits in the corner stimming.
And meanwhile, like this guy is like, I'm pretty sure he's like screw sex with them somehow.
And obviously, like I shouldn't be quoted on that.
And that's alleged.
But yeah, it's like what he doesn't like about Bill Gates is that Bill Gates isn't like a living hard on.
I mean, yeah, this is, this is what was interesting to me because I thought I kind of assumed like Bill Gates, at least he like, he tries to put on this face of like he's, you know, the idea of the giving pledge and like, you know, philanthropy.
And I assumed his fellow billionaires would like at least like that, at least like try and do PR for the billionaire class.
No, because that's a tiny mirror.
Even though Bill Gates is just using it to funnel money back to himself, even though he's just laundering, even though it's all bullshit, he's still like, man, I feel somewhat insecure that this guy pretends to be a good guy.
He's so insane.
He's like, anything that isn't pure evil that doesn't just go along with my absolutely insane, like selfish, evil fucking vision of the world.
I am so insecure about it.
I think about it all day and night.
Yeah.
Yeah, Chris, what do you make of Teal's like strange hostility to Bill Gates?
Yeah, I mean, I think in part, I mean, part of it is this sort of intergenerational, you know, they're focusing on different things.
Elon Musk actually has a huge beef with Gates too.
And, you know, I guess Bill Gates was, you know, a longtime short seller of Tesla stock.
And, you know, Elon Musk would say he did never did anything, you know, in the tech world.
He's a loser.
He just gives money away.
He's not creative, et cetera.
So I think part of it is that the sort of Bill Gates' vision of sort of this trying to be a good person is very different than what people like Teal and Musk are thinking should be done with their sort of fortune and money.
And in part, I mean, I think the irony of this is that if you look at what Mark Andreessen says about how, you know, a lot of the sort of scrutiny from the Biden administration and Lisa Kahn on the tech industry, you know, they got really pissed about that.
It's what drove many of them to Trump.
And they said, you know, they don't understand there's a deal that they actually call it the deal with like capital, capital D. And the deal is basically this, that they should give tech basically a wide degree of freedom to do whatever they want.
And then they'll become rich, gather a lot of money.
And then, you know, 20, 30 years later, they're going to be philanthropists.
So in many ways, it's like the Bill Gates model is what they are advocating for why they should be actually no restrictions on them right now.
So it is really strange and ironic that they target him like this because they are espousing basically his career for their, you know, as the model for why they should have less scrutiny.
Bill Gates is unk.
He's the risk player who's been playing it for a while.
This settlers of Catan guy, he knows the game.
I just arrived.
And yeah, I'm throwing my weight around, but this guy's the problem.
I once had an incredible conversation with Brett Leonard.
This is the director of Lawnmower Man, an early pioneer in the vision for, you know, how cursed virtual spaces, you know, could be.
And he was telling me that like after Lawnmower Man came out, he was like Hollywood's it guy and he was going around and being courted kind of like by all of these like multi-millionaires and billionaires who were like, yeah, worked, worked, you know, they wanted to talk to him because he was a futurist in a lot of ways and they were trying to develop the technology that you were sort of seeing in Lawnmower Man.
And he said, these guys are fucking, he's like, they, they fucking, they think they're going to live forever.
He's like, they hang out on islands and do ketamine drips and like their brains go out into like the four corners of the universe and they come back and they think that they've solved mortality.
And like all of these guys, like that's basically like what they're doing when they get to that point is like they've solved everything else.
And so it becomes like, how can I cheat death?
And, you know, what's what's he's like, that's what makes them so awful is that like they all eventually like have to face it.
And facing that reality is like what corrupt.
It was, I'm not quoting him exactly.
And he doesn't, he's never going to hear this.
So I don't give a shit.
But like it was a fascinating thing about trying just trying to put myself in the shoes of somebody who lives on a different plane of existence than 99% of the rest of us.
They think they deserve it.
And they think they deserve it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
For being successful.
I'm here because I deserve it.
Of course.
You couldn't possibly just be, you know, the scummiest man on earth that like got risen to the top after a mountain of privilege amounted to you getting the shot at being the cruelest.
No, of course not.
It's not that.
I do have a solution, though.
I mean, these people are like, I guess, like facing their own mortality and the end of their lives.
And like they're becoming like outrageous and damaging to everybody else.
So I just have like a solution to that.
All right.
All right.
I didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything.
Yeah.
You know, yeah, so I think these tech billionaires, they kind of remind me of, I hear stories about like ancient emperors of China who like, who like became obsessed with like achieving immortality because they, they lived such strange lives separated from everyone else in terms of their power and their influence and even like, you know, what they had access to.
They, they were so separate from the rest of humanity.
They thought like that inevitable normal human experience, which is mortality.
is something that that was optional for them.
Right.
And I think, I think something similar has happened.
It's like, it's like, I'm not just separate from the rest of humanity in some sort of like social or economic way.
I'm separate from the rest of humanity in a more profound metaphysical way.
Or like the kinds of things that all humans have to face, I actually don't have to face.
I don't have to deal with that because I'm separate.
And I think, yeah, there's just this, it's just the degree of wealth inequality and the degree of like, you know, just living in the clouds because of what they have access to and their insane wealth just makes them think that, think that they don't actually have to be mortal.
I mean, I think you're totally right.
And I think that the sort of ancient China Emperor connection is really apt because you probably saw this recent meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping of China, where there was this mic that caught them talking informally.
And it was about exactly this.
It was about actually how in Russia and China, they had scientists, teams of scientists working on ways of extending lives.
And Putin was talking about how he's going to live to 150.
And Xi Jinping was talking about various organ replacement types of things.
And so, yeah, you get together sort of oligarchs, you know, or sort of tech oligarchs or, you know, Putin and Xi Jinping authoritarian leaders throw in Trump for a threesome.
And I'm, you know, this is what they, this is what they're thinking about.
I don't like the idea of a threesome there, but I will, I will say that like what they don't really quite understand is that capitalism's very design is that it will create the inequality.
Like that is the actual design.
Like the inequality has to exist to show people that some deserve and some don't deserve within the system.
To justify the very system, it has to create inequality.
And of course, like that's not something that these people are going to reckon with because they're not reading any of the books that are behind you, Chris.
I wish our science fiction authors had imagined a more pleasant future for us because like really, I mean, especially given this conversation between between Putin and Xi Jinping, it's like these guys are just trying to be like Wayland Yutani.
Like they're just trying to live for like 150.
Like, oh man, like I wish, I wish we had had like cooler, more benevolent like characters in our science fiction.
I wish the fucking xenomorph was real.
Alien Earth, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a little bit of that.
But God, that is so, I did not know that about the hot mic.
And that makes this whole conversation just so much more depressing that these guys are just getting together and patting each other on the back and being like, oh, may you live to 200.
And he's like, no, you, 250.
No, it's just country club shit.
Like they're fucking degenerates.
Like they have no intelligence.
Like they're not talking about reality.
They're just like a bunch of good old boys.
Like, yep, we got to the top.
I guess we're really special.
You're not special.
You're the worst people on earth.
Maybe this is like a good question for Chris because back in the day, and I'm really just like quoting Titanic, the movie, not the historical event.
You know, Guggenheim, what do you mean?
How would you quote the historical event?
So Guggenheim and all these guys, you know, when they realize that the Titanic's going down, they're like, gentlemen, we are dressed in our best.
And like they go down to like smoke cigars and drink brandy like and just fucking accept their fate.
Like what has changed?
Is it that they're science?
And so like Teal has to create a way, like he has to create a way that science is also like biblical.
Like, I don't understand.
Like it used to be that our billionaires, you know, had dignity and like, yes, gentlemen, like, I won't, you will, you'll never catch me complaining, even as you drive the knife into my heart.
Like, they're so unbothered, even by death.
They were unbothered by death as opposed to trying to conquer it.
These people are surgeons.
They're surgeons, Jake.
Like, their whole fucking life, they've been using like calculus, like algebra to fucking get the best outcomes.
And of course, like I said, always cruelty.
Cruelty is the main thing that will get you to the top here.
But then when they had to construct their own soul, when they were looking at death in the eye and they had to like children that had never played with this Play-Doh, they had to construct.
It's like, have you ever seen a businessman try to draw a person?
Like, that's what's happening.
They're trying to draw their soul and it's late.
It is late.
It is getting later and later.
And it is crude.
These drawings are so crude.
It's sad.
They have no fucking soul, and they desperately are trying to draw it in the late days.
Yeah, to your point, Jake, I mean, I do think, yeah, among the elite, there used to be much more this sort of noblesse oblige type type of idea.
And, you know, I don't know, you know, Julian originally started asking if we wanted sort of French kings or the tech oligarchs.
You know, I sort of chose the French kings and I didn't really think very that deeply about the time.
But if you think about sort of our discussion of capitalism, you know, and how it's actually evolved over the past 50 years, you know, you've had inequality, you know, sort of increase at huge rates, bigger rates than before in history.
And part of that in why we actually don't actually experience it as much as we probably should is that as it's as the rich get richer, they are actually isolating themselves in their own sort of separate worlds.
And so, you know, the poor are staying poor and the rich are getting richer.
And we don't actually sort of realize.
And because they're sort of continuing to isolate themselves, their own separate worlds, I think it is this idea that they're so much more sort of self-entitled that the world should run around sort of sort of them.
And so I think it's in part that's what leads to these, you know, just massive, you know, eruptions like either Peter Thiel or Musk have, where, you know, the world doesn't go the way they want it to.
And, you know, they have to, you know, sort of step in.
I wish we could treat it a little bit more like addiction because addiction to money is a real issue.
And I think these people are the same as like someone who's being threatened with like their stash being taken away, you know, like as a drug addict.
Like they will come up with any argument, anything.
It's not about rationality.
They're going to just scramble around finding something, some excuse, so they don't get cut off.
And yeah, like I do think that we don't, because capitalism rewards greed and accumulation of money, we don't treat it as a sickness.
Whereas I think anybody that is like above 5 million personal worth and is still ruthlessly seeking more at the expense of others, that is a sick person.
That is a genuinely sick person.
And I wish we had a fucking societal way to like recognize that and classify that because we do not right now.
We do not.
That is an empty, that is it.
This is a blind spot for us.
Like if you put somebody in the squid games, right?
Or, you know, you put them in like a locker room with like 20 people and a knife and you're like, hey, for $2 million, like you got to stab everybody in that room with a knife.
Mr. Beast, this is Mr. Beast.
This is the Mr. Beast thing.
And so Mr. Beast is like, I'm going to put you and I'm going to videotape it to you.
I'm going to put you in the room for $2 million.
Like if you kill everybody in the room, you get the money.
And like, okay, like, and then basically, if you do do that, if you do like horribly slaughter like everybody in the room and come out covered in blood, holding the knife, like expecting your 2 million, a couple doctors should come out, like the end of streetcar name desire and drag you away.
Like that, that should be the, you know, the sort of like litmus test.
And like, like you said, Julian, like Thiel, Zuckerberg, Gates, like all of these guys, I'm sure in some, you know, in some not so abstract way, are probably responsible for at least a handful of deaths, allegedly.
A handful, millions, millions of deaths, not allegedly.
Like, study the actual system.
They absolutely are.
And that, I mean, you know, obviously, like, the tech oligarchs are like the kind of, I guess, like new guard of some of the most cruel people that have acceded to power before them.
You know, it's not like Silicon Valley is some sort of new way of being evil or cruel.
This is just the system that we live in.
But still, absolutely, they're responsible for millions of deaths, probably dozens directly.
Yeah.
Just look at Doge and USAID.
I mean, there's a, you know, that's.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
I also want to talk about the peculiar paranoia of Elon Musk.
According to Elon Musk, there are a few threats to human civilization.
They include awokeness or what has he, as he calls it, the woke mind virus.
You think this is serious?
Yeah, the biggest threat to humanity is that I have a trans daughter.
Yeah.
You piece of shit.
You absolute piece of shit.
You know what this reminds me of?
I was recently watching the British Office and then Extras and I was like, man, Ricky Gervaise was so funny.
And then he sequestered himself in his little fucking like rich bubble and he became unfunny as fuck.
And he became a hateful little shit.
Money literally kills you.
Money destroys your soul.
Yeah, I was thinking about like Peter Thiel's able to sell these tickets to these lectures for $200 each and they sell out instantly.
It's like not because he's such a glittering orator.
He has some unique ideas, but I don't call them particularly profound or interesting.
But I think there's, yeah, there's this weird warping effect when someone reaches that level of success where you are constantly surrounded by people who want to hear what you have to say and act as if they are fascinated.
And like, it doesn't matter how awkwardly you say it or how nonsensical the content actually is because you're successful, they treat you as a raw model.
It's like, well, if an early investor in Facebook is saying this, if a Silicon Valley pioneer is saying this, it's like they think that, I don't know, that like emulating people like Peter Thiel is sort of like their own personal path to becoming a multi-billionaire.
But yeah, this has to be have warping effect.
It's not a normal experience for someone to just sort of slobber over every little weird, awkward utterance you make.
It's like you don't have the proper feedback to understand whether or not you're actually expressing good ideas or not.
I mean, it's sort of like the classic sort of like problem of like, I guess like, you know, the Sultan who thinks he's everything he's doing is great because his vizier is just whispering in his ear about how great he is.
These people, they don't, they don't have normal feedback systems.
So the way they talk becomes so strange and warped.
Imagine we had to study the vomitorium, the styles of vomiting, and be like, actually, it's kind of genius in some way.
Like we have to find some sort of brilliance in these men who are literally gorging themselves and, you know, like ushering in the end of an empire.
Like very, you know, very kind of literally.
It's very direct.
It's like between the vomiting, this man is muttering some of the smartest stuff I've ever heard.
Yeah.
I mean, I think a lot of it as well.
I mean, it sort of feeds to this insecurity that, you know, is sort of needing to sort of feel loved and wanted in some ways.
And that, you know, even if you're saying crazy stuff, the people still sort of follow you and love you.
I think, you know, in some ways gives them, you know, sort of feelings of sort of, I don't know, security in their position.
I think, you know, with Trump, this is this is very much it.
I mean, you know, this people demanding loyalty to January 6th, that, you know, clearly 99% of the people that are sort of, you know, saying that, I'm sure that they know probably deep down that that's, you know, actually the election was not rigged and et cetera.
But the fact that he can get them to say that and follow his nonsense, I think, you know, I think there's something, yeah, something about these people that makes them feel sort of more secure and sort of loved.
It's so funny, too, because I know Elon Musk has been very publicly like anti-therapy.
Like he had some tweet where he was like, I'll never talk to a therapist ever.
Like, you know, like he was kind of bragging about it when it seems like, I don't know, a couple years, like, you know, it might solve a lot of these problems, these fragile egos and these people who, to me, clearly were just like terrorized by their rich parents.
And, you know, it's human beings.
How we are, it's a pretty simple equation.
It's, it's, you know, our family systems that we were raised in and our environments and our genetics.
And yeah, but also they're utterly unimportant because like capitalism could replace these people easily.
Yes, yes, but they're not actually special.
That's what's so terrifying to us.
That's exactly fucking, they're just like, they're literally like the digestive tract of the system.
Like they don't mean anything.
And they're terrified of that.
The idea that maybe they're just like instruments of a larger system that promoted them to the top because they were the most effective at doing whatever they needed to do to continue this system.
And that's what's so fucking infuriating.
Yeah, I wanted to turn to Elon Musk, his particular worries.
So there's the woke mind virus, and he's also very, very worried about slowing population growth.
He talks about the birth rate constantly.
Love that combined with like overpopulation.
This is such a funny fucking way to think.
This is only productivity, by the way.
There's only one reason why we would need people to reproduce more, even while we're overcrowding the world by far, is because we need productive little drones to continue capital accretion.
I mean, yeah, the other one, the other one that Elon Musk talks a lot about is out of control AI.
That's when he kind of deviates from some other tech oligarchs in that he seems to be more comfortable with the idea of, I guess, regulation on his terms of AI was like other people think that like any regulation at all is unsustainable.
But I'm, yeah, I'm really curious.
Like it's like, what, what exactly is this, this sort of like this sort of, this, uh, this sort of collection of fears with like, I guess, like wokeness, I guess like progressive rhetoric and the population growth and unregulated AI.
How does this fit into his particular agenda?
Yeah, I mean, I think for so many of these guys, as we've been talking about, I mean, it sort of really boils down to their own personal problems, issues, and insecurities.
I mean, Jillian mentioned, you know, unsurprisingly, you know, he came out against woke after his daughter, you know, transitioned.
It's, you know, he also talks a lot about, you know, needing to go to Mars.
This is another sort of obsession of him that, you know, the world, the U, the world is going to be kind of uninhabitable and we need to go to Mars.
I mean, this is clearly, you know, his interest in building rockets, which is, you know, Jeff Bezos also has this sort of, you know, sort of obsession.
So I think, you know, a lot of it is very much boils down to the personal sort of interest or personal slights that these people have.
And they sort of spin them up into these gigantic conspiracy theories to basically defend, defend and make their position seem legitimate.
I won't be so lonely on Mars.
Women won't be so mean to me on Mars.
Well, it's it's uh, you know, it's a little bit like me and my proton packs.
Like, I, you know, I tell my wife, it's so much like that.
I tell my wife, I tell my wife that, like, I'm, I'm, you know, and I'm, and I'm kind of thinking about it that, like, what I eventually want to do is like join one of those local Ghostbusters chapters and have to fall suit and like go to hospitals and stuff and do like charity events.
Oh, that's really cute as fuck, dude.
And I'm like, and I'm like, because there's a group, there's like a local group I met them last Halloween, but I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I'm thinking like maybe like one day I'm gonna do that.
And so therefore, like, it's okay if I collect like three, maybe even four, maybe even a fourth Proton pack.
It's like a fourth?
It's like, let me collect these things because I'm gonna do something dope with them in the future.
I'm actually gonna serve humanity after I'm like the grittiest piece of shit and like steal from everybody and like kill millions.
I'm actually gonna be really cool in the future.
Yeah, Elon Musk's personal sort of like concerns remind me of this old onion article.
And the headline was grimacing congressman quickly drafts legislation for Charlie Horse research.
And it's like, yeah, it's like, it's like for some people, they reach this level of power where they are unable to tell the difference between their own personal kind of neuroses and general problems and threats in the wider world.
And like they become one of the same and like the separation between themselves and the world is just obliterated.
And why would they, though?
They've been told their whole lives.
Like you're special, like you're an individual.
There's no collective like dream.
There's no collective plan.
Why would they ever think outside of their own minds?
Yeah.
But for some reason, for me, it's like, it's frustrating that so many people like buy into this.
Like if I came out and said like their number one threat to civilization is too few people listening to podcasts.
Podcasts.
The number one threat to civilization is Julian Field interrupts.
That's right.
He's like, he's like, not enough people downloading, listening to podcasts.
We need to devote as many resources into podcast literacy.
We need to get this in the schools.
This needs to happen right now.
People see you straight through this.
It's like, well, don't you don't you run a podcast?
It seems a little self-interested.
It's like Jesse Ventura.
Jesse Ventura, a wrestler who became a governor, and the first thing he did was deregulate the taxes on jet skis because he owned three.
Yes.
Obviously.
We need to be ordering more research into guys named Julian who do podcasts.
Guys named Julian who interrupt me personally.
That's what it is, though.
It's me.
It is.
It's exactly that.
It's psychotic.
It's truly so transparent at this point.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like, why can't people see like when he talks about like, you know, all of a sudden he gets on Twitter is like the number one threat to humanity is people being mean to be online or like whatever.
It's like, it seems, it seems pretty obvious that he's sort of advancing a personal agenda through the rhetoric of universal good.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I don't know.
It's like, well, is it just the billionaire aura?
It's just the success that they've achieved that allows them to like be this transparent to act as if their political agenda is anything besides immediate self-interest.
You're saying it's not a meritocracy?
I think, you know, part of it too, I mean, it's, you know, it's not just one day they wake up and they make this connection, but they've probably been talking about it and everyone is sort of reinforcing how smart they are and they know the important issues.
And of course they're right.
And so, you know, I do think that there, there's this process when you become so wealthy that you are so isolated and have just yes men and people supporting your opinion all around you that of course these ideas, you know, are things that are really world, you know, sort of world problems because you've been sort of that's been validated by your entire sort of social and business group.
Yeah, it's like imagine having every meal be a three-star Michelin.
Imagine anyone around you that displeases you being disappeared.
You know, it's like, yeah, of course, like you end up totally insane.
Yeah.
You end up totally warped.
Yeah.
If my dad had like come into my bedroom at like, you know, when I was like, I don't know, eight or nine years old and plopped down a gaming PC with like a 5090 in it 4K monitor.
I'm talking in 1992, by the way.
Okay.
Okay.
So this is like a historical, but yeah.
You're getting access to future technology through your dad.
Is he a time traveler, by the way, Jake?
He like got a deal from some guy, you know?
Yeah.
You know, he picked up some deal.
You know, it's, it's kind of like this little guy called Doc with his friend Marty McFly.
No, in the same shop, in the same shop where the other dad gets gizmo for his kid, in the same shop where they sell Mogwise, they also in late 80s, early 90s, had very advanced PCs.
I love that you would be trying to run like lemmings on that ship.
No, no, no.
It would have all the modern software.
So, okay, all the software.
So basically, imagine if I played by the way they're all games.
They're all games as a service, so you would need like a high-speed internet connection.
So, could you at least explain how that works too?
That's the magic.
That's the magic from the show.
It's the magic of cinema, Hollywood.
Magic from the shop.
But, like, imagine having to then grow up as all these other kids are getting excited about like N64 and like PlayStation.
And I've already seen it all.
That's true, actually.
Like, it's, I would feel completely dead inside because I'm like, I have to wait for all these fucking piss.
These guys are being like, oh, we're, oh, the third whistle in Mario 3.
And I'm like, you know, 18 and 4 on like Black Ops 6.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, and let's be honest.
Like, these guys, and this is a legend, but they've probably had sex with like dozens of like Playboy models.
Then they were like, uh, I need some children.
And then it's like, yeah, they don't feel anything anymore.
They've literally lived all the vicarious pleasures they possibly could, and there's nothing there.
It didn't fill their souls.
It didn't make them feel whole.
It made them feel emptier than ever.
And yeah, it's not good.
It turns out material goods, it turns out accumulation of power doesn't feel good.
It just feels pleasureful for a moment.
And then you are left thinking, I might be a monster.
I might be the Antichrist.
Okay, time to organize like fucking six like speaking gigs where I'm like telling people it's actually the like 19 year old girl who's fighting for Palestine.
She's the antichrist.
I mean, it's so at this point, it's so egregious.
That's what's so fucking insulting.
Chris, how do you, how do you keep your like salt?
As I ask anybody who has to look into this extensively, like, how do you, you know, keep from going too far into the void as somebody who is, you know, researching these people in this space.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the research, I mean, I've sort of come about these, these articles that I've written, The Jacobin and other places, you know, almost almost by accident for many of the reasons we've talked about in this podcast.
You know, a long time ago, so I have a PhD in sociology and my earliest work was on like social elites and these ideas of being in these sort of clubs together and how it really sort of isolates, you know, isolates these people.
And so this last year, I think when all of these tech bros have sort of stepped up in the sort of public conversation much more prominently, you know, I read things and it's just, it's insane to me.
And so that has really spurred a lot of this writing.
So it's not like this has been like sort of burning in my, you know, they've been sort of burning in my mind for years.
So maybe a year or two from now, I will become much more depressed.
But actually, a lot of the work I do are with, you know, like social entrepreneurs or social enterprises that are actually trying to do good in the world.
And so I take a lot of, you know, that's healing.
That's your, your sort of like saving.
Never become a podcaster.
Yeah, please.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Don't do it.
Yeah.
I also want to talk about Mark Andreessen, which is someone you've written about before.
This is another guy who is, I guess, yeah, just talks about his technology, especially like, I guess, the kinds of things he works in and invests in in these existential civilizational terms.
Right.
And one of the ways that Mark Andreessen has expressed this is through something called the Techno Optimist Manifesto.
And it's, you know, it's about like, you know, like basically about like how you know great technology is for civilization and like the people who build it.
And there's a section of this manifesto that talks about his enemies or the enemy.
And Jake, could you could you read this section here?
We have enemies.
Our enemies are not bad people, but rather bad ideas.
Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades against technology and against life under varying names like existential risk, sustainability, ESG, sustainable development goals, social responsibility, stakeholder capitalism, precautionary principle, trust and safety, tech ethics, risk management, degrowth, the limits of growth.
This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past, zombie ideas, many derived from communism.
Well, of course.
You motherfuckers, you stole our future.
You stole our future just because you hated the idea that we could do anything together.
You fucking waged a fucking multi-million death campaign to make sure this idea wouldn't win.
Sorry, sorry.
We were eventually going to get there on this episode.
There's no doubt in my mind.
I'm surprised that you made it an hour and eight into the recording.
It'll be less than that for you, listeners.
Your idea was so fucking good.
You had to kill.
You had to fucking kill.
It had to be at the end of the gun.
You're a fucking great idea, you assholes.
Okay, wait, let me finish the quote because it's awful.
He says, okay, so based on zombie ideas, many derived from communism, disastrous then and now that have refused to die.
So he's like, and so it is upon us, the billionaires, to kill it.
There's lots of stuff going on here.
One thing that struck me is the idea that like there's been a sort of like an anti-technology demoralization campaign for the past six decades, which just sounds anti-anti-reality.
This past six decades has been subject to like the greatest, largest expansion of like, you know, of technology and its usage and its corporation everyday life of any time in history.
So I'll always talk about there, but like, yeah, just generally, what do we make of this strange paranoia?
A couple of things.
I mean, that essay is almost as unhinged as the Peter Thiel's Antichrist comments.
You know, professors actually also are, I take a particular sort of pride that I'm a, you know, as a professor, also, we, we are sort of the enemies of Mark Andreessen.
And, you know, like you said, Travis, I mean, this is something where we've had this amazing technical expansion over the past 60 years.
The problem is, though, these companies are all in the monopolies, and the government is actually looking very carefully at how they're abusing power, how they're dominating markets, how they're really sort of hurting the broader public.
And so now that that has occurred and they're not actually able to operate as freely as they were when they were like little tiny companies, when actually a lot of times they actually probably had pretty good social, you know, social and ecological values.
So when as soon as they get gigantic and monopolies, there's scrutiny on them.
And then, of course, they attack these people that have, that they have scrutiny on.
And I think, you know, it's so rich these, the way that both Mark Andreessen and Peter Thiel are the sort of in some ways the poster child of this, where, you know, they claim that intellectuals are bad, that, you know, these sort of sort of sophisticated ideas are bad, but they themselves dress up all of their talks with all these like abstract philosophers and ideas.
And so, you know, again, I think it's a big, you know, insecurity that they have that somehow their sort of, I don't know, you know, intellect or ideas are not sort of gaining, gaining as much traction.
So they, they attack intellectuals, but then try to be intellectuals themselves.
I mean, so it's, yeah, totally insane.
What strikes me is that these guys act just absolutely incensed and bewildered and offended that anyone could pretend to have more authority than them in any realm, not even just like material authority.
It's like they act like politicians act like they have some sort of political authority because they've been selected through some sort of political process.
That's that's offensive to them.
The idea that like, yeah, academics have some sort of intellectual authority or like progressive activists have some sort of moral authority.
It's like, well, obviously they act as like there's no way other people have more authority than them.
They have the ideas that made all the money.
So obviously they have the ultimate authority in all realms.
Right.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, that's, that's exactly what, you know, if you read these, you know, that Mark Andreessen techno-optimist manifesto, that's, that's the underlying message.
Yeah, it's like, they don't treat like, I guess, like technology or like, you know, I guess business as like one domain of humanity.
They activist is the prime domain that should rule over other all other domains.
Yeah.
And they, and obviously they've had this success in that.
And so, you know, this is, they should actually, you know, basically dominate society.
And this is not, you know, a new thing.
If you look even a lot of the philanthropy, which we, you know, we talked about earlier, the sort of models that Bill Gates has taken, you know, are from people like Rockefeller and Carnegie and many of the, you know, some of the people that sort of sank on the Titanic Jake.
I mean, these are folks that had the exact same ideology that, you know, we've accumulated all this money and we should have, you know, power over society, over governments in some cases.
And also like the issues that we care about, you know, building libraries or, you know, whatever are the things that should money should be spent on, not necessarily the money should be, you know, taken back, you know, and redistributed to the population in a way that is much more democratic.
I guess before I let you go, I was like, what if you could offer maybe some like notes of like optimism?
Because it seems like, you know, it seems to me like one point of this rhetoric is to like justify their just total domination in Olis.
It's like it seems the prime message is like, give us everything we want, impede us in no ways or else we're all dead.
It's like, I mean, again, this is this is the, this is the rhetoric of a cult leader.
But like, I mean, what's what exactly is, I guess, the, the path to escaping this vision that they say is optimist, but I, I find very dystopian.
It's not, I mean, we did do an episode on techno-optimism a long time ago.
And yeah, yeah, before, before, obviously, I'm, I'm a very big interrupter, uh, Chris, so I want to hear what you have to say, but but techno-optimism was not this.
This was not techno-optimism.
Techno-optimism was the belief that this would connect us, that this would actually like form a kind of almost like mycelium style network of human minds and inform us all in ways that would liberate us.
And now we're being fed this shit as techno-optimism.
Anyways, go ahead.
So you asked to be sort of like someone, I guess, positive, you know, to sort of come to the end.
And, you know, I think it's hard after, you know, all the things we've been talking about, but some of the things that I at least think about and try to help sort of move along.
I mean, fortunately, these guys are all very ham-handed, I think, in all their ideas.
This Antichrist thing of Peter Thiel or the techno-optimist, I can't imagine that anyone outside of their sort of cult or people that want to be with them read that and think this is like a legitimately, you know, reasonable, reasonable way to think.
Also, I think that people are getting really fed up with the levels of inequality, you know, in our world.
And it's clear that these guys' strategies are about exacerbating inequality.
And if you look at the New York mayoral race that's that's sort of undergoing right now, you know, all kinds of rich, you know, property developers have come out and donated to Andrew Cuomo's campaign, but people are still supporting Mandani, like, you know, incredibly, because they know that affordability and inequality are the key issues.
And Andrew Cuomo is not going to be the person that delivers on that, or Bill Ackman, who's supporting him, et cetera.
And then finally, I'll say, you know, we talked a little bit about the Gilded Age that that was followed by the progressive era.
And I think people got fed up with, you know, the labor conditions in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills and other sort of egregious human rights violations really on labor.
And so, you know, people stood up.
And I think that we're starting to see that with the No Kings rally, with the mayoral race in New York.
And so I am, you know, assuming we don't have a forever president in Donald Trump, I'm optimistic that the tide will turn against these oligarchs.
And I think, you know, one of the reasons why they're fighting so hard to maintain the status quo is because all these ideas that Jake mentioned that Mark Andreessen is against.
I mean, there are starting to be serious critiques of their power and influence.
So anyways, I'm guardedly optimistic.
Yeah, there are more of us than them.
And the people are pissed off.
And I think most of us are, you know, we're still laughing at the kings, right?
You know, we're making fun of the people who are sycophants.
And I have felt the same way, Chris, about this New York mayoral race, is it feels like on whole, people are fed up with how far the gap or how far the wedge has been driven economically between, you know, these various classes.
And so I just, I always kind of like, I guess, keep my eye on the larger picture.
And that's, that's where, and I, of course, I don't want to take away from any kind of optimism.
I'm a huge Mamdani guy, you know, obviously, I think that the depravity of his opposition is just so, so clear.
And just the reliance on hatred and internecine and kind of ethnic separation, you know, like these are, these are depraved people and they're showing their ass entirely to use common parlance.
But I will say that we are in the imperial core.
We are dealing with a country where it's like, yes, it would be great to have a great mayor in New York City that cared about like, you know, people being able to afford the subway.
But we're talking about a thousand military bases.
We're talking about a dollar-centric economic system.
We're talking about so many institutions.
And, you know, you mentioned earlier USAID.
As much as I know that withdrawing USAID funds is directly impacting people, we are still talking about essentially like the kind of band-aid that was applied to kind of soothe the imperial, I guess, wound, the wound of the spear that, you know, is drawing blood and continues to draw blood.
You know, I think of that Lancet study that stated that about half a million people die every year from just the financial sanctions and embargoes and things like that.
So yes, like, and again, I'm not trying to be a doomer.
I'm just looking at the larger picture and saying there's a larger system that needs to be dismantled right now.
And we need to face that as well.
Like, of course, it's like the people, yeah, the people are going to rise, like no kings.
Great, great.
Can we at least inform the American people that they've been running the largest empire on earth?
Can we inform them that even if you want to look at authoritarianism in Russia and China, that they both have at the most outrageous, outrageously high estimate, 20 bases of the US?
No, Julian, no, there's too many mirrors in here.
I know.
It's tough.
I know it's tough, folks.
Like, I just think, and again, I like incremental progress.
I fucking love it.
I think it's really important.
I really think that if Mamdani wins, it's a big fucking deal.
But I also want to just remind people that most in the world are living in the utmost poverty.
They're being exploited in ways that are unimaginable for the average human being.
It's not about whether they get consciousness about, you know, like their local mayoral race.
I don't know.
I guess I just wanted to add that in and just kind of like give a little bit more depth to a more global perspective on this and the fact that these men that we're discussing are demons.
I don't know how else to describe it.
I mean, no, of course, I'm not a religious person, so I don't think that's right.
But if they want to be religious now, if suddenly they think that atheism is not the right way to see it, great.
You know what, guys?
You're actually demons.
Yeah.
And Julian's Constantine.
Like, you are.
You are like the satanic order.
And so, so, yeah, go fuck yourself to these men.
That's all I have to say.
And I guess, well, that's not all I have to say.
I'm sure I could go on forever because I'm really annoying about this shit.
But I just, I just, I just like have a lot of compassion for people who might be listening to this conversation and going, what the fuck?
Like, you're not even close to addressing my issues.
And I think that global poverty and inequality is at levels that are fucking outrageous.
Like you said, you know, it's like it makes monarchy look like friendly.
So yeah, no, I really appreciate this conversation and I think it's a really important, important one.
And I do, I do want people to not feel discouraged.
I think that tides do shift.
And I think that eventually humanity is, I think, like, I guess, on its way to realizing that working together is the only way and that not seeing ourselves as like atomized individuals is the only way that we can possibly build a better future.
We need to think of ourselves as a mass.
We need to think of ourselves as a common mind, a common soul.
So many like conspiracy theories and the people that are deep in those communities are fantasizing about just that.
Like it's something that I think human beings naturally want.
Where we go and we go all.
Like that is, I know it's a QAnon saying, but it's like, it's true.
Except the guy who's eating steaks in fucking Florida, like thinks that means like him and Trump and his friends are in it together.
He just, he maybe should think about like the Nicaraguan like peasant.
That's all I'm saying.
I mean, one thing that does make me kind of optimistic, just the fact that Greta Thunberg made Teal so paranoid.
He accused her of being possibly the Antichrist.
Oh, that's so cool because she got dragged, literally got dragged around and like forced to kiss the Israeli flag.
Like she, she was like beaten and they were like, oh, fake news, fake news.
Insane.
I just, I just think it's pretty extraordinary.
Someone like Teal, who has everything, tens of billions of dollars.
No, he's terrified.
Yeah.
And then like a hand in like some company, some very frightening companies that are like expanding the surveillance state.
He has his allies in power.
I like, it feels like civilizationally, everything is stacked in his favor.
Yet somehow one young, very fixated woman is able to get under his skin to that degree.
She's so fucking cool.
I would love to just like sit here and say, hey, Greta, incredible.
You're in the mouth of these demons.
They have to mention you somehow.
And the braveness, like the fact that that human spirit like still exists is so fucking beautiful to me.
It makes me a little bit hopeful for the future.
And no matter how many times they drag you around and make you kiss the flag of the oppressor, no matter how many times they make you, you know, they torture you because that is what happens.
That's what happened to Mandela.
That's what happened to every fucking person who tried to stand up for a little bit better world.
So yeah, I don't know.
If you want to get married anytime, I'm going to get a different, but that's all right.
What are you guys talking about?
This is a dating app.
Hello, Greta.
I have a lot of, I have a lot of positive.
Listen, I have some problems.
I have some, I'm not going to lie.
I have some issues.
I don't.
She is 22 years old, you old man.
What do you mean?
I'm 25.
Maybe in your mind.
Yeah.
Okay.
No, that's true.
Yeah.
That's okay.
This is, do you think there's anything else that people should like, you know, kind of like think about like, you know, the, I guess, the political agenda of these, these tech oligarchs before it lets you go?
Yeah.
I mean, I think we, we, we sort of covered most of it.
I mean, I do think, I mean, I think that the contrast with Greta Thunberg, you know, is really, you know, insightful way to think about this.
Like, why is that such a threat to Peter Thiel?
And I think, you know, Trump talks about her as well.
And I think, you know, the little minor concerns, you know, so-called minor concerns that many of these folks have, I think really reveals, you know, in some ways the weakness that they have.
And so I think, yeah, as we're sort of in some ways organizing against them, I mean, I think keeping those weaknesses in mind is really important.
I just hope that those weaknesses and that fear translates to any kind of shift in like the power structures because, you know, it's like, obviously, the Nazi leader is going to feel like the spokesperson for the ghetto is a threat.
Did that change in any meaningful way the outcome of that situation?
No.
And I want it to.
I want it to so desperately.
And I think we need more Gretas.
We need to all honestly, I mean, it's like, I don't want to become like the Charlie Chaplin fucking speech, but we need to lay our bodies on the fucking cogs.
We need to, there's just no choice anymore.
And by that, I mean we need to all right.
Okay.
All right.
I think we're going to take it out from here.
So we've been speaking to Christopher Marquis.
I'm going to link to your Jacobin articles in the show notes, but where else can people find your work?
Yeah.
So they can find my, I have a website, my name, ChrisMarquis.com.
I have a recent book called The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Costs that resonates quite a bit with our discussion.
Folks should take a look at.
Fantastic.
Very talented.
Yeah.
I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Sorry for being, you know, myself.
Yeah, thanks so much for taking your time.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you.
Yeah, me too.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the QA podcast.
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Listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you.
Can we just interject for a second?
Also, Jake, of course, don't forget cursedmedia.net.
This is where you can sign up for our mini-series.
We have a great new mini-series coming called Truly Tradley Deeply by Annie Kelly and another Kelly, Megan Kelly.
I'm trying not to think this is a conspiracy against me, but they are going to be covering some of these fascinating topics.
And, you know, obviously, if you're not a supporter of women, don't sign up.
But if you are, like, you should be studying what?
If you are, you should be studying these movements and not listening to just a bunch of guys like us and Jake, specifically Jake and Travis.
Specifically at me.
Really, if you don't sign up to Curse Media, civilization is at risk.
So actually.
CursedMedia.net.
And then we also just released a ton of bonus content for the original series that we released, which is Liv Agar and Spencer Barrows.
They covered, obviously, the trans medicine, the early trans medicine and the kind of creation of the trans identity in the medical community and how that was treated along the eras.
Lots of new stuff.
We have tons of interviews, tons of bonus material, an epilogue for the entire series.
So go sign up.
You'll get access to the old series as well.
You know, we're going to keep building this platform and we're going to keep building, you know, I guess, independent voices that matter.
So just like Chris, which, by the way, we called him Marquis.
Turns out he calls himself Marquis, but he was just so nice and so friendly that he didn't mention it.
But either way, however you call Chris, go check out his stuff.
Please.
Yeah, go check out his work, please.
Okay, and listener, for real this time.
Until next week, may the deep fish bless you and keep you.
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My very specific question for you, right, is that you're an investor in AI.
You're deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance, in technologies of warfare and so on, right?
And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to sort of impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you were building, right?
Like, wouldn't the Antichrist be like, great, you know, we're not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far, right?
I mean, isn't that, isn't that a concern?
Wouldn't that be the, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?
They're all, look, there are all these different scenarios.
I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing.
I, uh, I mean, to be clear, I don't think that's what you're doing either.
I'm just interested in how you get to a world willing to submit to permanent authoritarian rule.
Well, but again, there are these different gradations of this we can describe, but is this so preposterous, what I've just told you, as a broad account of the stagnation that the entire world has submitted for 50 years to peace and safetyism?
