Techno-autocrats are moving into politics
This piece by Cheryl Rofer addresses the weird fact of Elon Musk’s entry into the discussion about Ukraine and Russia which I find somewhat terrifying. Who do these autocrats think they are?
Elon Musk, like many of his venture capital brothers, has decided to enter the discussion. His tweeted proposal of a peace agreement on October 3 repeated Russian conditions. Since then, he has blathered about the will of the people in the occupied areas (which he got stunningly wrong from stunningly inappropriate evidence) and introduced a new perfume. He has also threatened to turn off Starlink communications, which have greatly helped the Ukrainians. His proposal:
Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.
Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).
Water supply to Crimea assured.
Ukraine remains neutral.
In between, there was a kerfuffle with Ian Bremmer over whether Musk had talked to Putin before he proposed this plan. Musk says he didn’t, but 1783, “Khrushchev’s mistake,” and the water supply to Crimea are oddly specific and oddly Russian.
Like many of the venture capitalists who are opining about the war, after a run of erroneous opining about epidemiology and virology because their money means they must be Smart People™, Musk doesn’t bother to look into what his conditions would require.
Rob Farley ticked off in our podcast a long list of what is needed to have fair elections in the annexed regions, all of which would have to be negotiated. It would probably take years. As would the rest.
The CNN article that broke the story about Musk’s demands attempts to figure what Musk is paying for it. It’s not clear. The article also raises the question of whether we are seeing Musk’s pique at the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany’s telling him to fuck off with the peace proposal. Others have asked whether this has something to do with Musk’s inability to raise the money needed to buy Twitter. Or if Musk’s generous initial provision of Starlink services to Ukraine was a bait and switch.
The incident also raises the question of whether an unstable and autocratic individual should have control of essential government and public functions, including Twitter. Ronald Reagan started a trend to “privatize” government services. It’s one thing if the cafeteria goes to crap under an outside contractor who is skimming profit that used to go to providing good food, and another if Elon Musk threatens to cut off defense services. Maybe it’s time to start turning back to government control of government services.
How about this guy, his former partner:
Peter Thiel is far from the first billionaire who has wielded his fortune to try to influence the course of American politics. But in an election year when democracy itself is said to be on the ballot, he stands out for assailing a longstanding governing system that he has described as “deranged” and in urgent need of “course correction”.
The German-born investor and tech entrepreneur, a Silicon Valley “disrupter” who helped found PayPal alongside Elon Musk and made his fortune as one of the earliest investors in Facebook, has catapulted himself into the top ranks of the mega-donor class by pouring close to $30m into this year’s midterm elections.
He’s not merely favoring one party over another, but is supporting candidates who deny the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as president and have, in their different ways, called for the pillars of the American establishment to be toppled entirely.
Thiel’s priorities this midterm cycle have partly aligned with those of Donald Trump, with whom he has had an on-again, off-again relationship since writing him a $1.25m check during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Thiel, like Trump, has made it his business to end the careers of what he calls “the traitorous 10”, Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump in the wake of the January 6 insurrection. Four of these members opted not to run for re-election at all, and four more, including Liz Cheney, the vice-chair of the House committee investigating January 6, went down in the primaries.
But there are also signs that Thiel is thinking around and beyond the former president. The lion’s share of his largesse – $28m and counting – has been directed towards two business proteges who, with his help, have established themselves as gadfly rightwing darlings: JD Vance, the best-selling author of the blue-collar memoir Hillbilly Elegy, who is running for Senate in Ohio, and Blake Masters, a self-styled “anti-progressive” and anti-globalist who is running for Senate in Arizona.
Over the past decade, ever since the supreme court dramatically loosened the rules of political campaign giving in its Citizens United decision, Thiel has placed sizable bets on candidates who are not only conservative but have sought to challenge longstanding institutional traditions and break the Republican party’s own norms: Senator Ted Cruz in Texas and Senator Josh Hawley in Missouri as well as Trump himself.
Masters, who has campaigned on the notion that “psychopaths are running the country right now” and spoken approvingly of the anti-establishment philosophy of the 1990s Unabomber, and Vance, a frequent speaker on the university circuit during his book tour days who now says “universities are the enemy”, fit the same mould. They and Thiel all have ties to a branch of the New Right known as NatCon, whose adherents believe, broadly, that the establishment needs to be torn down, much as Thiel and his fellow Silicon Valley disrupters believed two decades ago that the future lay in destroying longstanding business models and practices.
Thiel himself opined as far back as 2009 that he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom and expressed “little hope that voting will make things better”. While a member of Trump’s presidential transition team in 2016, he flashed his institution-busting instincts by proposing that a leading climate change skeptic, William Happer, be appointed as White House science adviser. He also pushed for a libertarian bitcoin entrepreneur who did not believe in drug trials to head up the Food and Drug Administration.
Such proposals were too much even by Trump’s iconoclastic standards. Steve Bannon, Trump’s ultra-right campaign manager and political strategist, told a Thiel biographer: “Peter’s idea of disrupting government is out there.”
Thiel did not respond to a request for an interview, and his representatives did not respond to multiple invitations to comment.
Masters and Vance also did not respond to inquiries.
These techno-robber barons are even more arrogant than the originals. They all believe they are renaissance men, real Leonardo DaVincis, geniuses in every way. They are not. They have talents, to be sure. But these tech dudes are very one dimensional, almost puerile about everything else. God help this world if they represent our new leadership.