Gilded rage Elon Musk and the radicalization of Silicon Valley

In this incisive account, journalist Silverman (Terms of Service) tracks the rise of reactionary conservative politics among Silicon Valley billionaires, culminating with their enthusiastic support of Trump's 2024 reelection bid. Silverman traces how the likes of Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Peter Thiel spent the presidential campaign and its lead-up spreading "wackily conspiratorial" views on finance, deregulation, and anti-woke ideology, and installed one of their own--former venture capitalist JD Vance--in the vice presidency. The author delineates the contradictions in these figures' positions--they are libertarians who support the military industrial complex and free-speech warriors who help foreign governments surveil dissidents--and covers well-known incidents like the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX and Elon Musk's Twitter takeover. But the book's most fascinating segments focus on local San Francisco stories that reveal the power amassed by Silicon Valley elites; these include venture capitalist David Sacks's overweening participation in several recall campaigns and the bizarre venture capital--funded "California Forever" project, which aims to transform local farmland into "an entirely new city" and whose leaders have been suing landowners who won't sell. Silverman persuasively lays out how Silicon Valley found in Trump both a mirror image of their own pseudo-populist resentments and a politician who was willing to reconsider policy for a price (Silverman cites Trump's sudden shift on crypto). The result is an ominous window into the extremism, accelerationism, and "fusion of corporate and state power" at the highest levels of U.S. politics. (Oct.)

Financial reporter Silverman digs deep into why the richest part of wealthy California has swung to the extreme right. There was a time when Elon Musk threw his money behind progressive candidates, when, supporting LGBTQ+ equality, he said, "People should be free to live their lives where their heart takes them." That was before Democrats and progressives began talking about taxing the rich, anathema to the rich, of course, and after 2022 Musk threw himself far to the right, "his public persona utterly transformed," now opposed to transgender people (including one of his children), undocumented immigrants, and wokeness in general. Just so, the less visible David Sacks put money into Gavin Newsom's gubernatorial race, but then suddenly jolted to the right, funding a recall election. Some of the fascination with the right has to do with Silicon Valley's commitment to disrupting things, whether moribund industries or government; but then, Silverman writes, Silicon Valley has always had its share of people on the far right, such as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who's been all in for Trump to the extent that he bought into the movement to overturn the 2020 election results. The rightist movement, Silverman notes in a cogent argument, has been freshly awash in new money from the likes of Peter Thiel and a bunch of Saudi princes; it has used those funds to boost the MAGA movement and Trumpism in various ways, but it has also bought its way into government through defense-industry contracts, DOGE, and outright bribes, all with an eye to deregulating, undoing the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice, and liberating supporters from the burden of having to pay their fair share. It makes for an ugly picture altogether, with a decided undercurrent of despair about our "rut of societal stagnation, decline, corruption, and mistrust." A book that should trouble your dreams. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.