Innovators and Cranks
The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion (Published 2025)
The Rationalists, a community focused on the risks of artificial intelligence, regularly gather with tech figures and other like-minded people in a complex that covers much of a city block.
‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley
The industry’s liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies – celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity – have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990s
‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley
The industry’s liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies – celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity – have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990s
Tech's right turn : the rise of reactionary politics in Silicon Valley and online
This dissertation shows how a group of conservative activists helped shape Silicon Valley and its digital technologies in the 1980s and 1990s. Operating primarily within a loose network of think ta...
An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption
Three recent books challenge the tech industry's myths of self-reliance and prescience.
When Silicon Valley’s AI warriors came to Washington
Effective altruism is increasingly described as a cult. But as the movement’s billionaire adherents pour money into D.C., its obsession with the AI apocalypse is remaking the capital’s tech policy landscape.
The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn | Washington Spectator
For decades, the conventional wisdom about Silicon Valley was that it leaned progressive. And by many measures (like donations by Big Tech employees to…
Silicon Valley’s Politics: Liberal, With One Big Exception (Published 2017)
A new Stanford study found that the nation’s tech elite are extremely liberal on most issues — except when it comes to regulation.
A forty-year career.
The Silicon Valley narrative centers on entrepreneurial protagonists who are poised one predestined step away from changing the world. A decade ago they were heroes, and more recently they’ve become villains, but either way they are absolutely the protagonists. Working within the industry, I’ve worked with quite a few non-protagonists who experience their time in technology differently: a period of obligatory toil required to pry open the gate to the American Dream.
Effective obfuscation
Silicon Valley's "effective altruism" and "effective accelerationism" only give a thin philosophical veneer to the industry's same old impulses.
Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem | Aeon Essays
Tech titans claim the genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future
Silicon Valley’s worldview is not just an ideology; it’s a personality disorder.
Silicon Valley’s ideology is this: Libertarianism for me. Feudalism for thee.
Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?
During the 1980s and 1990s, networks of evangelists and venture capitalists fused technological boosterism with reactionary social ideals. Our video of the week examines the deep roots of Silicon Valley's shift toward the right. Featuring @beccalew.bsky.social at @westernu.ca buff.ly/ydgntnc
Rationalist Cults
Articles on rationalist-adjacent cults: the Zizians, Leverage Research, and the darker outgrowths of the rationalist / LessWrong-derived / Aella polycule scene that is behind "AI Safety" in Silicon Valley. Working thesis: MIRI and CFAR read as high-control groups (cults) who believe in P(DOOM) and use sex (and power) maliciously — yet they are unfortunately the ones who have captured the framing of "AI Safety," which has little to do with actual safety.
The Effective Altruism Kids Aren’t Alright
My Experience with Leverage Research
What Policymakers and the Public Need to Know About the Cult of AI
banteg (@banteg)
The Techno-Religion at the Center of the A.I. Debate
SE Gyges (@segyges.bsky.social)
