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.
‘Think Everybody Dead’: How the Threat of AI Is Fueling a New Political Alliance
A billionaire-backed movement from Silicon Valley and populists like Bernie Sanders are eager to stop an AI disaster — but can they overcome their mutual distrust and work together?
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.
Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Why You Hate AI
Technology leaders don’t seem to understand society’s gripes about AI, but boy, are they posting through it.
How a billionaire-backed network of AI advisers took over Washington
A sprawling network spread across Congress, federal agencies and think tanks is pushing policymakers to put AI apocalypse at the top of the agenda — potentially boxing out other worries and benefiting top AI companies with ties to the network.
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 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
The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites
I recently re-read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and now every time a reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire opens his mouth, I think about it. So I wrote about it for The Nation. Here's the column: On Instagram, there’s an activist named Brian Patrick (@pano.
‘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...
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.
The Biggest Pro-AI Super PAC Network Has Poured Millions Into Nevada Shell Companies
Backed by Silicon Valley titans, Leading the Future has raised huge sums to promote pro-AI candidates on both side of the aisle.
Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
We asked a group of writers to consider the forces that have shaped our lives in 2017. Here, science fiction writer Ted Chiang looks at capitalism, Silicon Valley, and its fear of superintelligent AI.
Don’t Believe the Hype — or Doom — About AI
For America’s VC-dominated tech industry, AI hype isn’t just a crazy by-product — it’s a structural part of the US economy in which capital tries to write our destinies. We shouldn’t let it.
