In a recent interview, cryptocurrency venture capitalist and author Balaji Srinivasan argued for a new typology in American politics.
“Just calling it ‘tech right’—yes, we are focusing on the fact that it is to the capitalist, progress right of the […] Democrats today. But, after this election, it is quite possible it will be to the internationalist left of the Republicans tomorrow.”
He was speaking about the increasingly distinct influence of Silicon Valley tech figures, many surrounding Peter Thiel, on American politics in general and American conservative politics in particular. But Srinivasan wasn’t describing “tech” like one right-wing interest group or internal faction among others. Instead, it was a free-floating cause, a political identity of its own, with its own goals and history. He said of its roots,
“lots of tech people were attacked in [San Francisco] by crazy people on the streets that Democrats released. Another part is BLM burning things down. Another thing is seeing the internet censorship. There are many drivers. I’m certainly not—it’s not monofactorial. It’s a combination of Democrats doing a terrible job, overall decline […] preexisting people who were on the right but who were also on the internationalist left, and this counter-elite emerging.”
Indeed, in his conception, the cause of “tech” wasn’t coherently left or right. Counter-elite was a more durable moniker. This new tech movement was born in response to the failures of institutions in US society; it was pushed by figures who found courts, governmental science agencies, journalism, and universities to be hollow bodies for spawning and consuming credentials. Tech renegades, in contrast, sought innovation and creation unbridled by the superstitions of prestige and the stodgy sensibilities of self-affirming, homogenizing bureaucracies. Progress—a meaningful career and a meaningful life—entailed detaching oneself from official society, stealing away to a lawless frontier, and finding something new.
And now, years after watershed moments like the alleged postwar slumber of American innovation and the opening up of the internet in 1991, the tech counter-elite is ascendant. It bolstered a successful US presidential candidate (in the form of Peter Thiel’s support for Donald Trump in 2016) and more directly produced the current Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, JD Vance. Vance first met Thiel in 2011, after a speech the latter gave at Yale Law School, where Vance was a student. The aspirant of the Vice Presidency called this interaction “the most significant moment of my time at Yale Law School.” Vance was so inspired by Thiel that he made a career pivot and went to work for the venture capital firm that Thiel cofounded, Mithril Capital.
Years after watershed moments like the alleged postwar slumber of American innovation and the opening up of the internet in 1991, the tech counter-elite is ascendant.
Interest or Ideology?
This movement isn’t synonymous with the tech industry, nor do its ambassadors reside primarily in Silicon Valley. Its hotspots also include Austin, TX, El Segundo, CA, Nashville, TN, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Peter Thiel is legitimately regarded as a focal point of a network linking most of its prominent personalities, though others like Netscape co-founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreesen play a distinguished role in the creation and popularizing of its intellectual and expressive codes among a larger, mainly online audience.
Were we to listen to public statements of the actors themselves, we might think their support for Trump is but a banal lobbying initiative; that renegade tech is supporting Trump only because he is more friendly to crypto-currencies, because he may put tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, and because of his hostility toward the progressive identity politics that these tech figures see as, at best, a distraction. As sitting Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg put it to T.V. host Bill Maher this way: “We’ve made it way too complicated. It’s super simple: these are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican Party that tends to do good things for very rich men.”
Indeed, there is nothing new about an economic sector operating as a discrete political force; nothing new, even, about membership in a particular industry serving as a banner for a wider political identity. Workers, farmers, merchants, and teachers’ parties dotted the European political landscape during the 1900s (and in some places continue to today), each with a platform that extended beyond the narrow concerns of industry and profession.
Some of the current tech actors trace their origins to the futurists of the early 1900s and their boldly anti-nostalgic, anti-sentimental, and anti-collectivist vision.
Yet some of the current tech actors trace their origins to the mobilization of, if not technologists per se, then the futurists of the early 1900s and their boldly anti-nostalgic, anti-sentimental, and anti-collectivist vision for the future. Marc Andreesen, for example, obscurely cites the Italian Filippo Marinetti in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto—Marinetti being in part radical anarchist, in part fascist artist who called for a rejection of tradition and the emancipation of the individual from institutions.
Like the futurists of the past, the new tech operatives are turning toward the political right despite a great deal of right-left ambiguity in their ideological profile. Some of their values appear plainly progressive liberal. Whether it comes from a romantic vision of finding and pursuing frontiers, or a free-market call for states to compete with each other for citizens, they seek a world of mobilized individuals whose membership in political communities is contingent. Contingent, that is, on the opportunities afforded (or surrendered, they might say) by the state. This is no agenda of nationalism; not the place for loyalty to history or to origins.
Nor is there any inherent mandate for politics to be organized around collective will. If new tech is left-wing in its embrace of freedom of movement and association, we see its reactionary credentials in its relative disinterest in equality and democracy. Following on the ideas of Albert O. Hirschman, they aspire to a world that doesn’t so much sanctify the right to “voice” as much as it does the right to “exit.” And indeed, if we look at the lives of the main actors in this world, they strive, not to destroy democracy—as their more amplified opponents might claim—so much as to outflank and escape it.
Marinetti came to embrace an anti-democratic ideal for a future society run in part by an elite of intellectuals and artists. For him, the cause of liberating the creative capabilities of the individual from the yoke of tradition and institutionalization would produce a distinction and hierarchical ordering that ought to manifest in the worlds of both aesthetics and of governance. Such an explicit anti-egalitarian political vision is absent among the new tech thinkers today, and it could be at variance with their yearnings for decentralization. But it is implicit in the ways they talk about IQ differences and in their conspicuous eschewing the of language of equality and equity that is otherwise essential to so much contemporary political discourse.
The Metaphysics of Renegade Tech
My casual impression is that it is a powerful cause, too, and I believe this is for two linked reasons. First, as Marry Harrington argued, renegade tech stands out within the wider landscape of political commentary for its optimism. Whereas nostalgia grips the populist right and the liberal forces mourning the populist right’s undeniable intrusion into their history, the anti-nostalgia of the tech world stands out as an exhilarating and rare assertion of hope. For an indication of how exceptional this is in our politics, look at the way the 2024 Harris/Walz campaign treats its erstwhile banner message of “joy” like a novelty.
Second, the movement’s intellectuals are attempting to articulate a more comprehensive metaphysics for their cause, to make it about more than economics and machines. Without doubt, the most memorable lines in Marc Andreesen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto were not about regulation or frustration with the rate of innovation, but instead these: “We believe in the romance of technology, of industry. The eros of the train, the car, the electric light, the skyscraper. And the microchip, the neural network, the rocket, the split atom.” To say that the cause of tech might not only make us wealthier, not only make performing our material tasks easier and more efficient, but also provide experiences of beauty and the sublime—to say such things is to extend the cause beyond that of an industry lobby group.
The movement’s intellectuals are attempting to articulate a more comprehensive metaphysics for their cause, to make it about more than economics and machines…they transform the venture capitalist, the innovator, and the tech CEO from soulless mercenaries into players in a cosmic battle for good and evil.
And it is just one of multiple conversations aspiring to equate the cause of tech with the broader cause of humanity. Networks surrounding Peter Theil have birthed a small, but growing intellectual production focused on discussing and writing about what I am calling technopolitical theology, about the ways that our political life and the course of technological innovation interact with concepts from theology, that of Christianity in particular. While this has for the past years been my primary focus of research, and although that research is ongoing, I can say that its focus is more often than not on the various actors and stages operating in what Gorgio Agamben, building off of Walter Benjamin, calls messianic time; that is to say Christ, the Antichrist, the katechon, and the apocalypse—sometimes as actually existing entities, other times as metaphors (divinely or humanly-inspired) conveying real insight about history and society. The narratives themselves often portray technologists as saviors and demons, depending on how their products contribute to processes of governmental centralization and the cataclysm prophesized to anticipate the Second Coming of Christ and the End Times. While the ideas themselves deserve careful analysis and consideration, so too does the social work they may accomplish. For they transform the venture capitalist, the innovator, and the tech CEO from soulless mercenaries into players in a cosmic battle for good and evil.
The Heart of the Matter
What’s at stake in all this is not whether the ideas and expressions of this world could become popular. They derive from and speak to a narrow demographic, riffing on concerns that could hardly be regarded as common or practical. And there is likely little internal incentive to change that: after all, a cause envisioning a future beyond democratic, electoral politics has less reason to endure itself to the masses.
No, what matters is that these thinkers are showing sensitivity to the importance of narrative and meaning in our social and political lives. They know that a cause focused crudely on the production of things could not possibly lay claim to the future; it would fail to inspire the action and audacity to seek change. And so, they seek a message that appeals to the heart, knowing, perhaps, that the primary audience for these messages is themselves.
Benjamin Teitelbaum is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology and International Affairs at the University of Colorado Boulder. His interests include music and politics, ideology and aesthetics, Western esotericism, political theology, research ethics, and Scandinavian traditional music and folklore. He is currently working on a project concerning ideology and theology in the tech world.
Image made by John Chrobak using “Peter Thiel (51875325807),” by Gage Skidmore licensed under CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.
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