how the tech oligarchs are ruining their own grand plans for the future
Before we worry about artificial intelligence, we should really tackle natural stupidity.
One of the things with which I've struggled over the past year is figuring out exactly why the tech broligarchs threw their support to the MAGA movement. Yes, yes, I get the desire to have no regulations, easy money with low interest rates, and tax cuts so they can bring about their inept techno-feudalist cyberpunk dystopia on our heads. I would stop right there if it wasn't for one huge complication that I really don't believe they've thought through when it comes to the people they've backed.
Remember that first and foremost, they don't think like you and me. They have grand, borderline ridiculous ambitions which include conquering the solar system and living forever as digital gods in the distributed cloud thanks to super-AI. They do not give a crap about things like patriotism, or egg prices, or the debt, or any of those issues on which Trump claimed to be running. In their minds, those are pedestrian worries left to mere mortals at whom Peter Thiel scoffs in podcasts.
No, they have an AI police state to build and a galaxy to conquer and colonize. Well, at least Mars. Kinda. Sorta. Maybe not Mars because of AI space wokeness. You get the idea. Or at least I thought I got the idea until I saw their support for appointing RFK Jr., the living embodiment of the Chaos plague god Nurgle, as the head of the HHS, with not a single peep from them as he carries out his anti-vaccine crusade and makes us all more vulnerable to the next pandemic.
Meanwhile, they stood by as DOGE recommended monstrous, extinction-level budget cuts to NASA and the NSF, and are actively cheering vendettas against colleges while decrying diversity and immigration. They also seem unperturbed as health datasets in the public domain are being stealthily altered in obvious bids to boost quack theories the NIH is now being forced to defend while our ability to prevent satellite collisions is on the chopping block even as they try to launch massive orbital constellations which need a clean orbit free of as much debris as possible.
For every one of their stated goals, they need NASA, health agencies that are not ran by malicious morons selling snake oil, and tremendous funding for scientific programs which are usually ran by — yes, you guessed it — colleges, on top of renewables and a robust research program into fusion power and beyond. Without all of this, forget ever settling the galaxy. They'll be lucky to live to 75, choking on clouds of toxic fog and in constant fear of cuts and scrapes as superbugs overwhelm modern medicine.
Supposedly, these are some of the smartest people in the world. Or, at least, this was the mainstream take on them for decades. How could geniuses not realize they're not just hurting themselves, they are full on demanding to kick themselves in the genitals harder in the ridiculous group chats in which they spend their days, patting each other on the back for the most absurd, simplistic, and whiniest opinions?
They have extraordinary wealth, luck, and power, and believe our economic system is basically doomed when computers and robots reach a certain point so we will have to remake ourselves as a species to progress in the aftermath. Which, to be fair and give credit where it's due, I think is spot on. I would disagree on the timeline and how we'd go about it, but the direction is solid. And yet, these grandiose visions appear to be all talk from people otherwise stuck in a universe of petty obsessions and grievances.
As is typical of cyberpunk dystopias from which their attempts at a coherent ideology were yoinked by Curtis Yarvin, we have a dichotomy. Regressing culture vs. scientific, technological, and economic accelerationism. Except they couldn't get the latter part right and only brought us cultural and political regression while relying on their LLMs for scientific and technical breakthroughs. You know, the things that are known to just make up entire novels worth of bullshit, or turn into both angry Nazis and lewd anime waifus at the same time.
But maybe that does make sense. For many of them, their full time job is to sell what we call vaporware in tech, then hope the experts they have to hire can make it work quickly enough to make a profit. With chat bots and decades of patting each other on the back in their echo chambers, they're probably convinced they don't need us to be the revolutionary geniuses they imagine themselves to be now, and if they make a big enough of a mess, someone will eventually fix it. That's how it's always worked before, right? What could they possibly break that couldn't be put together again?
