Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, has a solid Valley pedigree: He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, founded multiple startups, became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. In 2013, a New York Times story headlined āSilicon Valley Roused by Secession Callā described a speech in which he ātold a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become āthe Microsoft of nationsā: outdated and obsolescent.ā
āThe speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,ā reported the Times. Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, but his prophecies sometimes fall short. Last year, he lost one million dollars in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.
Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. Garry Tanāthe current Y Combinator CEO whoās attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Franciscoāparticipated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting ādie slow motherfuckersā at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in āmoderateā politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.
What Iām really calling for is something like tech Zionism,ā he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (āspiritual fatherā of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in gray t-shirts. āAnd if you see another Gray on the streetā¦you do the nod,ā he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. āYouāre a fellow Gray.ā
The Graysā shirts would feature āBitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos ā¦ Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.ā Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly āpolicemanās banquetsā to win them over.
āGrays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,ā said Srinivasan. āWhat does that mean? Thatās, as I said, banquets. That means every policemanās son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.ā
In exchange for extra food and jobs, cops would pledge loyalty to the Grays. Srinivasan recommends asking officers a series of questions to ascertain their political leanings. For example: āDid you want to take the sign off of Elonās building?ā
This refers to the August 2023 incident in which Elon Musk illegally installed a large flashing X logo atop Twitter headquarters, in violation of building safety codes. City inspectors forced him to remove it. This was the second time Musk had run afoul of the city in his desire to refurbish his headquarters: In July, police briefly halted his attempt to pry the āTwitterā signage from the buildingās exterior. But in Balajiās dystopia, he implies that officers loyal to the Grays would let Musk do as he pleases (democratically-inclined officers, he suggests, can be paid to retire).
Simply put, there is a ton of fascist-chic cosplay involved. Once an officer joins the Grays, they get a special uniform designed by their tech overlords. The Grays will also donate heavily to police charities and āmerge the Gray and police social networks.ā Then, in a show of force, theyāll march through the city together.
Profits are gained often times at the expense of the workers, as seen in the recent push for profitability in the wake of interest rate hikes which has resulted in mass layoffs across the industry. These layoffs also have a double effect of flooding the job market depressing wages and allowing employers to further exploit their workers with the threat of casting them into the quagmire of unemployment. In this sense companies thrive off the economic insecurity of there workers as the more your afraid to lose your job, the less youāll complain about ungodly hours or not getting a raise to keep up with inflation.
This threat is less scary for higher paid wealthier workers like yourself who may have the savings to sustain a bout of unemployment, but for lower paid, poorer or even higher paid people with higher obligations like a mortgage, child care, medical expenses etc. this threat is big.
This is why this techno-fascist ideology is so horrible, its stability relies on casting out the undesirables and unproductive and using the threat of being pushed out to enforce conformity. Like all fascism it sounds great if your part of the in group, but once the new bar is set and your cast out youāll realize the tyranny that the system perpetuates.