Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

by Jacob Silverman

Bloomsbury presents Gilded Rage written and read by Jacob Silverman

A searing insight into the political radicalization of Silicon Valley, from Elon Musk to Peter Thiel, JD Vance and Donald Trump, and how it will affect the future of all our lives.

From the pursuit of potentially apocalyptic artificial intelligence to life-extension start-ups that promise billionaires eternal youth and those who encourage the political far right around the world, the Silicon Valley techno-utopian dream has curdled. The global innovator class has the world in their hands, but they can't stand the touch.

In Gilded Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, New York Times bestselling author Jacob Silverman leads us on a critical investigation into the radicalization of Silicon Valley and the billionaires that increasingly run our lives, shape the global economy, and support Donald Trump.

At the center of this book lies Elon Musk, but this is about more than just one man and his obsession with the "woke mind virus", as Silverman reveals a network of tech and finance oligarchs, emboldened by the zero-interest rate years, now using their wealth to exert an increasingly radical political program.

Transiting San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Austin and Miami, New York, Washington DC, and various global capitals of tech, finance, and political power, Silverman talks to the people who are already living with the real-life consequences of the political revolution underway. It's a bizarre, sometimes frightening, darkly humorous world where moguls preach populist revolt while dismantling the few remaining checks on their influence.

Gilded Rage offers essential reporting and insight for anyone who wants to know what's happening to Silicon Valley. As the erratic influence of tech elites continues to spread around the world, the story that Jacob has to tell will have a profound relevance for us all.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Technology, Economics, Audiobook, History, Journalism

Audible Audio

Published October 9, 2025

Reviews

[Sindu · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading this I can hate Elon Musk and his ilk with even more specificity.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Democracy needs equality to survive. The Titans of hype and delusion profiled in this book prioritize their power over the true, moral, and good. Without their manipulation of reality their dignatus melts into the ether of the void.

Peter Thiel creates an ‘antichrist’ from time to time as he misapplies his shallow biblical interpretations and appoints his puppet J. D. Vance as his savior. This book made Vance a central character while the world knows him for the cartoon villain he is. Thiel prayers at the altar of Rene Girard as illuded in this book. I suggest reading his book “Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World.” Girard requires a sacrificial goat for the creation of saviors. The Titans of hype and delusion believe they are our saviors and the people are their preferred sacrifice. To save us they must destroy us, because for them democracy needs inequality to survive and freedom is antithetical to their maximizing their dignatus.

As pointed out by this book the Titans of hype and delusion require a ‘mimetic’ sacrifice and in their desperate search for enhancing their dignatus. The Titans have found their useful idiot in Donald Trump. To understand the mindset and motivations of all the villains portrayed in this book Girard provides a roadmap or one can read the short story by Shirley Jackson “The Lottery.”

Among the Titans of hype and delusion a sacrifice of the people is a requirement. Their self-worth comes from their anointing themselves as antichrist slayers through magical processes. They must have a sacrifice to preserve their dignatus and the mob watches Fox News (sic) and get distracted by Trump’s cruelty which excites the Titans since they use the distraction to make the world less equal.

Bitcoin is for fools. (What do I know, I wanted to short it at $30000, and now it’s above $100k). The Titans of hype and delusion need the myth to continue to succeed. Trump is floundering, generative AI through LLM is never going to return its investment, and J. D. Vance is off-putting when he speaks. The Titans of hype and delusion are losing their dignatus and their useful idiot is fading off the world stage as I get to watch it happen in real-time. As illustrated in this book, the Titans of hype and delusion all universally seemed to have supported Ron Desantis, the biggest goofball ever, before they rallied around their true transactional hero, Donald Trump.

It’s not that the Titans of hype and delusion are crazy, they aren’t. They believe crazy things so that they can enhance their imaginary value through increasing their own dignatus while sacrificing at the altar everyone else who is not them. I love watching the myth-makers create their myths and watching it collapse in real-time.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid work on all the weirdness of the last decade. We are living in Elons world unfortunately.

[Allyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well if I wasn’t depressed before, I sure am now.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If wars are how Americans learn geography, then elections are how they learn about plutocracy.” That’s a pithy quote from this book that I jotted down in my notes. It packs a lot into a handful of words.

Will Americans actually learn about plutocracy, though? Or will our country, a nation of “temporarily embarrassed millionaires,” as they say, ever learn? Will we ever care? We’re the country that brought you the prosperity gospel, after all. And corporate personhood. We’re the country that worships the golden dollar like the psychopaths at Galt’s Gulch. We think so highly of businessmen that we give them the nuclear codes.

So forgive me for being cynical, but I don’t think we’ll ever learn. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal. You should read this book. You should let your friends borrow it when you’re done. Hell, you can have my copy. Pass it around. It’ll make your blood boil. Hopefully it will inspire you too, though.

Decline is a choice. Like a nation of Ebenezer Scrooges, though, we may yet have the capacity to change. May it not require an intervention from the spirit realm for us to get our shit together.

4.5 stars. Knocking off a half star for some clumsy editing.

[Raghu Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

California's political landscape is predominantly liberal. The population here supports Democratic candidates and progressive social causes. The Bay Area (Silicon Valley) is a microcosm of this ethos. Since I came here in 1993, I have found the place to be leaning towards environmental care, universal healthcare and education. However, there is also a libertarian tilt, which is seen in anti-regulation. Silicon Valley has also seen an enormous rise in wealth in the past three decades. It impacted the consciousness of the people living here. Given such stratospheric wealth, the Bay Area shifted politically rightward during the past decade. This book details Jacob Silverman’s analysis of this shift’s roots along with those who cause it. Silverman argues that, despite the prominence of culture wars since Trump’s presidency, they are not the primary driver of the right-wing trend in Silicon Valley. Rather, it is the end of cheap money and the desire to reduce or evade regulation and taxes, and resistance to antitrust enforcement. Having amassed immense wealth in the past decade, the elite wants to gain political control, dismantle government oversight of technology’s direction and progress. They want to experiment with authoritarian governance models. Silverman blames Elon Musk and Peter Thiel for masterminding this trend, charging they have a deep-rooted ideological belief about their own supremacy and a desire to maintain unconstrained wealth.

The book paints a group portrait featuring the Silicon Valley venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Peter Thiel, Vice-president JD Vance, and the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. This is a slice of what President Joe Biden described as the tech industrial complex. Silverman points to the year 2022 as the turning point when the near-zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) ended. This ended the era of free credit, causing crypto markets and growth stocks to decline. For once, billionaires faced real limitations after years. Rather than adapting to the new reality, they looked for a political guarantor to restore conditions for making unconstrained profit. The Biden administration secured some tax enforcement measures and specific tax increases on corporations through legislation, apart from proposing significant tax increases on corporations and individuals earning over $400,000. This was anathema to the elite, and they channeled their political funding to lawmakers who would defeat such measures.

Elon Musk bought Twitter shares at a low price without disclosing his holdings in a timely manner. It violated securities law, and the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) sued him multiple times. States and advocacy groups filed lawsuits, challenging the legality of Musk’s actions within federal agencies. It had to do with dismantling USAID and accessing sensitive Treasury data. Peter Thiel’s Palantir secured government contracts with the IRS, ICE, and the Pentagon. This drew criticism from advocacy groups and lawmakers, raising concerns about mass surveillance. Under the Biden administration, Lina Khan, chair of the FTC, pursued an aggressive antitrust agenda that included suing Amazon for monopolistic practices. Despite these actions following established legal precedent, the billionaire class, accustomed to minimal oversight, saw this as an existential threat. All this scrutiny made them realize they needed to buy influence in the government so that they could deregulate industries and dismantle agencies like the SEC and the DOJ. The goal was always to keep capital cheap and to keep regulation and oversight minimal.

The right-wing tilt of Silicon Valley that Silverman notes is not sudden or unexpected. Several indicators have pointed toward a preference among the wealthy for a kind autocracy run by technocratic experts instead of a people's democracy. The signs of capitulation to the Federal government and wealth have always existed since 2001. An early sign of actions from large tech corporations, with massive financial implications, emerged during the first Obama administration. In 2009, Big Tech complained to President Obama about China’s industrial espionage on their servers to steal the secrets of their technologies. But the companies declined to provide details when President Obama wanted the tech companies to give proof of the espionage. The reason was that China would realize which companies complained against them and hence would retaliate against them, affecting their access to the vast Chinese market. It would hurt their bottom line and the interests of their shareholders. It showed that the Silicon Valley companies would side with shareholder interests and profits above those of US national interests.

A second warning came in 2013. After 9/11 happened, the Bush administration applied pressure on all the tech companies to part with their customer data so that they could do surveillance on them. The tech companies complied without informing their customers. It was Edward Snowden who exposed this collusion between the Bush administration and the tech companies in June 2013. Snowden said only Yahoo and Twitter resisted, but major tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and AT&T shared customer data with the intelligence agencies. They had been doing it for a decade without informing their customers. It alerted civil liberties advocates about how businesses would act when billions of dollars are on the line, despite their professions of a liberal ethos.

Many venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, like Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen, are admirers of the ideas of the far-right influencer, Curtis Yarvin. They are supportive of his anti-democratic governance models, though they have not endorsed Yarvin’s defence of slavery and inherent racial IQ differences. Andreessen approves Yarvin’s ideas, saying one can read him without becoming a monarchist. Vice-president J.D. Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence and praised his ideas of purging the civil service. Elon Musk embraced Yarvin’s principle of efficiency over democratic processes. The way he carried out his DOGE suggests he tried to follow Yarvin’s ideas of the ‘Butterfly revolution’. Yarvin proposed an anti-democratic strategy for a reboot of the U.S. government, replacing it with an autocratic, corporate-style dictatorship led by a “CEO-monarch”. It advocates dismantling existing democratic institutions and the rule of law. Peter Thiel has long expressed the view that “capitalism and true freedom conflict with democracy.” He believes that the technocratic elite has a legitimate right to rule and that capitalism and economic freedom must prevail over democracy. The venture capitalist class views democracy as leading to woke politics and dysfunction overall.

After reading the book, one highlight for me was how angry the billionaire class seems to be. They enjoy immense wealth, exceeding what one might imagine, along with global success. Yet, they are angry. Silverman reckons with this anger and calls it ‘the Gilded Rage’. He says this class shares a lot of the recent years’ anti-woke grievances. The tech critics and regulators incur their ire, wounding their feelings. They attempted to build a world, which they felt lacked sufficient public appreciation and gratitude. Sometimes, it’s also personal. Bill Ackman blames Harvard for turning his daughter into a Marxist. Elon Musk blames the woke mind for his child coming out as trans.

Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman believes that despite their long-standing prominence and wealth, these individuals may feel they are past their best. Their anger could stem from this. Silverman agrees and finds the idea intriguing. He recognizes this group gambled heavily on crypto, suffering poor results. Even Peter Thiel talked about AI as the only thing remaining. That might point to their poverty of imagination and fuel their anger.

Silverman’s categorization of Silicon Valley is analogous to an investment company facing the end of easy profits and increased auditing and oversight. Instead of changing or adjusting its leveraged business model, it buys the stock exchange and appoints its own regulators. This would ensure the rules are bent in favor of high-risk, high-reward trading. Certain conclusions of Silverman are not satisfactory or convincing. For example, Silverman says Silicon Valley’s achievements are due more to market manipulation than genuine innovation. If he means ‘financial engineering’ by ‘market manipulation’, then there is some truth in it. But no one can deny the valley’s path-breaking technological achievements. Another charge from Silverman is that it was tech money that decided the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. It sounds similar to the Democrats’ charge about Russia and Cambridge Analytica defeating Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s campaign and supporting groups spent twice the amount of money ($1.2 billion) that Donald Trump’s campaign and his allies ($600 million) did during the 2016 general election. This means that something beyond money is involved.

This is a timely book, looking deep into the innards of Silicon Valley and its leading lights and their connections to immense wealth and political power. Silicon Valley is no longer the ‘innocent technological hub’ that it was before the rise of the internet in the mid-1990s.

[Leann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most important book to read now.

Thoroughly researched and informative, the author describes in detail the rot underlying the rot tech industry and venture capital. Realizing the extreme amount of foreign investment and interests in American political, media, technology sectors was equally troubling. Scary & sickening to know authoritarian regimes are influencing our media and political systems.

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If wars are how Americans learn geography, then elections are how they learn about plutocracy.”

Extremely enlightening and upsetting. A really solid and through portrait of the people driving this burning bus into the pit of techno-fascism. There's so much to chew on in here from the enormous influence of Saudi Arabia in Silicon Valley (and by extension, on Capital Hill), to the profile of the spineless VC puppet JD V*nce -- every chapter equally revolting and fascinating. Already relevant but will become an increasingly valuable reference point for those of us trying to keep up with and understand whatever the absolute fuck is going on in the world right now.

Almost five stars but the overall structure was a little disorganized which made the through line a little hard to follow. You should read it any way though.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Long on anecdotes. Short on analysis.

[Keely · Rating 5 out of 5]

it’s such a pleasure to read a book written by a friend and to see their genius in action!

well-written and exhaustively researched, rather depressing because the state of our democracy is depressing, this book details the failed techno-utopian dream of silicon valley and the rightward radicalization of the billionaires who shape our apps, global economy, public policy, and (downstream of all that) our daily lives. various chapters focus on notable dramatis personae like sam bankman-fried, the rise and fall (and rise again) of crypto, the libertarian desire to establish unregulated fiefdoms in the form of charter cities and ZEDEs, the shifting political winds buffeting tiktok, and culminate at the end in several chapters describing how all of the previous topics influenced(/decided) the 2024 presidential election. elon musk sits at the center of the narrative, but he’s just one representative from the class of angry, reactionary, biblically greedy moguls described.

the overlapping spheres of interest detailed in the book were often hard to follow (by design!! the shady, double-dealing VCs made it murky and hard to understand on purpose!), which occasionally made me feel a bit out of my depth, but i still marvel at how jacob was able to make such opaque topics generally intelligible to a tech/finance neophyte like myself. deft work, done well!

[Burpee Bibliophile (Ty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a chilling and rather disturbing read. But an excellent and important one. What this book reveals should terrify and anger everyone. We get a crystal clear picture on why all these evil ultra rich elites view democracy as a threat to their ability to accumulate more wealth and power. There is no longer any debate whatsoever about who has taken over this country and is now running it. It’s the tech billionaires and the influence they harness poses monumental and immediate danger to our democracy. That can’t be stressed or emphasized enough. What I appreciated most about this book was how the author constantly exposed the underlying rot of the tech industry and venture capitalism. Two toxic parasitic soul sucking machines. The damage and infectious disease these two entities have inflicted cannot be ignored. They destroy lives and companies while lengthening the income & wealth gap. And if all that isn’t horrifying enough, this book also showcases and highlights all the extreme amount of foreign investment and interests in American political, media, and technology sectors. Why is this equally as disturbing? Because authoritarian regimes are now fully influencing our media and political systems. I mean just look at our current administration and our main stream news outlets. It’s all connected and it’s unsettling. This book is absolutely a must read. Can’t recommend it enough. Happy reading!

[Emma Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super insightful and very well researched. I was particularly shocked to learn about the ZEDEs in Honduras and aspirations for corporate towns by many of the Silicon Valley CEOs. This book left me uneasy as many of the figures and ideas discussed reminded me of the dark predictions of the Parable of the Sower series.

[June · Rating 4 out of 5]

I couldn't help reading through in fewer sittings, to make up my lapse over habitual scorn of the news channels and social media.

Crowned to be a clown,
I shut off the noise around;
Tantrums of a baby,
I relent to let today be.

[Claire Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated another review that said, “after reading this I can now hate Elon Musk and his ilk with even more specificity.” This is definitely an echo chamber of a book, as I doubt anyone not already anti-tech-billionaires would read it.

There is simply too much news out there, and corporate malfeasance and headlines every hour. This book was helpful to lay out the major players of the tech billionaire/VC world and how their fringe ideas were allowed to become more mainstream.

From a book perspective, the first few chapters were a bit disjointed, but the final 2/3 flowed well into each other. It was disheartening to read how the same actions are allowed to persist again and again, but I now feel more informed to understand the industry and major players.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

For an inveterate podcast freak like myself this book didn’t really offer a ton in the way of new information about the march of the far-right crypto denizens through the halls of power. Still quite grim to have it all laid out so succinctly.

[riti aggarwal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very clunkily written tbh and repetitive as well but succinctly captures the current technocratic zeitgeist in all its immature, tantrum-throwing nonsense

[Christopher M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well researched and detailed expose of the evil that rich men do with their wealth, but I found it a bit too dispiriting reading more than one chapter at a time.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

How Elon Musk and his tech bros dove off the deep end with Donald Trump

In 1998, three ambitious Silicon Valley entrepreneurs established a startup called PayPal. These three hustlers—Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek—later merged with Elon Musk’s company and enlisted eight or nine others. Together, they became the PayPal Mafia. The company survived the tech crash. And since then at least four of the “founders” have become billionaires. Elon Musk, of course. Peter Thiel (Palantir). Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn). Max Levchin. Perhaps David Sacks, too. And at least four others have amassed hundreds of millions.

Many of these same names—most prominently Musk, Thiel, and Sacks—loom large in the sad story of how the tech bros of Silicon Valley helped enable Donald Trump’s election to a second term, guided tech policy, and staffed many of the key posts in his administration. In Gilded Rage, journalist Jacob Silverman tells the tale of Silicon Valley’s partnership with Donald Trump with ill-disguised distress.

A sprawling cast of influential characters

For obvious reasons, the book’s subtitle (Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley) features only Elon Musk’s name. But as Silverman relates the story, two others—Peter Thiel and David Sacks—were if anything more instrumental in that “radicalization.” Musk gets a lot of attention, of course. It’s hard to overlook the richest person on the planet. Or the head of DOGE, who led the charge to wreck the federal government. But Thiel and Sacks come across as more influential among their peers in the Valley. For example, Sacks is Trump’s “White House AI and crypto czar.”

But parallel with Silicon Valley’s strategic move to the right was the explosive emergence of cryptocurrency. The crypto industry has played a guiding influence in the administration. While the tech bros all support crypto, that industry involves an almost wholly separate cast of characters. They enter into the story, too. And a disturbingly large number of them are crooks, pure and simple.

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley by Jacob Silverman (2025) 389 pages ★★★★★

The larger context of this story

Gilded Rage artfully tells the story of how high tech and the extraordinary profits it has generated played a pivotal role in Donald Trump’s reelection in 2024 and in the administration he then put in place. Understandably, though, that story lacks context. It’s long and complicated enough as it is. But it’s only the latest chapter in the 60-year rise of the Republican Right and its transformation into an authoritarian force.

That story began—if in fact, any story can truly have a beginning—with Barry Goldwater in the 1960s. Later, other characters came on-stage in leading roles as the so-called “conservative” movement gained steam. Richard Nixon, of course. Justice Lewis Powell. Milton Friedman. Ronald Reagan. Newt Gingrich. George W. Bush. Dick Cheney. And numerous others, far less well known. They all played their part in paving the way for today’s emerging Right-Wing dictatorship.

In some ways, however, the role of the tech bros is unique. Not only have they provided the financial muscle to enable Donald Trump and the sycophants around him. They’ve also contributed intellectual capital. And, most importantly, the software produced by some of their companies has provided the Trump Administration with the tools it needs to power the police state they are moving to establish.

That’s the true context of the story Jacob Silverman tells in Gilded Rage.

Summary of the book by AI

I turned to the chatbot Claude (Version Sonnet 4.5) for a summary of this book. What follows is the result, word-for-word. I’ve only deleted the URLs linking the text to its sources and inserted subheads.

A rightward shift toward Donald Trump
Gilded Rage examines the political radicalization of Silicon Valley’s tech elite and their rightward shift toward supporting Donald Trump and far-right politics. While Elon Musk sits at the center of Silverman’s investigation—particularly his obsession with the “woke mind virus”—the book extends beyond one individual to reveal a broader network of tech and finance oligarchs reshaping politics and society.

Silverman explores how figures like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, and JD Vance form an interconnected web of radicalized billionaires who, emboldened by the zero-interest rate era, are using their enormous wealth to advance an increasingly extreme political agenda. The author examines why these individuals, who were once considered liberal darlings promoting a cleaner and more connected future, have taken such a dramatic rightward turn.

Observing the real-world consequences of Right-Wing policies
Silverman identifies San Francisco itself as a catalyst for this transformation, with the city’s progressive policies on homelessness, prosecutorial reform, and equity initiatives becoming symbols of decline for these billionaires, fueling their reactionary politics. The book covers topics ranging from potentially dangerous artificial intelligence pursuits to life-extension startups promising eternal youth, illustrating how the original techno-utopian vision of Silicon Valley has deteriorated.

Traveling across San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Austin, Miami, New York, Washington DC, and various global centers of tech and finance, Silverman interviews people experiencing the real-world consequences of this political revolution. He describes a bizarre and sometimes frightening world where moguls preach populist revolt while systematically dismantling democratic checks on their power.

Handmaidens to authoritarianism
The book addresses the contradictions in these figures’ positions—they claim to be libertarians while supporting the military-industrial complex, and position themselves as free-speech champions while helping foreign governments surveil dissidents. Silverman covers major incidents including Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX collapse and Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, while also highlighting local stories like venture capitalist David Sacks’s involvement in recall campaigns and the California Forever project to build an entirely new city on farmland.

Through detailed reporting and analysis, Silverman presents an urgent examination of how Silicon Valley’s wealthiest individuals have become handmaidens to authoritarianism, offering essential insight into the forces reshaping contemporary politics and democracy.

About the author

Jacob Silverman is the author of two other well-received nonfiction books, one on social media, the other on cryptocurrency. He’s a contributing editor at The New Republic and The Baffler, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. He lives in New York.”

Silverman notes on his author website that he writes “about the politics of tech, political corruption, illicit finance, the nihilism of our forever wars, [and] the depredations of a clueless media,”

[Albin Carlsson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bra och viktig! Men det var mycket som jag kände saknades.

Jag köpte denna boken för ett par veckor sedan för att ifrågasätta mina åsikter. Jag stör mig något ofantligt på när människor påstår en massa saker som de inte uppenbart inte vet ett skit om. Som de så uppenbart inte, så kallat, ’fact-checkat’. Förbehållet då att man inte förtydligar att man talar ur röven, då är det OK. Och eftersom allt jag påstått om Trump sedan han vann valet 2024 egentligen bara varit baserat på intryck, kände jag att det var god tid att ändra på det.

Jag var iallafall övertygad om att Trump-ismen var en politisk rörelse utan ideologi. I grund och botten en rörelse med egentligen en enda central valfråga ”rösta på mig för att göra mig rik”. En uttryckligt kleptokratisk folkrörelse, kanske den första i tidshistorien. Åtminstone sedan antiken, för Julius Ceasar gjorde väl ungefär samma sak. Heja Brutus!

Det känns som att Silverman, överlag, bekräftade mina känslor. Men här kommer också mitt problem med boken, och varför den bara fick 3 stjärnor. Rätt ofta tappade han fokus och började på något nytt och (som jag upplevde som) rätt orelaterat - oftast kryptovaluta eller var en biljonär fick sin utbildning och när han köpte alla sina herrgårdar och hur mycket hans mamma finansierat hans riskkapital (som antingen osade av ressentiment eller beundran. Vet inte vilket som skulle vara värre. Eller, jo det vet jag. Sistnämnda. Definitivt det sistnämnda), saker som alltså för det mesta hade 0 koppling till deras politiska verksamheter - och att kartlägga det, det är ju det boken säger att den är till för. Hans inkonsekvens och bristande förmåga att hålla sig till ämnet gjorde också så att det inte fanns sådär extremt mycket att hämta om hur dessa nya mäktiga och rika och inflytelserika ideologer vill omforma samhället. Känns som att en deep-dive i t.ex. agenda 2025 hade varit lämplig att ha med, istället för att beskriva California Forever som inte ens ledde nånstans. Särskilt bristande tyckte jag var, konstigt nog, sånt som Peter Thiel, JD Vance och Elon Musk skrivit och sagt.

Det han iallafall säger verkar i stort sätt bekräfta mina tidigare intryck. Trumps Silicon-valley anhängare är för massiv deregulering och att slussa skattepengar till stora tech-företag genom kontrakt med försvarsindustrin. Alltså den gamla goa klassikern: Libertarianism - när det passar.

I den andan, här är några väldigt träffande citat:

In this election, every policy proposal seemed to come garnished with a heaping of self-interest (s258)

It was unusual for a politician to promise to make people’s lives worse and for voters to thrill at the possibility (s265)

The positive vision that Peter Thiel said his allies lacked still haden’t appeared. But a better, more prosperous future was supposed to emerge from the wreckage of the administrative state (s265)

Jag tyckte även Silverman framstod som ganska naiv när han bitvis verkade vilja få det framstå som att ’wokeness’ utgjorde något slags reelt progressivt alternativ till Trumpismen och inte, precis som den sistnämnda, som en alternativ corporate strategy (vilket den självklart inte heller endast är. Och även om den var det så lever idéer ju sitt egna liv, och har sin egen makt och konsekvenser. Ingenting är ’bara’ något). Men egentligen kände jag mest så i början. Men i början är det verkligen påfrestande. Kändes där som att han menade att Demokraternas politiska platform kan sammanfattas som nån slags neutral rationalitet/kompetens.

I slutet gav han dock mycket bra kritik, och målar upp Demokraterna nästan som ett kleptokratiskt Big-Tent parti (jämförbart med de partier som är förhärskande i demokratier i tredje världen - men kanske inte exakt så grovt).

Ska fortsätta på recensionen lite mer imorgon. Men avslutar med detta.

Som någon som var relativt sympatisk till Trump 2016, och som var övertygad om att höger-populism aldrig skulle kunna rubba åsiktskorridoren, så chockerar det mig hur mycket jag hade fel. Goes to show hur mycket idéer faktiskt styr och begränsar världen. Också visar det på det faktumet att de flesta mäktiga aktörer är så villiga att överge sina principer om så bara de tjänar på det. Deras enda princip är Groucho Marx principen. Kan bistå med ett svenskt exempel jag ofta tänker på: Magdalena Anderssons floskelnationalism a la ”Svenska flaggan bör vara hissad på varje torg i hela landet”.

Alla vi som skrattade åt cringe compilations runt 2016, som egentligen bara bestod av en samling klipp på rätt rimliga, om än hysteriska, människor som pekade ut Trumps fascistiska tendenser. Nu, när alla slutat bry sig, så är det vår tur att äta upp hatten. Vem fan hade kunnat gissa att världens mäktigaste land faktiskt höll på att röra oss mot banan-republikanism. Uttryckligen! Inte jag iallafall. Men uppenbart dem i cringe kompilationerna.


Nu är det dagen efter och jag har bara en till tanke som jag vill artikulera och lägga till. En sak jag tänkt mycket på i relation till Trump, är hur centralt anständighet är för att tygla överskott av politisk ondska. Och Trump, genom att utmana detta, har drivit igenom en kanske obotlig förändring i den Amerikanska politiken. Det kommer att bli hans stora arv.

För mig, som naiv 16-åring, så var hans vägran att vara politiskt anständig nog också det mest attraktiva med honom. Bara det sätt han agerade och de värden det representerade, illustrerade för mig så tydligt demokratins skenhelighet (som kontext, under denna perioden växlade jag mellan att se mig själv som Leninist och Stalinist. Såsom tonåringar gör.).

Politisk anständighet är bara en överenskommelse, en intersubjektiv idé om att makthavare måste inställa sig till underförstådda regler av gott uppförande och värdighet - deras politik måste inte nödvändigtvis vara etisk, men uppförandet och utförandet måste vara det. Skall korruption ske, vilket det nog kommer att göra, så ska det ske dolt och upplevas som pinsamt och osmakligt och förnedrande för dem som tar del av det. Något som alltså måste döljas, om man vill behålla sin självrespekt. Och detta sociala krav på att dölja sin politiska ondska, verkar uppenbart enormt tyglande på den politiska ondskans överflöd.

Att jag kommit till denna insikt, på grund av Trump, har i mångt och mycket gjort mig till en militant anti-revolutionär. Och på grund av det och annat, så sympatiserar jag i stort sätt med de elitistiska Demokrater, som liksom Silverman beskriver, brukar förutsätta att de förtjänar makt, att deras väljarkår bör vara tacksamma (s245) och att de finns där för att utbilda sin väljarkår (s246).

[Evelyn Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley by Jacob Silverman is a penetrating, fearless examination of power, ideology, and moral decay in the modern tech empire. With his trademark clarity and journalistic rigor, Silverman dissects how the utopian dreams of innovation have hardened into a dystopian reality one in which wealth, disruption, and disinformation intertwine to shape the future of democracy itself.

At the center stands Elon Musk, not as a lone disruptor, but as a symbol of a broader transformation a tech elite radicalized by influence and insulated by privilege. Silverman reveals the web connecting Musk, Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and other power brokers whose populist rhetoric masks an agenda of control and deregulation. Through extensive reporting across Silicon Valley, Washington, Austin, and beyond, he paints a vivid portrait of a class that has traded innovation for ideology, and progress for dominance.

What makes Gilded Rage so compelling is its balance of sharp critique and human insight. Silverman writes with the moral urgency of a historian documenting a turning point in civilization when the digital revolution begins to devour its own ideals. His blend of humor, precision, and alarm creates a narrative that is as captivating as it is chilling.

For readers of Christopher Leonard’s The Lords of Easy Money or Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, Silverman’s work stands as an essential contribution to understanding how Silicon Valley’s myths of genius and freedom conceal the rise of a new oligarchy. Gilded Rage is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the moral fault lines of our technological age and what’s at stake if we look away.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

A searing indictment of the American Political establishment’s unwillingness to reckon with the ever burgeoning tech and investment class captures images of Elon Musk, David Sacks, Vivek Ramaswamay, Larry Ellison, Marc Andressen, Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Sam Bankman-Fried and vice president JD Vance as the most self-serving, craven collection of modern day robber barons imaginable.

There is a rotten undercurrent that unites all of these men and in spite of any thing else, brought them into alignment with Donald Trump. As the neo-liberal regulatory policies of the Biden and Obama administrations failed to reign in its bad actors and allowed them to grow biblically wealthy, those actors saw any attempts to bring them to hell as an infringement upon their rights. None of these men would’ve felt the difference of a Harris administration in any capacity beyond MAYBE slightly higher marginal tax rates. But that in of itself was such an affront to their collective inferred genius, that they simply could ever be brought back into the fold of normalcy.

Instead, we have a government of, by and for the plutocrat.

[Arianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a worthwhile read for every American, as it lays out in detail the techno-authoritarian takeover which has consumed America these last few years. Silverman has a deep knowledge on the subject, and my only complaint is the occasional tangents the book took, which were interesting, but felt like they were drifting slightly from the dominant theme. And that theme is really an unprecedented level of greed and corruption, that has been happening out in the open with not much pushback from the forces elected to protect the citizens from this kind of corporatist hellscape. Americans generally seem woefully under educated on these technologists’ shenanigans, and books like this feel like they should be required reading, if only to create a more even playing field for everyone to exist. But I guess the point is that these techno-authoritarians don’t want an even playing field, but rather one that is tilted in their favor, allowing them to hoard wealth that they then use to to buy the opportunity to create a society that only serves them, and no one else.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have listened to Jacob Silverman several times on a few podcasts, and have always enjoyed him. This book, and perhaps because it was also read by him, sounded much like a continuation of these conversations. I enjoyed it, albeit it covered many topics that I was already versed in thanks to these aforementioned podcasts.

It was great to learn, I didn't realise how far back many of the earlier founders, such as Thiel and Sachs autocratic leanings went, and how they have used their massive wealth to fund their political ambitions and working with the GOP. I also learnt about other things, such as how close and intertwined some of these big tech companies are with the Military/Defence Industrial Complex. I found some people's disdain for homeless people, and their work to criminalise it absolutely reprehensible. I was also pretty shocked to learn about who actually bought Twitter and backed Musk, as well as the foreign espionage that happened inside twitter.

[Grant Bollmer · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're unfamiliar with the events chronicled in this book, I suppose this is an ok starting point, though the reporting on Musk, Thiel, and Silicon Valley in general has been much more aptly handled in the pages of Wired and other magazines. Because it has to differentiate itself from the work of better journalists, this book presents itself as analysis, not just reportage, but it isn't, unless you think a few semi-sarcastic asides count as analysis. The fact that this book opens by discussing how the author briefly worked for Vivek Ramaswamy, with a few other "I was there" anecdotes peppered throughout, demonstrates how he seems to think the value of this book is that he's met many of these people in person. Your time would be better spent reading other things on the same subject.

[Chris Boutté · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should be scared shitless about the tech billionaires running our country and how much they’re influencing politics. If you’re not scared, you need to read this book. This book goes deep into stories about Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and many other tech oligarchs who are hoarding wealth and influencing politics so they can stay on top. The stuff discussed in this book is scarier than I even thought, and it’s mind blowing hearing how these rich tech people think they’re these godly beings.

What’s worse is that we’ve brainwashed people into believing that because these tech people are rich, they know what’s best, and we’re just letting them do whatever they want. I could rant about this all day, but I’ll just recommend that you go check out this book.

[Nwoka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Follow the dark money.



Who would have thought that the cessation of cheap capital(ZIRP) would lead to a raging toddler-esque reaction from our tech “elites”? Someone grab the pacifier. This is a well-written book, it highlights something that is usually ignored, which is how beholden Silicon Valley is to Saudi and Emirati sovereign wealth.

There’s a penchant for escapism with a lot of the characters in this book. A yearning to escape from conventional economic and social systems, from regulatory oversight, from the planet itself with some of them. The section on Balaji Srinivasan’s Network State gave me a good laugh. Balaji seems to have reengineered authoritarianism, wonder who’s going to tell him.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fairly exhaustive review of how tech authoritarians got to be in control of everything. The prose is efficient, easy to read, the information relevant and engaging.

I think the main reason I was a tad disappointed with the book is that it involved very little information that was not already public knowledge. The only section that was entirely new to me was the list of investors involved in the purchase of Twitter.

If you are also a leftist who's got Chapo/TrueAnon/QAA/Trashfuture in your rotation, you will find a nicely organized and well-presented summary of the last 4-5 years of politics, but nothing that will surprise you.

[Alex Gruenenfelder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A self-described "history of Silicon Valley's radicalization," this is a book about the blurry line between politics and big business, with a particular focus on the book's unofficial cover model of Elon Musk. Predominantly anti-oligarchy, the book has a distinctive left-wing bias, although it does not overwhelm the diligence of the reporting from any perspective. There is a lot about cryptocurrency and the prominence of Saudi Arabia, with more about both than I already knew. This is a book about the wealthy outcasts who "need the societies they resent," and it is worthwhile reading for people who care about the rise of the 21st-century American oligarchy.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up because of its informational value.

Too much text and suffers from a lack of graphics to track the players, their relationships, and their “projects”. That said, it’s terrifying and most citizens are blissfully unaware of the potential that we will all soon be chattel.

The subtitle suggests this is mostly about Musk who but the book is about a network and Musk, for all his wealth and deviance, isn’t the person I fear the most. I don’t think he’s that smart. Others however, are.

[Mayaisfiya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silverman's work feels like a sequel to Karen Hao's book "Empire of AI," which I also loved. Silverman helpfully fills in some blank areas in the American psyche about what exactly happened in 2024. He charts the course of silicon valley's biggest names as they swung from the popular liberalism of the 2010s to the reactionary conservatism they've now adopted. This book follows the money and relationships that have shaped our reality in the 21st century.