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 “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he “told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”
“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” 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 Tan—the current Y Combinator CEO who’s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco—participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting “die slow motherfuckers” at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in “moderate” politics. But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.
What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” 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. “And if you see another Gray on the street…you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” 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 “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.
“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. “What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”
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: “Did you want to take the sign off of Elon’s building?”
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 “Twitter” signage from the building’s exterior. But in Balaji’s 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 “merge the Gray and police social networks.” Then, in a show of force, they’ll march through the city together.
My impression is that some tech workers in the Bay Area are growing increasingly frustrated with the way the government runs the place. They often come from a liberal background, but the phrase I’ve heard is that if you want to convince someone to be a Republican, you should have him live in San Francisco. (The majority of people in San Francisco still vote for Democrats, but I suppose the “someone” in that phrase is specifically a tech worker.) They have a point - the last time I was there, I was at a wedding that was interrupted by the sounds of exploding propane cylinders from a nearby homeless encampment which was on fire. San Francisco is surprisingly unpleasant for them given how wealthy it is and surprisingly hostile to them given how much of that wealth comes from tech. These tech workers are also often opposed to the Democrats’ emphasis on equity, which they see as an attack on meritocracy.
Meanwhile, for someone who works in tech and is successful, the way that a tech company is run has better results: the environment is pleasant and safe, the pay is great, and management is respectful. There appears to be a lot to gain if tech can run the city for the benefit of tech.
Tech company….pleasant and safe environment. You sound like one of the tech Zionists. Tech companies are not typically safe or pleasant. Not for 15 years at least.
Dude clearly hasn’t been paying attention for the last several years.
I’ve worked in tech (but not in the Bay Area) for over ten years and what I say has been my own experience. I’m not claiming that every tech job is great, but good programmers are in such high demand that there’s no reason for one of them to settle for less.
The tech company life is great until they fire you and 10% of your colleagues in pursuit of even bigger profits. Then when your on the streets you’ll probably prefer the current liberal city government over whatever these fascists have planned for the homeless
I’ve gotten laid off myself before. It was disappointing but not a major financial setback - I had been getting paid enough that I could then live comfortably on my savings until I found a new job. I think that overall, as long as tech companies keep making those even bigger profits, tech workers will be doing well.
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 you’ll 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 you’ll realize the tyranny that the system perpetuates.