In a world increasingly ruled by tech companies, some of the industry’s most powerful figures appear to be quietly drafting blueprints for the near future. There’s just one catch: it may or may not be a democratic one.

In an interview on “Decoder,” a podcast by The Verge, tech journalist Gil Duran outlines a disturbing theory that a growing number of Silicon Valley elites are pursuing a vision of power not rooted in the common good, but in profit, feudal hierarchy, and total control of the platforms that define daily life for hundreds of millions of people.

Duran dubs this emerging ideology the “Nerd Reich” — a slurry of right-wing ideas championed by ruthless tech overlords like Palantir founder Peter Thiel, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, and cryptocurrency titan Brian Armstrong, with some OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sprinkled in for good measure. Drawing on the reactionary writings of Curtis “Mencius Moldbug” Yarvin and the cryptolibertarianism of tech investor Balaji Srinivasan, this philosophy isn’t explicitly outlined by our billionaire overlords, but is nonetheless a useful framework that explains their increasingly undemocratic actions.

Basically, as Duran tells it, we’re quickly marching into the dictatorship erected by a handful of the richest tycoons in the history of humankind. At the core of the Nerd Reich is the insistence that liberal democracy, the governmental system characterized by rule of law, is set to collapse any minute now. When that happens, the billionaire cabal hopes to be ready.

“I say it’s inherently anti-American,” Duran told the Verge’s Jon Fortt. “It sees a post-United States world where, instead of democracy, we will have basically tech feudalism — fiefdoms run by tech corporations. They’re pretty explicit about this point.”

Marc Andreesen, for example, in his 2023 Techno-Optimist Manifesto, argues that an unregulated tech industry, not democracy, is the key to unlocking the “ultimate open society.” Andreessen’s enemies, he says in no uncertain terms, are pesky ideas like “sustainability,” “trust and safety,” “tech ethics,” and “social responsibility.”

As a sneak preview of things to come, Duran points out that these men are already investing billions into network-state schemes, lobbying for “freedom cities,” and using their platforms to erode trust in public institutions.

Political theorists of all stripes have long argued that when economic power is concentrated, political power follows. The immediate lesson of Duran’s Nerd Reich is that these billionaire ideologues are actively investing in a future where their immense wealth buys not just influence over elected politicians — as is arguably the case today — but the rule of law itself.

Yet, Duran notes, US workers once organized throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s to curb the excesses of robber barons, winning the labor rights many of us enjoy today. Unfortunately, those hard-fought victories have been purposefully eroded over decades of union busting, outsourcing, and legal campaigns — an effort which continues to this day.

Zooming out a bit, Duran’s analysis of the present day finds us in a remarkably similar situation — if corporate rule is allowed to sink its teeth any further into our institutions, democracy as we view it could become a historical footnote (if it hasn’t already, as some political scientists have argued.)

“We have a bunch of CEOs telling us that AI is going to get rid of millions and millions of jobs,” Duran argues. “Well, what’s going to happen to those people who can no longer work? What is their future? What is the future of their children? What does democracy look like when you don’t get to eat unless someone like Elon Musk is approving of your existence?”

Unless you’re a billionaire tech CEO, the stakes Duran lays out are clear. Behind the hyped-up rhetoric of “innovation” lies an age-old project: the wealthy elite reshaping society in their own image. The antidote is also old: democratic resistance and politics built around in the material needs of the many, not the dystopian fantasies of a wealthy few.