Gil Durán
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gilduran.com
Gil Durán
@gilduran.com
34K followers 2.2K following 2.2K posts
California writer. Ida Tarbell stan. Beat: tech fascism, billionaire extremism, network state, crypto cartels.

Writing a book: “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Global Democracy.”

The Nerd Reich: http://www.thenerdreich.com
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gilduran.com
In 2022, Peter Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan—formerly of Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase—envisioned a Second American Civil War.

He predicted it would be triggered by Bitcoin.

This is how it would work:
“It’s a mistake to think a Second American Civil War would look anything like the first Civil War, or like World War 2 for that matter. It’d be nothing like the movies with huge movements of uniformed soldiers, tanks, and planes. Instead it’ll just be a continuation and escalation of what we’ve seen over the last several years: a network-to-network war to control minds, rather than state-to-state war to control territory.” — The Network State: How To Start a New Country by Balaji Srinivasan https://a.co/eRihuJi
November 11, 2025 at 5:03 AM
gilduran.com
image of elon musk with semicolon eyes
November 10, 2025 at 10:28 PM
gilduran.com
Introducing ADX Florence, the Network State for billionaires who want to overthrow democracy.

New units coming online in 2028 and beyond.

(If the billionaires can imagine eternal life, Mars colonies and a post-democracy world, we can imagine this. "Meme it and we will be it.")
overhead photo of ADX florence supermax prison
November 7, 2025 at 2:48 AM
gilduran.com
currently the winning thumbnail 🐀

forget the lies you have been told! rats are empathetic, intelligent, and sweet pocket puppies.

and their tails are beautiful.
Gil Duran holding a pet rat while talking to Paulina Borsook. Text reads "She smelled a rat in Silicon Valley. Turns out she was right."
October 21, 2025 at 9:02 PM
gilduran.com
Coming soon to The Nerd Reich podcast...a rare cameo by Bernie the Anti-Fascist Fancy Rat!

Our new episode—an interview with Paulina Borsook, who saw tech fascism rising out of San Francisco 30 years ago—drops soon.

Subscribe on YouTube to get it first:
www.youtube.com/@TheNerdReic...
photo of gil duran holding a hooded fancy rat named Bernie
October 21, 2025 at 3:00 AM
gilduran.com
You can tell the Antichrist thing is a disaster for Thiel because his big-mouthed toadies are totally silent.

Re: Satanic themes: Every year Thiel's firm throws a party called Hereticon—a literal celebration of heresy, with mock Christian themes.

Shh, don't tell the Christians!
Screenshot of Founders Fund Hereticon Apocalypse Ball wit many-eyed feathered monster, a witch looking into a crystal ball, assorted occult imagery, and the biblical quote "Be Not Afraid"
October 20, 2025 at 6:54 PM
gilduran.com
Moral cowards, lacking core beliefs, can be pushed in any direction.

An insight to keep in mind as the billionaire class calculates the optimal path through fascism.
NYT Headline: Benioff Apologizes for Saying Trump Should Send Troops to San Francisco Marc Benioff, the chief executive of Salesforce, said he no longer believed that National Guard troops were needed in the city.
October 17, 2025 at 9:51 PM
gilduran.com
Globes, an Israeli business publication, says Gaza could become a "tax haven" with lax regulations for tech companies—and has drawn support from Peter Thiel.
Headline from Globes, Israeli business publication: Jared Kushner and Peter Thiel are also in: Gaza could become a tax haven that will bring about the normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia The huge economic project of rebuilding Gaza after the war is already attracting interest from countries, billionaires and former leaders • From Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who aspires to establish AI centers in the Strip, to foreign investors looking for enabling regulation • Experts predict: The development initiatives could serve as leverage to promote normalization with Saudi Arabia, also through Kushner's involvement, but the road there is still fraught with political and security obstacles."
October 17, 2025 at 1:55 AM
gilduran.com
The creation of ‘parallel’ institutions—media outlets, universities, political parties, etc—is key.

That's how billionaires turn their money into institutional capture and ideological weaponization.

Weiss already has a “university” and a “Free Press.”
Now she gets CBS...
From Gil Duran's New Republic piece: So, there’s no debate about whether this ideology exists. The question is what to call it, and how to describe its political orientation. For clarity, it helps to briefly examine some of the intertwined characters trying to circle-jerk this parallel world into being. Let’s start with Bowles. Her celebrated article echoed the arguments in Michael Shellenberger’s “San Fransicko: How Progressives Ruin Cities” book and even featured the exact same anti-S.F. critics. Shellenberger, a former leftist P.R. expert who worked for socialist Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez before pivoting to right-wing causes, now serves as chair of politics, censorship and free speech at the newly formed University of Austin. This effort at a parallel academic institution was co-founded by The New York Times’ former conservative columnist Bari Weiss, Bowles’s wife. In 2022, after Musk put Weiss in charge of writing “The Twitter Files,” she recruited Shellenberger to help.
October 13, 2025 at 5:46 PM
gilduran.com
Spotted in Oakland
Wrong Way street sign with a crossed-out swastika
October 13, 2025 at 1:43 AM
gilduran.com
Just got my copy of Gilded Rage by @jacobsilverman.com

Please buy this important book about how tech zillionaires went off the edge.

(Bonus: I’m in it!)
Book Cover of “Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley” by Jacob Silverman. Featuring Elon Musk with a makeshift crown.
October 11, 2025 at 7:13 PM
gilduran.com
Yes, it's weird that Peter Thiel can't stop talking up the Antichrist.

But look on the bright side—he's also the guy who:

-Gave @jd-vance-1.bsky.social his first VC job
-Funded Vance's firm
-Bought his Senate seat
-Got him the VP slot

Have a nice day!
photo of JD Vance
October 10, 2025 at 11:22 PM
gilduran.com
Timeline cleanse: Bernie the Rescue Rat chomping a tortilla.
Hooded rat eating tortilla
October 10, 2025 at 1:59 AM
gilduran.com
2025 is just full of surprises
hilariously wrong AI-generated net worth calculator that says Gil Duran has a net work of $61.5 million
October 9, 2025 at 12:39 AM
gilduran.com
Terrified Curtis Yarvin—the “philosopher behind JD Vance”—plans to flee the USA.

The Dork Enlightenment guru says the Trump administration is failing to go full authoritarian.

“I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country.”
From Yarvin's Substack: The second Trump revolution, like the first, is failing. It is failing because it deserves to fail. It is failing because it spends all its time patting itself on the back. It is failing because its true mission, which neither it nor (still less) its supporters understand, is still as far beyond its reach as algebra is beyond a cat. Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive.
October 6, 2025 at 4:01 AM
gilduran.com
I was on NPR with that reporter last year and he tried to argue that the tech right and the Republican right were disjointed rather than organized, and didn’t have a policy plan. Played real defense for JD Vance! And I was like, what about Project 2025?

www.thenerdreich.com/j-d-vance-ca...
Ian Ward; Also, these are contradictory thinkers, a lot of them you can't square Thiel and Yarvin's thought with the thought of someone like the Claremont Institute necessarily. There are real tensions here and those tensions exist within JD Vance's thinking. So I think you need to broaden your frame a little bit to understand the full complexity of Vance's thought. CHAKRABARTI: Gil, you want to respond to that? DURAN: I think there is a plan. It's called Project 2025. And that's where all of these things are now merging. A plan to completely seize control of government, to fire up to 500,000 government bureaucrats and make government as a right-wing tool. So there is actually a plan.
October 2, 2025 at 4:53 PM
gilduran.com
This week: The Network State conference in Singapore.

Watch as radicalized tech billionaires and authoritarian governments openly plot a post-democracy, post-USA crypto future.

The Network State is an extremist tech cult based on the work of Curtis Yarvin. It calls for a program of "tech zionism."
@balajis: This year's Network State Conference is on Friday, October 3 in Singapore. Our speakers include Vitalik Buterin, Bryan Johnson, Ben Horowitz, Brian Armstrong, Amjad Masad, Ranveer Allahbadia, Arthur Hayes, Nas Daily, Noah Smith, Andrew Huberman, and the governments of Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and El Salvador.
September 28, 2025 at 11:12 PM
gilduran.com
All of these apply to MAGA, and *especially* to tech fascists, so...
from Ken Klippenstein: In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report. The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indica” (indicators) of violence: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.
September 28, 2025 at 6:12 AM
gilduran.com
New Network State just dropped…

Balaji announces the creation of …UZ-TECH-ISTAN

A very niiice new country for tech bros. Who needs San Francisco when you’ve got Astana?

Vladimir Putin will never invade and liquidate your whole thing or anything like that. Pinky swear.
Balaji Srinivasan tweet: It's happening. Kazakhstan recently signed a deal with the Solana network state to create a special economic zone.
September 26, 2025 at 10:26 PM
gilduran.com
11/ There are still some copies available, but this book deserves a reissue with a introduction by somebody famous.
cover of "Cyberselfish" by Paulina Borsook.
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
gilduran.com
6/ Borsook described “paranoid” anti-government rantings and a tech libertarian culture in which the “gestalt is of testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands.”

And soon, these guys would morph into multi-billionaires...
From Cyberselfish: Although many impor- tant potential and actual violations of constitutionality and What's Right are bruited about on alt.cypherpunks with sense and smarts, the tone is mostly a mixture of the paranoid rantings, reminiscent of what showed up occasionally in '60s underground newspapers, plus something new, more desperate and more scary. The gestalt is of testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands.
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
gilduran.com
4/ Borsook divided the tech ”libertarians” into two main types: the Ravers and the Gilders.

The Ravers are the ones who go to Burning Man and project countercultural ideas. The Gilders are the Peter Thiel types, more overtly focused on money and power.

But they are birds of a feather.
From Cyberselfish: Emblem of the ravers is former Grateful Dead lyricist and Electronic Frontier Foundation* cofounder John Perry Barlow. Barlow wrote the notorious "Declaration of Independence of Cyber- space," which, in language longing to evoke Henry David Thoreau in "Civil Disobedience" and the Jefferson Airplane's late '60s revo- lutionary call-to-arms, "Volunteers of America," cries out that you are old and sick and tired and tyrannical and we are beautiful and free and loving and of the future. Posted Net-wide, his "Declara- tion" is perhaps the best-known expression of this kind of techno- libertarianism. It's no coincidence that the last fad that Timothy Leary embraced before his death was the Net and that he was taken on as a kind of Jove figure by Barlow and other cyberhippie Utopians.
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
gilduran.com
2/ In 2001, Borsook said tech "libertarianism" reflected an adolescent mindset, with a craving for unchecked independence & resistance to constraint.

She warned that tech libertarians wanted an anti-human world that worked more like a computer. From "Cyberselfish," a book based on her 90s writing:
from cyberselfish by paulina borsook: It's an inability to reconcile the demands of being individual with the demands of participating in society, which coincides beautifully with a preference for, and glorification of, being the solo comman- der of one's computer in lieu of any other economically viable be- havior. Computers are so much more rule-based, controllable, fixable, and comprehensible than any human will ever be. As many political schools of thought do, these technolibertarians make a philosophy out of a personality defect.
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
gilduran.com
1/ A longtime Wired editor just wrote a mush-brained essay about how he totally missed the political rot of Silicon Valley (& still doesn't get it).

But in the late 1990s, a Wired journalist warned of a toxic ideology bubbling up from tech. Paulina Borsook has largely been erased. Let's change that
photo of paulina borsook
September 24, 2025 at 6:36 PM
gilduran.com
“Modern political journalism must identify memetic warfare tactics early and disrupt coordinated manipulation before mass adoption.”
Norman Rockwell's "Free Speech" painting of a man standing to speak in a public forum.
September 22, 2025 at 3:35 AM