A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
Silicon Valley oligarchs as Bond villains
[Musk] and the Silicon Valley MAGA cohort were finished with Democrats, regulators, stability, all of it. They were opting instead for the freewheeling, fortune-generating chaos that they knew from the startup world. They had big dreams and had made the calculus that Trump would create a more hospitable environment in which to realize them. They were going to plant devices in people’s brains, replace national currencies with unregulated digital tokens, replace generals with artificial intelligence systems and much more. “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress and the realization of our potential,” Andreessen wrote in his manifesto. “We are not victims, we are conquerors.”
This New York Times magazine article is only the most recent warning (though an abnormally strong one for the Times) of how screwed America may be in just a few weeks. Musk has become almost a caricature of the dangerous oligarch who seeks money, power, the end of democracy, and control over everyday human beings' existence. He has powerful friends in a technology industry that once was run by honorable people but is now, in so many ways, the epitome of corporate and personal avarice. A personal note: I arrived in Silicon Valley about the same time as Marc Andreessen, who has come a long – and ugly – way from his days as a graduate student co-developer of one of the first web browsers. I met him a few times and was an admirer. Today he is unrecognizable. Where he's arrived on his journey, unfortunately for all of us, is a place where megalomania, greed, and hunger for unchecked power rule all else. I don't know what we can do about this, but democracy and fundamental freedoms depend on somehow preventing this clique – which specifically includes its political creation, Vance – from running everything.
This isn’t a standard-issue case of oligarchy. It is an apotheosis of the egotism and social Darwinism embedded in Silicon Valley’s pursuit of monopoly—the sense that concentration of power in the hands of geniuses is the most desirable social arrangement. As Peter Thiel once put it, “Competition is for losers.” (He also bluntly admitted, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”) In this worldview, restraints on power are for losers, too. With his government contracts—and his insider influence—Musk will become further ensconced in the national-security state. (He already has a $1.8 billion classified contract, likely with the National Reconnaissance Office, and, through a division of SpaceX called Starshield, supplies communications networks for the military.) At a moment when the government is confronting crucial decisions about the future of AI and the commercialization of space, his ideals will hold sway.
Elon Musk has come out of the ideological closet, revealing himself to be one of the most evil, and dangerous, people on the planet. As this Atlantic commentary (if that doesn't work try this link) explains in the starkest way, his support of Trump – who would be the most dangerous person on the planet if reinstalled in the White House – is transactional as well. Corporate power and coziness with politicians is nothing new. But this crowd holds the levers to some of the most essential elements of society, and is demonstrating all the time how little it cares about the human consequences of its actions, beyond enrichment of the select few and control of the many.
Because there is no longer really any ambiguity here. Elon Musk is not an eccentric billionaire with a limited self-interested relationship to politics who occasionally says some off color things. He is in a league of his own, actively wielding his unparalleled wealth, generated from Tesla products and SpaceX government contracts, and his reach, multiplied by his purchase of Twitter, to reelect Trump and advance a policy agenda that reeks of authoritarianism and racial animus. He is the richest political operative in the world. And his project, as anyone who follows Musk on X already knows, largely revolves around two things—ending “Wokeness”, aka policies that favor inclusivity, and “securing the border” from undocumented migrants, who he has joined Trump in deriding and dehumanizing as “invaders.”
Merchant, in his newsletter post, connects many more dots here. Musk has some formidable achievements to his name, but he's also been the ultimate government welfare recipient – via contracts and manipulative tax breaks – on his way to unparalleled wealth. What Merchant shows is how the oligarch's arrogance, wealth, corporate power, and political goals – and parallel operations via his right-wing oligarch pals – are all part of the same project.
• Musk, Thiel, and Vance himself are all savvy enough to recognize that Donald Trump is falling apart mentally, and perhaps physically, as the world watches. (For instance just this evening in Pennsylvania, where he talked to the crowd about Arnold Palmer’s genitals. If the man were part of any normal family, he would already be under supervisory care.) Should he and Vance be elected, the odds are overwhelming that Vance would sooner or later end up in control—through the 25th Amendment or by natural means.
• JD Vance turned 40 this past summer. He is a hundred times more vigorous than Trump, and at this point a thousand times smarter. He is incalculably more threatening.
• Thus the election is in the short term about Trump. But in the long run it’s really about Vance, Musk, and Thiel.
I've quoted just three of the bullet points in Jim Fallows' newsletter post about the even larger stakes of this election that almost every Big Journalism organization has basically ignored: the extremely likely presidency of Vance if Trump wins. Vance is owned and operated by some of Silicon Valley's most anti-democracy billionaires, which is saying something. They represent the ascendance of something new in the modern world, and it is a five-alarm political and social conflagration. What lengths will they go to install the equally bad-news (or worse) Vance in the White House beyond buying him the vice presidency? I wonder if the increasingly addled Trump – who is nothing if not paranoid – has given this much thought. The Fallows post also features a searing segment on the way a highly-paid propagandist (who has been calling himself a journalist) from the Murdoch family's Fox "News" deceptively edited fascist remarks from Trump to make it look like he said nothing of the kind. The episode is only the latest reminder that the Murdoch clan – at least the parts of it that controls the media empire – deliberately and relentlessly injects poison into our civic bloodstream. If you subscribe to cable or satellite TV, or an online equivalent, you are sending money to this vile company every month. I urge you to cancel, right now.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
Take your personal contact list, compare it to the national voter file, and find out which of your actual friends, family, co-workers and past acquaintances live in swing states and districts where a call or text from you could be hugely influential.
Please read Micah Sifry's advice – and heed it! You still have time to make a huge difference.
Please send your suggestions
I spend a lot of time looking for essential coverage, and hope you'll help me by letting me know about the good stuff you find. Let me know.
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Brian Merchant
James Fallows
Micah L. Sifry
