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The Nerd Reich | Gil Durán
Description
Journalist Gil Durán spent years in political consulting before returning to reporting, and eventually, to the beat that became the subject of his book, The Nerd Reich. He joins Chris to lay out his case that a corner of Silicon Valley has turned against democracy itself — an ideology he traces from the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual, through neo-reactionary blogger Curtis Yarvin, to Balaji Srinivasan’s "network state" — with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Vice President J.D. Vance at its center. His argument, Durán insists, rests on what these men have said on the record: that democracy is obsolete, that a "cognitive elite" should rule, that crypto and AI will dissolve the nation-state. He contends the movement is losing the public even as it gains power, and that the 2026 midterms will test whether that still counts.
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Music by Andrew R. Bird
Photo by Jessica Christian/Getty, Gil Durán
Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible b