What do Silicon Valley Tech oligarchs want from the rest of us?
San Francisco and the East Bay have become a learning laboratory for studying the designs of billionaire tech executives on the nation and even the rest of the world. In this Part III show on San Francisco and Bay Area politics, seasoned journalists, podcasters and political researchers with Doomloop Dispatch and the San Francisco Phoenix Project discuss the apparent and completed plans that “Network State” tech power players have. These now look like: coal-based projects in the East Bay, new Network State cities and more land for real estate profiteers. We discuss how their plans have succeeded or failed in San Francisco and Oakland.
Aligned with YIMBY forces in San Francisco, tech executives and real estate folks helped elect billionaire Daniel Lurie as mayor. But in Oakland, their anti-blackness campaigns have (mostly) failed and Oakland’s new mayor is progressive and former congresswoman Barbara Lee.
How did Oakland beat back astroturfed groups like “Black Action Alliance”–founded by white, hedge fund manager Philip Dreyfuss, who also primarily funded the campaigns to recall the former Oakland Mayor, Sheng Tao and Alameda DA Pamela Price? What do these new tech and billionaire campaigns to take over long-standing liberal and progressive cities mean for the rest of us?
See also: Part I and Part II and past shows on “JD Vance and the Tech Bros of San Francisco” here:
JD Vance and the Tech Bros of SF, Part I
JD Vance and the Tech Bros of SF, Part II
The early Ali Collins show on Talk of the Bay: Could It Happen Here?
Resources:
Gil Duran’s essential article at The New Republic, from April, 2024
Gil Duran on Twitter
Gil Duran on Substack.
The Sad Franciso Podcast, with Toshio Meronek
The Phoenix Papers report (Part I) on Big Money in SF Politics
Peter Thiel’s Praxis Co. plans an autonomous city in the Mediterranean
International “Network State” projects
Kelly Hayes on Christo-nationalism and Techno-fascism
News outlets reporting on all this:
The San Francisco Standard (note funded by billionaire Michael Moritz, who is also allied with California Forever, etc.)
