One of my hopes is that there's a limited lifespan to some of this stuff because there is no positive vision there, because it is so cruel.

And I think the average American voter is not drawn to that.

I'm going to... Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine.

I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Jacob Silverman.

Jacob is the author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk, and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley,

which is coming out in September 2025 from Bloomsbury. It's not available for pre-order yet,

but keep your eyes open for it. His book, Easy Money, is also now in paperback.

U.S. elections feel like they go on forever, and so we have been watching how Silicon Valley has been engaging in this U.S. election for a while now.

But I figured as the vote gets closer and closer, it's probably time to check in on what we have learned about the tech industry through this entire process.

Because I feel like it has been a quite revelatory period of time in the politics of many of the people

who are the most powerful in Silicon Valley itself. Obviously, we saw someone like Peter Thiel

get behind Donald Trump back in 2016, but in this election campaign, it feels like many more

of the billionaires and powerful figures in Silicon Valley

have come out very openly about the increasingly extreme right-wing politics that they

hold. Certainly, there are some who do support Kamala Harris and the Democrats and have donated

to the party to try to make sure it gets elected, but it feels like there's a lot more

energy within the tech industry behind this right-wing project that Donald Trump is trying to

bring in that is increasingly shaped, as I've talked to with other guests in the past, by these

ideas that come from the tech industry as well. And so I figured as this campaign draws to a close,

it's a good time for us to discuss this on the show. And I figured Jacob was the perfect person to

discuss it with me. Now, there is a caveat I want to make before we get into the episode. We

recorded this on Thursday, October 24th. So a week before many of you will be hearing it. And,

...