Why tech billionaires want a ‘corporate dictatorship’

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Vox Media Podcast Network

Technology, Business

4.3 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 July 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This is Jon Fortt, CNBC journalist. I’m guest-hosting for a couple more episodes of Decoder this summer while Nilay is out on parental leave. Today, I’m talking with a very special guest: Gil Duran, an old friend, journalist, and author of The Nerd Reich, a newsletter and forthcoming book about the shifting politics of Silicon Valley and the rise of tech authoritarianism. Links: Is Peter Thiel the Antichrist? NYT didn’t think to ask | The Nerd Reich How tech authoritarianism becomes reality | The Nerd Reich Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America | The New Yorker The rise of techno-authoritarianism | The Atlantic JD Vance thinks monarchists have some good ideas | The Verge Startups meeting with Trump officials to push for deregulated ‘Freedom Cities’ | Wired Peter Thiel-linked startup wants to build the “next great city” in Greenland | Inside Hook Bitcoin could replace dollar If US debt grows says Coinbase CEO | CryptoSlate Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Ursa Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:30.2	Maybe it's a romance or that nonfiction book you've been needing to get around to, or maybe it's something else.
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0:43.2	No, no, like summer.
0:45.8	What we read and why we read during the summer.
0:48.9	That's this week on Explain It to Me.
0:51.2	New episodes every Sunday, wherever you get your podcasts.
1:00.5	This week on the gray area, the president of Wesleyan College tells me what's happening on
1:05.0	American campuses. The Trump administration is attacking colleges, universities, because they want
1:09.8	to take them over. Not because they shouldn't have had encampments or because not enough conservatives are going into physics.
1:18.2	What does the attack on higher ed mean for America?
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1:31.2	Hi. Sean Illey. New episodes every Monday, available everywhere. Hello, and welcome to Decoder. This is John Fort, CNBC journalist, co-host of Closenbell
	...

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