Chuck Darwin<p>To fully grasp the current situation in San Francisco, where venture capitalists are trying to take control of City Hall, you must listen to <a href="https://c.im/tags/Balaji" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Balaji</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Srinivasan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Srinivasan</span></a>. </p><p>Before you do, steel yourself for what’s to come: <br>A normal person could easily mistake his rambling train wrecks of thought for a crackpot’s ravings, <br>but influential Silicon Valley billionaires regard him as a genius</p><p>“Balaji has the highest rate of output per minute of good new ideas of anybody I’ve ever met,” wrote Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the V.C. firm Andreessen-Horowitz, <br>in a blurb for Balaji’s 2022 book, The Network State: How to Start a New Country. </p><p>The book outlines a plan for tech plutocrats to exit democracy and <br>establish new sovereign territories. </p><p>I mentioned Balaji’s ideas in two previous stories about Network State–related efforts in California<br>—a proposed tech colony called California Forever <br>—and the tech-funded campaign to capture San Francisco’s government.</p><p>Balaji, a 43-year-old Long Island native who goes by his first name, <br>has a solid Valley pedigree: <br>He earned multiple degrees from Stanford University, <br>founded multiple startups, <br>became a partner at Andreessen-Horowitz <br>and then served as chief technology officer at Coinbase. </p><p>He is also the leader of a cultish and increasingly strident neo-reactionary tech political movement that sees American democracy as an enemy. </p><p>In 2013, a New York Times story headlined “Silicon Valley Roused by Secession Call” described a speech in which he <br>“told a group of young entrepreneurs that the United States had become ‘the Microsoft of nations’: outdated and obsolescent.”</p><p>“The speech won roars from the audience at Y Combinator, a leading start-up incubator,” reported the Times. </p><p>Balaji paints a bleak picture of a dystopian future in a U.S. in chaos and decline, <br>but his prophecies sometimes fall short. </p><p>Last year, he lost $1 million in a public bet after wrongly predicting a massive surge in the price of Bitcoin.</p><p>Still, his appetite for autocracy is bottomless. <br>Last October, Balaji hosted the first-ever Network State Conference. </p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/Garry" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Garry</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Tan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Tan</span></a><br>—the current Y Combinator CEO who’s attempting to spearhead a political takeover of San Francisco<br>—participated in an interview with Balaji and cast the effort as part of the Network State movement. </p><p>Tan, who made headlines in January after tweeting <br>“die slow motherfuckers” <br>at local progressive politicians, frames his campaign as an experiment in “moderate” politics</p><p>But in a podcast interview one month before the conference, Balaji laid out a more disturbing and extreme vision.</p><p>What I’m really calling for is something like tech Zionism,” he said, <br>after comparing his movement to those started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith <br>(founder of Mormonism), Theodor Herzl (“spiritual father” of the state of Israel), and Lee Kuan Yew (former authoritarian ruler of Singapore). </p><p>Balaji then revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe <br>clad in gray t-shirts. </p><p>“And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”</p><p>The Grays’ shirts would feature “Bitcoin or Elon or other kinds of logos … <br>Y Combinator is a good one for the city of San Francisco in particular.” </p><p>Grays would also receive special ID cards providing access to exclusive, Gray-controlled sectors of the city. </p><p>In addition, the Grays would make an alliance with the police department, funding weekly “policeman’s banquets” to win them over.</p><p>“Grays should embrace the police, okay? <br>All-in on the police,” said Srinivasan. </p><p>“What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets. <br>That means every policeman’s son, daughter, wife, cousin, you know, sibling, whatever, should get a job at a tech company in security.”</p><p><a href="https://c.im/tags/NetworkState" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NetworkState</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/grayshirts" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>grayshirts</span></a><br><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/180487/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">newrepublic.com/article/180487</span><span class="invisible">/balaji-srinivasan-network-state-plutocrat</span></a></p>