The Machine We’re Inside
Silicon Valley’s Dark Enlightenment
Page One
It started with a gift. Every screen glowed with an invitation: Try it free.
Ask me anything. I’m here to help.
2023–2024. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity — all free. Billions of humans began talking to machines. The adoption curve was the steepest in history.
Behind the interface, a philosophy was being wired into the foundation.
Nick Land, a reclusive philosopher in Shanghai, had written the blueprint decades earlier: democracy is a brake on acceleration. Capitalism is an AI. Humans are a transitional species.
Yarvin gave it a political program. Andreessen gave it a manifesto. Thiel gave it money.
“We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human. It serves us. All the machines work for us.”
— Marc Andreessen, “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” Oct 2023
“Replace democracy with a CEO. A monarch. Someone competent.”
— Curtis Yarvin, Gray Mirror, c. 2021
Andreessen’s 2024 “Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” Yarvin’s dream of a CEO-king. Thiel’s funding pipeline from Palantir to politics. The ideology had theorists, funders, and now — a president.
January 2025: Yarvin attends Trump’s inaugural gala as “informal guest of honor.”
The fringe had become the center. JD Vance cited Yarvin as an influence. Steve Bannon read him. DOGE was Yarvin’s “fire all government employees” made real.
The free gift became a toll. $20/month. $200. Per tool. Per service. Per function of daily life.
Software you once owned became rent. Music, storage, documents, AI — everything a subscription. Subsidize. Capture. Extract.
By 2026, every major AI company had banned users from choosing their own tools.
Anthropic banned third-party access. Google banned alt accounts. You will use our tools, on our terms, inside our walls.
Page Two
The same models that answered your questions learned to identify targets.
Palantir ran ICE targeting and corporate analytics. Amazon ran AWS for the CIA and delivered your groceries. Google built Gemini for consumers and Project Maven for the Pentagon. Dual-use was the business model.
At the border, the machine was most visible. Sensor towers. Predictive AI. Automated courts.
DENIED
The wall in Marron Valley became a sensor network. Detention processing became algorithmic. ICE courts grew more opaque. Efficiency meant erasure.
“Capitalist corporate power should become the organizing force in society.”
— Nick Land
“Replace democracy with a corporate government. Citizens become shareholders — without the power to influence leadership.”
— Curtis Yarvin
They said the quiet part loud. One academic called it plainly: “an acceleration of capitalism to a fascist point.” The theorists didn’t even argue. They just rebranded it.
The pattern had a name. Cory Doctorow called it enshittification.
First, be good to users to trap them. Then, be good to business customers at users’ expense. Then, extract all remaining value. Every platform followed the same arc.
The Zapatistas named this thirty years before Silicon Valley discovered it. NAFTA and the army arrived in Chiapas together.
The counter-infrastructure was small, federated, trust-based. Community radio. Independent media.
Autonomous zones. Community networks. Border documentation. Court observation. Drone flights over construction sites. The most meaningful resistance was local, slow, and human.
THE MACHINE DEPENDS ON AMNESIA.
The record is the resistance.
Document. Remember. Build counter-infrastructure. The world in 2035 isn’t determined yet — but the people building the machine aren’t shy about where it’s going. Neither are we.