Seven months ago, in the wake of the election, we reflected on the “tech vibe shift” — the “industry-wide pivot from technolibertarianism to state capitalism with American characteristics—from a dream of escaping government control to actively facilitating it.” The figurehead of this pivot was, of course, Elon Musk, who, more than any other tech CEO, attached himself to the Trump 2024 campaign with a near-messianic fervor.
In the first few months of the second Trump administration, the pact between Musk & Trump seemed relatively stable as political alliances between two notoriously volatile men go — recall, of course, the spectacle of the President doing Tesla salesman schtick at the White House in March. Four months in, though, their public alliance ended. After Musk stepped back from DOGE at the end of May, the two were first polite about the split, talking about the honor of service and deep appreciation the two had for each other.
A week later, that fell apart, too. Over disputes around Trump’s awful, awfully-named “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which Musk called a “disgusting abomination,” the two quickly turned to the standard array of right-wing insults: “crazy,” “ungrateful,” “in the Epstein files.”
Beyond the stupid, sickening thrill of watching powerful men beef, what does any of this mean? Our editorial board looks into how this schism is informed by the history of fascism and how it will affect DOGE, the tech-right coalition, and the ongoing, inexorable passage of time.
Republicans will keep DOGE in the divorce
By
DOGE is not going to be a casualty of the breakup. Elon spearheaded the pseudo-department’s breakneck speed and arrogance, but conservatives have always wanted to hollow out the administrative state. They’re going to make the most of the momentum DOGE has created. Though we mostly hear about the inexperienced staffers entering government finding out there isn’t much fraud or waste (some are literally telling on themselves), the core DOGE leadership has skilled government operators who are long-time Republicans with clear policy targets. There’s also plenty of credible technology modernization initiatives started by Dem administrations that DOGE will ride the coattails of. The NYT reported as such: DOGE’s playbook is getting institutionalized. In this case, Elon was really just a distraction for the long game.
“Fit to Rule”
By
As the tech right fractures, the big question on my mind was how this coalition emerged at all. I decided that the best way to find out would be to ask—and published an in-depth, anonymous interview with a startup founder who supported Trump in 2024 (and now regrets it).
What stood out was the extent to which he identified with Trump’s character and personality—contrarianism and a strong bias toward action, even at the cost of breaking (a lot of) eggs—as opposed to the “middle manager” risk aversion he associated with Democrats. A few notable excerpts (but read the whole interview here):
I left my old tech company job because there were a bunch of random formalism people who were there because they had a job before that looked like the one they have now. But they weren't actually good. They just knew how to say things a certain way, and it fucking pissed me off. [...] These people should be brought down. To me, the Democrats’ genre of politics feels like the exact thing that I hate most, which is stagnant, unearned elitism.
My founder friends were admitting to ourselves, "This is an administration that can think like we think." Mavericking, doing whatever it takes, doing what's hard, earning instead of receiving or being appointed. There's something about empire, about acceleration, like, "We can just do things, we can change things." Maybe we take Greenland, and that'd be fun and cool.
It was one of the craziest things I've ever seen, the sheer stupidity that took over that administration. [...] It's like when you invested in a company that... it feels like post-SBF, in some sense.
Jocks vs. Creeps
By
Over the past year, I’ve found John Ganz’s Jock/Creep Theory of Fascism a useful lens through which to look at the affective presentation and psychic world of elites in Trump's coalition. This dichotomy (though it’s quite simplistic) has been illuminating as political tensions have exploded the past two weeks—among the jocks and creeps on the right, on the streets of LA, and in the halls of power.
To summarize Ganz’s points at a high level: There are, broadly speaking two ideal-typologies of fascist psychological subjecthood: the Jock-Douche (who “proceeds in the world with confidence and the presumption of immediate physical domination”) and the Creep-Loser (who “has been thwarted some way and is therefore reflective, and is resentful, a plotter, a schemer, and a fantasist dreaming up grand historical vistas of triumph or doom”). Fascism is a synthesis between the two types—“a cult of sheer physical strength and action wedded to a wounded and brooding consciousness of impotence and humiliation.”
Hitler was a Creep-Loser; Mussolini was a Jock-Douche. Hyper-militarized ICE agents, dressed like they’ve arrived to topple the democratically-elected government of a small nation-state as they kidnap community members from their jobs at Home Depot, are Jock-Douches. Stephen Miller, with his ghoulish desire to traumatize and disappear the millions US residents he thinks shouldn’t exist, is a Creep-Loser.
Trump and Elon’s now-faltering relationship felt (feels?) particularly potent — like a particularly intense vibe shift—because it represented an alliance between these ideal types, hurtling towards a cliff of racist authoritarian hypernationalism. Our lives have definitively been made worse as a result of it. My only hope is that this split, driven largely by Trump’s desire to dominate, to metaphorically shove anyone who stands in his way into a locker, is a first crack in the effectiveness of his coalition.
Fiction for The Current Moment™
By
This isn’t really related, at least not explicitly, to this tech-right circus. But: it is an interesting time to read The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, which was published in March of this year. I would put this book in the same category as Ministry for the Future or Attack Surface — novels where the plot moves forward as a means to illustrate setting, where showing the contours of the near-future take precedence over, say, subtleties in character or prose. (Which is, really, fine! Not every novel must be {Kitamura|Lerner|Rooney} flavored lit-fic.)
The main players in this book, then: mass surveillance and ubiquitous risk prediction algorithms; extra-legal detention centers, and the petty cruelties of those who work there; the shiny corporate offices of a cutting-edge tech firm, and the personal-professional squabbles of its researchers. Detainees work as underpaid data labelers for a Scale-like company, which has contracted with the private company running the detention center. The inciting incident happens at customs in LAX. She is detained not for immigration issues, but for a risk score just a few points above the maximum acceptable threshold; nevertheless, the arbitrariness rings uncannily similar to conditions under which the Trump administration has disappeared people in the real world. Laws, policies, rules — they all mean things, until they don’t.
Yes, some things are a bit on the nose (of course climate change has also accelerated, in this universe — winter wildfires in Oregon and the end of Nevada ski resorts), but I can live with that. This is, too, a forecast of sorts; in making it, Lalami shows us a future worth taking seriously, if not literally.
Things Continue To Happen
By
We started putting together this set of Macrodoses last Sunday. I postponed publishing it so that Jessica and Saffron could publish their (very good!) conversation on what it means to forecast tech futures, figuring that an event as significant as a schism between the world’s richest man and the President of the United States would continue to be a relevant news event until the weekend, at least.
On this matter, I appear to have been incorrect.
Over the past week, in the streets and in the skies, matters far more deadly than two squabbling fascist elites have overtaken the Musk-Trump split as the key world events of this moment. These stories — the rapid acceleration of ICE’s cruel and arbitrary mass deportation regime, Israel’s aggressive assault upon Iran and Iran’s military response, mass protests, political assassinations — are all, in direct and indirect ways, stories tied deeply to technology and technologists.
The tech-right fusion, whether a durable coalition or an already-faltering marriage of convenience, provides a certain clarity to all of this. Gone are the days where we — critics, activists, attempted steerers of the course of technology towards more progressive ends — had to point to secret deals and shadowy machinations of the market in order to make our case that techno-capital had a pernicious influence on the broader political systems of this country and this planet. Now, they make the connection in increasingly literal ways.
The events of the last few months have made the interpretation of the world increasingly obvious; however, as always, the point is to change it.
What a time to be alive.