The rise of a new elite is impossible to ignore. Silicon Valley’s tech oligarchs are no longer content with pioneering innovation—they’re increasingly meddling in politics, setting their sights on reshaping the world to their vision. Some have become outspoken apostles of the Dark Enlightenment, an ideology that rejects the messy chaos of democracy, where the masses choose their leaders, in favor of a corporate monarchy ruled by the select few. These aren’t just brilliant minds—they’re people wielding staggering wealth and influence. It’s no surprise that Elon Musk was swept up in the euphoria of Donald Trump’s victory, a campaign he bankrolled generously. Peter Thiel took it a step further, pouring tens of millions into J.D. Vance’s campaign, propelling him all the way to the vice presidency. One thing is clear: this new elite has grand designs for remaking the world. And they’re finding allies precisely where democracy is seen as expendable, ready to be replaced by technocracy or a corporate state that runs like a colossal, well-oiled corporation.

The Code of the New Elite

The term “Dark Enlightenment” may not yet be a household name, but its ideas have long echoed in the speeches of politicians and shaped their decisions. Also known as the neoreactionary movement, or NRx, it champions the acceleration of capitalism, elitism, and social Darwinism.

Donald Trump has never explicitly branded himself a disciple of the Dark Enlightenment, but the parallels are striking. He casts himself as America’s CEO, promising “efficient governance” free of bureaucratic red tape, hinting at a “third term,” and even proclaiming at rallies that “after 2024, you won’t need to vote anymore.” This rhetoric aligns seamlessly with the core tenet of the Dark Enlightenment: democracy must give way to a monarchy or corporate dictatorship, where the leader reigns eternal, like a CEO who never steps down.

While Trump rails against the “elite” (read: Democrats), he surrounds himself with tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Howard Lutnick, who openly or tacitly embrace DE principles. He leans into social Darwinist rhetoric—from offhand remarks about migrants’ “bad genes” to elevating radical libertarians to key positions. His administration is pushing forward initiatives like Project 2025, which critics describe as a blueprint for techno-fascism.

In 2025, Trump’s administration is driving a “restructuring” of government, including efforts to weaken democratic institutions (notably through Project 2025, which carries distinct DE undertones). Critics warn this is a step toward “techno-fascism.”

The intellectual roots of the Dark Enlightenment trace back to thinkers like Nick Land and Curtis Yarvin (better known as Mencius Moldbug).

The roots of this madness trace back to the philosophers of the Dark Enlightenment. Nick Land in London and Curtis Yarvin in Silicon Valley crafted a lexicon for the new elite. Yarvin coined the term “Cathedral”—a unholy trinity of universities, media, and bureaucracy, operating like a cult of woke dogma. He tears into democracy: the will of the people is a mirage, elections are a hollow ritual, and the same old elites call the shots behind the curtain.

His alternative? Not a revolution, but a hard reset. The state is just software—crash it, wipe it, rewrite it. Keep the hardware, swap the code. His metaphors—“Cathedral,” “reset,” even “Nerd-Reich”—have become the lingua franca of Silicon Valley. In this language, power is an operating system ripe for hacking, debugging, and rebooting.

Apostles of the Dark Cult

Curtis Yarvin is the high priest. A former programmer turned blogger under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, he’s spun his sprawling posts into a kind of scripture for the new elite. His writing is a heady mix of history, philosophy, and computer metaphors. Yarvin doesn’t just trash democracy—he hands tech oligarchs a new language: Cathedral, reset, Nerd-Reich. In Silicon Valley, they read him like a mythologist who holds a mirror to their own ambitions.

Nick Land is the philosopher who turned these ideas into a manifesto. Once a philosophy lecturer at Warwick, author of theories on capitalism’s acceleration and the “Dark Enlightenment,” he bolted to Shanghai, morphing into an ideologue of a techno-authoritarian future. Land doesn’t write about politics in the usual sense but about civilization as a machine that must speed up until it burns out. For Yarvin, politics is software; for Land, it’s fire.

Peter Thiel is the financier and godfather of NRx. A billionaire, co-founder of PayPal, and Facebook’s first investor, he was the first insider to declare publicly: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” His money has launched political protégés—from Senator J.D. Vance to gubernatorial candidates. Thiel isn’t a philosopher, but without him, the Dark Enlightenment would’ve stayed a fringe blog. He turned it into a project with resources and political clout.

Other tech leaders are picking up the rhetoric. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, sings praises to acceleration and the cult of elites. Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, sketches a crypto-anarchist utopia where blockchain replaces the state. And Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO, has long dreamed of a decentralized future without power centers.

Together with Yarvin, Land, Thiel, Balaji, and Musk, they’re forging a heresy within the liberal order. Not a new empire, but a counterculture for the elite: a language where democracy sounds like a bug, and the world is a corporation begging for a hard reboot.

The Empire of Love: Yarvin’s Take on the USA

Curtis Yarvin dubs America’s modern hegemony the “Empire of Love.” This isn’t your grandpa’s empire with colonies and cannons—it’s a global web of soft control. Its arsenal? Not tanks, but diplomats; not punitive expeditions, but grants and cultural programs.

According to Yarvin, the heart of this empire is the State Department. From there, thousands of threads extend: embassies, foundations, NGOs, “missionary” organizations. Their job? To bind and cement local elites, turning them into a pro-American layer that runs their countries while believing they’re acting “independently.”

In Paris, it’s about backing the “right” politicians and journalists; in Berlin, it’s pushing the green agenda; in Kyiv, it’s NGOs and development projects; in Africa, it’s humanitarian missions. Local elites in this setup don’t feel like clients—they see themselves as the vanguard, often thinking, “We’re even more progressive than the Americans.” In reality, they’re wired into the architecture of the Empire of Love, propped up by its approval.

Yarvin argues this whole structure doesn’t rest on America’s strength but on the illusion of its eternal presence. He’s convinced that if America “lets go” of its allies, elites worldwide will crumble on their own, too accustomed to top-down support to survive without it.

His prescription sounds radical, almost like a troll: pull out of the UN, shutter embassies, dismantle NATO. In short, tear down the entire infrastructure of the Empire of Love, yank America’s fingers off the scales of global politics, and show the world Washington’s done holding hands.

For Yarvin, this isn’t defeat or isolation—it’s “liberation,” a move to smash the Cathedral on a global scale. The paradox? He pitches it as a cold, almost accounting-like strategy: cut wasteful spending, close the “missionary office,” quit playing global leader. But dig into the details—exit the UN in three weeks, liquidate NATO, shut embassies, pivot to “Zoom diplomacy”—and it’s less a strategy and more an acid trip.

These fantasies feel like the hallucinations of a techno-prophet: he dreams of a world where states collapse the moment you hit the “exit button.” Yet, in this surreal vision, you can sense the pulse of the era—exhaustion with globalism and the seductive pull of a simple fix.

Techno-Oligarchs: Monarchs or Court Favorites?

Tech oligarchs love to fancy themselves the new aristocracy of the 21st century. They build rockets, launch cryptocurrencies, and hold platforms with billions of users in their grip. They want to believe they’re demiurges, the digital era’s new Louises. But reality is far more mundane: they’re all tethered to the state, which can remind them who the real sovereign is at any moment.

In China, Jack Ma learned this the hard way. One of the country’s richest and most influential entrepreneurs, he dared criticize regulators—only to see his company, Ant Group, halted on the eve of its IPO, while Ma himself was “erased” from public life for months. In Russia, the state went further: platforms like Facebook and Instagram faced outright bans, while Telegram teeters between prohibition and Kremlin control, depending on the day’s mood in Moscow.

Elon Musk’s case in the U.S. played out in a more theatrical fashion. After Trump’s victory, Musk was strutting into the Oval Office, posing with his son beside the president, and snagging quasi-official roles in space and energy. But the honeymoon soured fast: Musk’s public spats with Trump turned their bromance to dust, and his access to the inner circle vanished overnight.

The takeaway is clear: techno-oligarchs aren’t monarchs—they’re court favorites. They’re embraced when useful, discarded when inconvenient. The illusion of power crumbles the moment the true sovereign frowns.

It’s always been this way. Under Louis XIV, Nicolas Fouquet’s rise and fall was pure theater—a dazzling minister turned disgraced prisoner in a single evening. The techno-oligarchs of the 21st century are in the same boat. Their palaces are corporations, their weapons are technologies, but their fate still hinges on the whims of the ruler.

Why Yarvin Matters—and His Paradoxes

Curtis Yarvin doesn’t craft utopias or map out futures. His role is way more down-to-earth: he’s the ideological bullhorn for techno-oligarchs.

He hands them three things:

• Meaning. Yarvin convinces billionaires they’re not just fat cats—they’re a new aristocracy, rightfully owning the reins of power.

• Language. His metaphors—“Cathedral,” “reset,” “Nerd Reich”—flip politics into IT-nerd speak: the state as code, the system as software, power as a bug or an upgrade.

• Hope. He dangles the promise that capital and state can hook up, and tech leaders will be the ones dictating the rules down the line.

But right there’s his paradox. Yarvin worships monarchies and spits on democracy, yet he and his “Silicon Valley aristocrats” were bred in a democratic world—with its universities, markets, and freedoms. Without that “rotting democracy,” there’d be no PayPal, no SpaceX, no Coinbase.

Another paradox: his future blueprints. “Conquer space” via armed satellites or “bail on NATO in three weeks”—he drops them deadpan, but they reek of political surrealism, more fever dream than playbook. Still, this trippy shit hits: it cracks open fissures in the status quo and exposes how the “Empire of Love” teeters on habits and rituals, not rock-solid ground.

Bottom line, Yarvin isn’t about pitching realistic plots. His gig is mirroring the elite: bouncing back their fears, ambitions, and fantasies in sharp visuals and gut-punch metaphors.

Yarvin’s no architect or seer. He toys with the elite’s imagination, not the real world. His writings act like a hallucinogen: injecting techno-oligarchs with mission vibes while shoving them into delusions of “new monarchies.” But at the end of the day, the big question hangs: how does this wrap up? Will the “Dark Enlightenment” stay a philosophical plaything for the inner circle, or will it actually bulldoze the political terrain?

How Will It All End?

America won’t morph into Curtis Yarvin’s monarchy. No president will crown themselves eternal CEO, and no corporation will turn into a kingdom. But the ideas of the Dark Enlightenment have already seeped into the discourse. They echo in slogans, in the tweets of tech titans, in the playbooks of party strategists. Even when politicians don’t quote them, they’re thinking in terms Yarvin set loose.

Techno-oligarchs will stay tethered to the state. No matter how much they dream of being monarchs, they’re closer to court favorites, their fate hinging on the ruler’s mood. Today, they’re ushered into the Oval Office; tomorrow, they’re shoved out the door.

Yarvin himself won’t birth a new order, but he’s already done something big: he’s handed the elite a mirror for self-reflection. In it, they see not just their strength but their fragility; not just the shine of bold ideas but their own fears of what’s coming.

That’s the crux of the Dark Enlightenment. It’s not a blueprint for the future but a metaphor for the now—an era where democracy’s weakened, liberalism’s exhausted, and a new elite is scrambling for a reason to justify their grip on power.