Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley

What happens if the world's richest and most powerful men decide to dismantle democracy?

In Gilded Rage, New York Times bestselling author Jacob Silverman takes us inside the surreal, high-stakes world of Silicon Valley. This is the story of the political awakening and radicalization of a cabal of tech billionaires and trillionaires and their descent into ideological extremism. Flush with cash from the zero-interest era, addicted to their own mythology, these men have began reshaping the world in their image - and it should terrify us all.

At the center is Elon Musk, the mogul whose obsession with the 'woke mind virus' has turned him from a tech innovator to an ideological crusader. But Musk is just the beginning. Silverman maps a sprawling network of radicalized elites - from Peter Thiel and JD Vance to the financiers bankrolling Donald Trump - who are using their platforms and their money to ensure a political revolution that's already underway.

We meet the billionaires funding life-extension labs and embracing apocalyptic visions of AI. We examine the populist rhetoric that is leading to the ruthless dismantling of democratic norms. And we enter the strange, darkly comic world of the tech-oligarchy where libertarian dreams meet authoritarian impulses, and where the people with the most influence over our lives are the least accountable.

Silverman travels from San Francisco to Miami, New York to DC, following a movement that's rewriting the rules and oftentimes fighting a war against reality itself. With sharp reporting and a cast of extraordinary characters, Gilded Rage is a gripping, essential dispatch from the front lines of the billionaire revolution.

Review

Jacob Silverman is one of the sharpest and most plugged-in tech commentators working today. He understands subcultures, politics and the internet. He can tell you what's in the black box, and what it's doing to our society. Gilded Rage is unmissable. -- Hari Kunzru, Writer and Journalist, author of 'Gods without Men', 'White Tears' and 'Red Pill'

In Gilded Rage, Jacob Silverman delivers a clear-eyed anatomy of tech-addled delusion that has stubbornly eluded our media and political establishment for more than thirty years. Along the way, he recounts how the libertarian ethos of Silicon Valley has curdled into a frontal assault on our democracy. -- Chris Lehmann, DC Bureau Chief of The Nation and the author of 'The Money Cult'

A book that should trouble your dreams. -- Kirkus Reviews

Silverman makes a convincing case for how tech became radicalized. By grounding his argument in money rather than red-pilling, he avoids fixating on the many outrageous social media posts of Musk and others, and instead offers a plausible explanation for why so many of Trump's most powerful allies in tech (including Musk and Andreessen) once presented themselves as moderate Democrats. -- Bloomberg

Tech reporter Silverman's sharp and ominous account delves into the radicalizing worldviews of Silicon Valley billionaires in the lead-up to Donald Trump's reelection, and warns of a fusion of corporate and state power through which tech titans seek to enact undemocratic agendas. It's an essential unmasking of the growing extremism among America's wealthy. -- Publishers Weekly

About the Author

JACOB SILVERMAN is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection and co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, which was a New York Times Bestseller. He's a contributing editor at The New Republic and The Baffler, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, and many other publications. He lives in New York.