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Hello and happy Tuesday! Here’s your Tuesday Tech Drop, the past week’s top stories from the intersection of politics and the all-inclusive world of technology.
JD Vance’s ideological kin
Donald Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance as his running mate has led to a flood of coverage about the Ohio Republican’s far-right beliefs. One way to describe them? He’s essentially Arizona congressional candidate and gun whisperer Blake Masters with a beard. Or a cherubic Elon Musk with a lighter wallet. By which I mean Vance, a rich Silicon Valley tech bro, is all-in on the idea of a far-right technocracy.
After the announcement, social media users started to shine light on a computer programmer turned far-right proselytizer named Curtis Yarvin, a peddler of racist pseudoscience (he espouses a belief in “biological roots of intelligence”) who’s been cited favorably by Vance and Masters, among others.
Vox published a piece in 2022 that quotes Vance as name-dropping Yarvin and citing him as the inspiration for his opinion that Trump should replace all the government bureaucrats with “our people.”
Here’s how Vox describes Yarvin’s worldview:
In many thousand words’ worth of blog posts over the past 15 years, computer programmer and tech startup founder Curtis Yarvin has laid out a critique of American democracy: arguing that it’s liberals in elite academic institutions, media outlets, and the permanent bureaucracy who hold true power in this declining country, while the US executive branch has become weak, incompetent, and captured. But he stands out among right-wing commentators for being probably the single person who’s spent the most time gaming out how, exactly, the US government could be toppled and replaced — “rebooted” or “reset,” as he likes to say — with a monarch, CEO, or dictator at the helm. Yarvin argues that a creative and visionary leader — a “startup guy,” like, he says, Napoleon or Lenin was — should seize absolute power, dismantle the old regime, and build something new in its place.
Definitely something voters might want to consider when they cast their ballots this fall.
Elon throws his weight fully behind Trump
Elon Musk, who has helped to push voices on his social media platform to the right, is officially wading into the 2024 presidential race with a massive spending campaign — he has promised $45 million per month to a Trump-affiliated PAC — to get out the vote for Republicans this fall.
Read more at CNBC.
Newsmax seeks investors
Far-right propaganda outlet Newsmax has been enthusiastically trying to coax viewers into supporting their initial public offering. Mediaite reports that, to that end, Newsmax’s CEO sent viewers an email this week that uses the Trump assassination attempt as an opportunity to solicit investment for “an IPO later this year or early next year.”
Read more at Mediaite.
Rep. Wexton’s AI demo
Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., who last year shared that she had been diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, posted some amazing footage of herself using artificial intelligence to re-create her voice as it used to sound.
High-tech border patrol
Raw Story published an article on AI-enabled technologies being deployed to deter undocumented immigrants from crossing the U.S. border, including “robot dogs,” drones and automated surveillance towers.
Read more at Raw Story.
Social media misinformation
A new report from The Associated Press found several of the most popular social media platforms in the world are running political ads that are rife with misinformation.
Read more at The Associated Press.
Jim Jordan’s authoritarian spectacle
Last week, I highlighted how Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, was pressuring advertising executives to spend more money on far-right platforms — and why I believe it previews the authoritarianism that Americans can expect more of should Trump get elected.
Read more at The ReidOut Blog.