Technocracy Unleashed: Who Controls our Future?
Is it Elon Musk’s techno-utopia or Peter Thiel’s neo-feudalism?
What’s happening folks?
I’ve been on quite the busy journey over the last while. This whole election/impending doom has me, and I’ve fallen deep into the rabbit hole of it all.
But not in a QAnon kind of way.
I’m a great believer in following where the wind blows you, and since that first US Election article, well, it’s a kind of strange thing to kind of explain, but it’s like other doors/avenues have, possibly only temporarily opened, but here I am.
Regarding my most recent Substack post, I apologize for the videos not working properly, too. Unfortunately, Substack isn’t good for embedding X.com posts, so here’s a better (non pay-walled) version.
There’s Something Not Right about the US Presidential Election
Rather interestingly, there’s a really good recent Substack post from Plant: Critical about how the election was hacked: Check it out here.
Here are some of my recent stories on Medium (all are non-paywalled)
The Tech Bros Think They Have Our Future Sorted
A Light in the Shadow of Power
There’s Never Been a Better Time to be “Messed Up” &
Argentina’s Gamble with AI Policing
Now then, as above, I’ve become somewhat obsessed about the Accelerationism we’re seeing from the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Theil etc.
I want to believe that they have humanity's best interests in mind, but what I want and what is actually in play are quite often rather diametrically opposed.
So, with that in mind, I had to go looking for where this philosophy comes from…so, I hope you enjoy the following…
When I was a kid, I used to watch The Jetsons and think, "Ah, wow, we’re going to have flying cars and sassy robot kitchen maids."
But it’s not looking that way, is it?
I could be wrong, I mean, Elon Musk shared this video recently:
(link to video tweet here)
Although, it’s pretty worrying that there are no green spaces. I mean, where are we going to walk our dogs, or will all the green spaces be inside those horrid-looking skyscrapers?
So, I guess I have to let go of my utopian dream of the jet age and must replace it something colder, harder — an algorithmic dominion ruled by technoligarch with botox smiles and transplanted hairlines with stem cell-enhanced blood in their veins.
British philosopher Nick Land foresaw this, though even he might balk at how swiftly his nihilistic prophecies have taken root among those with the funds to shape our future.
In his fevered writings, capitalism is not simple an economic system, it’s a ravenous, alien intelligence — a machine that devours its creators in pursuit of endless acceleration.
And now, standing at the helm of this Accelerationist ship are figures like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Balaji Srinivasan, architects of a world that seems more Landian with every day.
It looks grim, folks. It seems like we’re on a runaway train barreling toward a future where the only constant is the annihilation of what came before.
Nick Land
Nick Land began as a philosopher of delirium, a thinker intoxicated by the possibilities of escape — not for humanity, but from it.
Capitalism, for Land, is an autonomous force, a machine intelligence evolving faster than we can comprehend.
He once described capitalism as an “invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy’s resources.”
Recognizing that capitalism is out of control, he believes it needs to be brought to an end. And it should be done as quickly as possible.
For him, capitalism thrives on technological innovation and systemic collapse, devouring all boundaries — social, political, and even biological.
For many of us, we dreamed of a future utopia in which people lived as equals, all wealthy, healthy, and free.
Land’s philosophy mutated into his book The Dark Enlightenment, where he abandoned any egalitarian and embraced a grim realism.
Democracy, he contended, was little more than a sentimental speed bump — an outdated relic doomed to collapse under capitalism’s relentless march. In its place, hierarchies would (re)emerge, shaped by algorithms and consolidated power. Land’s grim vision is a world, or at least states, run like corporations.
Democracy has too many weak points, but a corporate boardroom-style approach in which people are in control of specific areas means more micro-managing and less chance of things breaking down. And when they do, instead of many being responsible, there’s one person to point the finger at.
The “strong” should rule the “weak” is what we’re talking about here. It’s fascism rearing its hideous head once again.
The technoligarchs
Land’s ideas might have remained on the fringes were it not for the technocrats who embody his vision in their business practices.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Curtis Yarvin, and Balaji Srinivasan, to name just four, are not philosophers in the academic sense, but their actions and ideologies reflect Landian themes of speed, disruption, and a future where the human is a footnote to technological progress.
Elon Musk
Musk is, well, I should say, was, the poster child for techno-utopianism, a man whose visions of Martian colonies and brain-computer interfaces seem like they were plucked from the pages of a cyberpunk novel.
To his millions of followers, Musk is like a savior—a billionaire messiah promising to take humanity to the stars. But beneath the branding lies something darker. Musk’s projects consolidate power at unprecedented scales: with SpaceX, he wants to monopolize space exploration, Neuralink is experimenting with cognitive control, and Tesla is surveilling its users under the guise of innovation.
Musk used to talk about the idea of Universal Basic Income, or actually, Universal High Income, where we’d all be wealthy in the future, and technology would do all the work. As he said in this video:
His recent foray into American politics, though, has left many onlookers with a bad taste. But maybe he’s just playing the game the best way he can and genuinely wants the best possible outcome for humanity.
Maybe cozying up to Donald Trump is the Faustian deal he needed to make?
Musk’s chaos is not Land’s nihilism, indeed, in the video he speaks about the worry that we may face a crisis of meaning.
Peter Thiel
Where Musk leans into dreams of collective salvation, Peter Thiel is unabashedly elite.
A libertarian billionaire with a disdain for democracy, Thiel envisions a future ruled by “smart” hierarchies, where power is centralized in the hands of those deemed worthy. His investments in surveillance technology, biotech, and seasteading (“the creation of permanent dwellings in international waters”) reflect a belief in escape — not for humanity as a whole, but for the chosen few.
Thiel’s admiration for Curtis Yarvin, the neo-reactionary thinker behind Mencius Moldbug, underscores his alignment with the Dark Enlightenment. Yarvin’s vision of CEO monarchs and technocratic rule is Land’s philosophy in action: accelerationism as a justification for domination.
Curtis Yarvin: the architect of neo-feudalism
Yarvin’s neo-reactionary manifesto rejects the chaos of democracy in favor of centralized authority, a hierarchy built not on equality but on efficiency.
For Yarvin, the future is not a shared endeavor but a vertical ascent, where those at the top dictate the course.
Balaji Srinivasan: the decentralist paradox
Srinivasan, with his vision of The Network State — online communities becoming sovereign entities — embodies the paradox of accelerationism.
He speaks of decentralization, yet the tools he champions (crypto, blockchain) often consolidate power in the hands of those who control the technology.
Srinivasan sees technology as the engine of history, its acceleration both inevitable and desirable.
The dangers
Together, these figures represent a Landian convergence: a world driven by technology and hierarchy, where the pace of change overwhelms any chance of collective governance.
The dangers are clear, but let’s make them crystal for those sitting in the back:
Erosion of democracy: Technocrats see democratic institutions as slow and inefficient, obstacles to the speed they worship. So, what replaces them? Unelected elites? Algorithmic governance? That’s what it looks like.
Inequality on overdrive: Accelerationism doesn’t just leave some behind; it buries them. The rich get richer, (as usual) the powerful more entrenched (will political dynasties fall in the future?), while the rest struggle to keep up unless they’re happy to share, and that seems unlikely.
The commodification of humanity: In the world of the technocrats, even the human body is a market — whether it’s Musk’s Neuralink or Thiel’s quest for life extension.
But let’s turn to a former colleague of Nick Land’s, another British philosopher and cultural theorist who had a bit more hope, albeit one that had a dread for the present, Mark Fisher.
Mark Fisher
In Fisher’s vision, accelerationism was about identifying the radical potential within capitalism’s technological and social structures and reorienting them toward collective liberation.
For Fisher, accelerationism wasn’t about embracing chaos or succumbing to hierarchy — it was about imagining alternatives.
He saw capitalism as a force that colonized not only economies but minds, stifling the ability to conceive of anything beyond its confines. In his book Capitalist Realism, Fisher argued that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”
Fisher believed that technology, could serve as a tool for emancipation from capitalism. Automation, artificial intelligence, and the internet aren’t inherently dehumanizing — they were only made so by a system that values profit over people.
Can we reclaim the future?
In Land’s view, the technocrats’ vision of the future is inevitable.
Yet, Fisher believed that the tools of acceleration could be repurposed — not for domination but for liberation.
And, the thing is, the technocrats and the technoligarchs may accelerate, but the destination is not fixed. The future is still ours to make — or to lose.
The question is not whether we can stop the machine, but whether we can steer it toward a horizon worth chasing.
Then again, maybe we’re already be too late.
Take my short counseling questionnaire here. Thanks for reading my article.
You can donate via Paypal, or you can buy me a book.
My different social media channels are here. My writer’s Discord is here.