(Re)creating a techno-nationalist elite

The technologists who would rule

The much-heralded AI revolution is but the latest in a series of technological revolutions originating from Silicon Valley: the integrated circuit and the personal computer, the Internet and the World Wide Web, smartphones and streaming video, search engines, online commerce, and social networks. These revolutions have made many of their creators immensely wealthy and (as has often been the case with the newly wealthy) eager to flex their muscles and acquire social and political power to match their economic power.

They are a would-be ruling elite, but do they deserve to be? This is not a question of whether or not it is good to have billionaires. There will always be an elite to govern us, the question is rather whether they are a positive force or a negative one. That in turn depends on the values they hold and their effectiveness as rulers.

In his article “The Making of a Techno-Nationalist Elite”¹ and a subsequent post,² Tanner Greer takes the measure of this would-be elite and finds them wanting. He reads a book advertised as the thoughts of their best and brightest and concludes that it most resembles “a series of TED talks sloppily sewn together,” with ideas that “at no point . . . rise above the intellectual level of the average TikTok reel.”

Greer chastises them for the emptiness at the core of today’s technologists’ view of the world: no guiding moral vision, and a deep reluctance to state what they stand for and what (and who) they stand against: “They demand a pulpit for America’s technologists but never summon the courage to state what gospel they should preach.” He also offers a diagnosis of what they need to be a true and effective elite:

a political coalition to which it owes allegiance and over which it exercises influence; an economic base that provides this class with wealth and unites its members around shared material interests; and finally, a set of institutions, rituals, and social customs that give this class a culture distinct from the country at large. Absent the first two, a leadership class lacks the power to lead; absent the latter two, it lacks the ability to act as a class.

Elites then and now

Greer grounds his criticisms in the history of the US after the Civil War, a war that demonstrated the industrial superiority of the North and bound together as a coherent class those whose efforts were key to creating that superiority. They were the seeds of a “techno-nationalist elite” that went on to make the US the preminent world power and create the modern world we take for granted, a world so different from what came before that in retrospect we can see the year 1870 as the “hinge of human history.”³

Some might complain that the 19th-century techno-nationalist elite had more favorable circumstances in which they lived and worked, starting with the unifying experience of victory in war. In contrast, we have social-media-driven polarization and alienation, ethnic strife, drives to promote one’s own group above others in a pitched battle over a perceived zero-sum future, and looming above it all the threat that the machines will soon assume control and treat us as either pets (at best) or pests (at worst).

But this is to gloss over the challenges faced by 19th-century America and the context within which the new elite had to operate: widening economic inequality, grinding rural poverty and foetid urban slums, recurring panics and depressions, rampant corruption in public life and business, a political compromise that granted the Civil War’s losers carte blanche to recreate an apartheid regime destined to last almost a century, brutal wars with native tribes, violent suppression of labor unrest and anarchist and other violence in response, and a population drowning itself in drink.

Thus present troubles are no excuse for the failure of a would-be elite class to take on the role that many among it think it suited for.

As Greer notes, creating and sustaining the earlier techno-nationist elite was a generational task. Perhaps our present-day technologists think that they cannot afford to take the long view, that the Singularity is just around the corner and the best we can do is shape its contours a bit before it’s too late.

But what if the Singularity is delayed, perhaps indefinitely? What if we are actually looking at a decades-long period of ongoing social, economic, and political disruption in the US and around the world? Then it would be nice if our would-be ruling class put a bit more time and effort into thinking how they might govern and to what ends, and then worked to put those ideas into practice.

This post is my own attempt to provide a guide to doing that—inevitably an inadequate attempt, but an attempt I felt compelled to make after reading Greer. I sometimes write as “we” in what follows, not because I myself am or could be a member of such an elite, but to put myself in others’ places and imagine what I might say and do if I were.

What America stands for

Before we discuss means, what about ends, and the values determining those ends? What does this would-be elite stand for? What is their vision for both the America they want to lead and the technological economy and society they are helping create? And, just as important, what are they against? What are the ideas and attitudes they abjure, and who are the enemies they must overcome?

Let’s start with America. What is it as a nation, and what is its place in the world? My candidate: America is a nation dedicated to the principles of liberal democracy, built on the proposition that adherence to such principles is the key to promoting the well-being of individuals, their families, and the society in which they live, and that participation in that society should in theory be open to anyone willing to live according to its principles.⁴

America’s role in the world is then to serve as an example to other countries of what liberal democracy can be at its best, a supporter of other liberal democracies against the forces that threaten them, and, finally, a place that welcomes as potential citizens anyone in the world who can embody the true spirit of America and become an American not just in form but in mind and deed.⁵

I also believe that the free market system is the system best equipped to promote the ideals of liberal democracy and to provide the robust economic growth required to promote both individual flourishing and the nation’s capability to sustain and defend itself and its people. Technological progress plays a key role in promoting that system and that growth, and thus is key to the fulfillment of the American project. But, as instantiated in America, both technological progress and the free market must ultimately serve the causes of liberal democracy and the well-being of Americans.

What is our moral vision?

What moral vision do we uphold? The techo-nationalist elite of the 19th and early 20th century were nominally united by their common Christianity. However, it is likely impossible for any one religion to provide a universal creed for today’s would-be elite. Beyond the different religions of those in America today and those coming to America as immigrants—Christianity in its various forms, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on—most of that elite is resolutely secular, even atheistic, in outlook. It would seem that our search for a common moral vision is doomed at the starting gate.

However, again, we should not exaggerate the differences between the present and the past. The Christianity of the 19th century industrialists and the Eastern Establishment was less obsessed with matters of the spirit and more concerned with matters of the world. It was to a large degree embodied in an Episcopalian establishment that was an American offshoot of a English state church serving that state’s ruling class, and fulfilled a similar function for the US techno-nationalist elite. Perhaps the most influential gospel among that elite was the “gospel of wealth” as evangelized by Andrew Carnegie:

The highest life is probably to be reached, not by such imitation of the life of Christ as Count Tolstoi gives us, but, while animated by Christ’s spirit, by recognizing the changed conditions of this age, and adopting modes of expressing this spirit suitable to the changed conditions under which we live; still laboring for the good of our fellows, which was the essence of his life and teaching, but laboring in a different manner.⁶

A basic moral code for today’s elite can thus plausibly be constructed as follows:

First, a foundational morality as embodied in multiple religions and among most unreligious, one that (for example) sees murder, rape, theft, and fraud as universally bad.

Next, a moral code that aligns with the ideals of liberal democracy: respecting the dignity of each individual as a fellow citizen, promoting the rule of law, and upholding the interests of individuals and families, especially when those come into conflict with those of powerful corporate and state bodies. This rules out supposed exceptions to the base moral code that can be found in clan-based societies and autocracies, for example, honor killings and extra-judicial killings of dissidents and others respectively.

Finally, moral obligations that bind those who enjoy the success afforded by their native talents and their contingent luck, and who are placed in a position to directly or indirectly rule over others. This is the realm of noblesse oblige, of recognizing that what one has achieved is to a large degree determined by factors beyond one’s control, and that that in turn should motivate one to help those less fortunate in their circumstances.

Enemies without and within

If we take as our touchstones liberal democracy and technological advances in support of liberal democracy, who are our enemies?

First are the enemies of liberal democracy: autocracies of various stripes and groups that reject the rule of law in favor of the “rule of the clan.”⁷

Next are those within liberal democracies who are the enemies of technological advances in support of liberal democracy: those who believe that protecting their current status (e.g., as “real Americans”) is more important than economic growth and technological advances, and those who believe that economic growth and technological advances are pernicious and must be sacrificed in the name of equity, “saving the planet,” and other causes.

Finally there is a heresy of liberalism itself that we must suppress: a radical libertarianism that elevates the “sovereign individual” above all else, and disclaims all obligations to one’s fellow members of society beyond the bare minimum of “nonagression.”

Coalition building for techno-nationalists

Having outlined ends, we now turn to means. Of the three elements Greer sees as crucial to creating a techno-nationalist elite, the second is most easily satisfied: “an economic base that provides this class with wealth and unites its members around shared material interests.” That base consists of the public technology companies whose valuations together dominate the US stock market, the private technology companies with equally lofty valuations, and the horde of new startups specializing in bits or (increasingly) atoms that hope to join them. Money is the least of problems for our would-be elite, but money cannot substitute for the other factors Greer identifies.

Let’s turn therefore to the first element: “a political coalition to which [the elite] owes allegiance and over which it exercises influence.” Here our would-be elite’s efforts have been halting at best and ham-fisted failures at worst. (See for example Elon Musk’s thus-far-empty threat to create the “America Party.”) How might they do better?

Greer discusses at length the role that the post-Civil War Republican party served as a political home for 19th and early 20th-century industrialists. Might one of our two major parties serve the same function today?

Unfortunately, both parties are dominated in their different ways by the enemies of technological progress I identified above, those who would sacrifice economic growth on the altars of nativism and equity respectively. As Greer has previously written, the direction of the Republican Party is to a large degree determined by whoever heads it,⁸ and thus support for a techno-nationalist program will depend in large part on the personal whims of GOP leaders.

As Greer also has written, the Democratic Party is driven more by interest groups and less by its leaders’ personal whims. However, despite pundits promoting “abundance,” there is as yet no strong Democratic faction committed to that cause; it certainly doesn’t seem to be popular among younger staffers and grass-roots activists, most of whom are more anti-capitalist in outlook and prioritize considerations of equity over economic growth.

A techno-nationalist “Prosperity Party”?

Where does that leave us? It seems that any successful techno-nationalist coalition must have an effective political party at its core. As the political scientist Lee Drutman notes, “Political parties aggregate citizen and group preferences, and fuse those interests into a consistent long-term program. Without this partisan brokering function, independent actors would float around the political space chaotically.”⁹ This applies no matter how rich and influential these independent actors are.

But the conventional approach to starting a third party is very difficult, given the structural and other impediments to its success—again no matter how rich and influential its backers might be.

Drutman proposes to address this issue through the promotion of “fusion voting,” that is, allowing a given candidate be nominated by two different parties and appear on the ballot under both their names. Their votes would be tallied separately for both parties, and then “fused” to give their final vote total.¹⁰

Thus we can imagine a hypothetical “Prosperity Party,” dedicated to promoting eeconomic growth and technological advances for the benefit of all Americans. It would recruit like-minded Democratic or Republican candidates to also run under its own banner, provide them financial and other support, and see its vote totals reported alongside those of the two major parties.

Unfortunately, there’s a fly in the ointment: Fusion voting as described was quite common in the United States before and during the period in which Greer’s techno-nationalist elite was ascendant. However since that period the two major parties have cooperated to eliminate any such threat to their hegemony by passing legislation that effectively outlaws this practice in all but two states (New York and Connecticut).¹¹

Drutman sees potential legal avenues to overturning these prohibitions, perhaps based on their violating constitutional rights to free association. I doubt this will be a successful strategy; judges owe their positions to the major parties that nominate them, and I predict that instead courts at all levels will maintain the status quo and defer this question to legislators.

A techno-nationalist “Prosperity Society”?

What then to do? There is certainly no obstacle to this hypothesized Prosperity Party running candidates in states like New York where fusion voting is still legal, or in other states like California where it is permitted in special cases like US presidental elections.

But an effective party needs an effective organization, hence a second element of building a techno-nationalist coalition: build a capacity for policy and organizational work outside the two-party structure. Greer has complained about the lack of “nuts-and-bolts policy expertise“ among conservative activists.¹² Such expertise, and the related expertise on how to effectively govern, are exactly what an effective elite needs. This expertise could be applied within the two major parties as well as in support of a new Prosperity Party.

Such an organization would be the techno-nationalist equivalent of an organization like the Federalist Society, except focused on the executive and legislative branches as opposed to (just) the judicial branch. This “Prosperity Society” would recruit and support techno-nationalist activists, policy wonks, potential bureaucrats and political appointees, and (last but not least) potential political candidates who might win Prosperity Party endorsements. If elected, they could then work to roll back prohibitions against fusion voting, so that they would be able to formally run under the Prosperity Party banner while still maintaining affiliations with one of the two major party banners.

A techno-nationalist “prosperity agenda”?

Of course, party organizations and policy shops are useless unless a techno-nationalist agenda can win support from a majority of voters. I suspect there are at least three components to a potentially winning agenda:

• Promoting affordability, especially for housing and healthcare. The split here will likely be between young people and old people, with the latter’s economic well-being tied to a large degree to high home values and generous healthcare subsidies. A Prosperity Party should side with the young.

• Putting in place an immigration policy that promotes economic growth and the effective assimilation of new immigrations into American culture. The Prosperity Party should side with the majority of Americans who are overall positive toward immigration and immigrants.

• Ensuring that the prosperity resulting from technological advances (AI or otherwise) is widely shared. Note that this does not mean trying to enforce economic equality. In fact, it’s quite likely that technology-driven economic growth will increase economic inequality, not decrease it. The goal is rather that all Americans have the means to live lives of dignity and worth, free from precarity, and that through the liberal democratic system they have some reasonable influence over the context in which technological advances occur, as opposed to being treated as mere speed bumps on the road to the future.

Others have written on the above topics at length, so I’ll forgo any further comment on them.

Institutions for techno-nationalists

I now turn to Tanner Greer’s final prescription for creating a techno-nationalist elite: “a set of institutions, rituals, and social customs that give this class a culture distinct from the country at large.” Ideally such institutions would nurture and support prospective members of a new techno-nationalist elite from childhood to adulthood, and from their early careers to the height of their power.

K-12 education for a techno-nationalist elite

Let’s start with childhood. Greer notes the important role played by private boarding schools as “national preparatory academies for the sons of the industrial elite.” Many of these schools still exist and have become a feeder system for Harvard and other elite colleges and universities.

For various reasons I consider it unlikely that these schools will play a similar role for a 21st century techno-nationalist elite. I consider it much more likely that new entrants will evolve to fill this particular ecological niche. As it happens, there are candidates near to hand, namely the growing ecosystem of high-end private schools being established under the Alpha School brand, as well as others modeled on Alpha School principles and licensing its associated TimeBack suite of educational software.¹³

The Alpha School model seems almost tailor-made for incubating a techno-nationalist elite: it combines accelerated academics in the morning (enabled by advanced educational applications developed in accordance with established principles of learning science) with guided instruction in life skills and project-based learning in the afternoon. It’s a veritable factory for equipping young people with advanced leveragable skills (including STEM skills), socializing them in a technology-friendly environment, and giving them a sense of being part of a “culture distinct from the country at large.”

Such a system is not for everyone. As a review of Alpha School notes, upper and upper-middle-class parents in Austin, Texas (the location of the original Alpha School) will likely continue to send their children to traditional exclusive private schools like those Greer mentions: “That is where the elite are sending their kids, why wouldn’t you want your kids in the same place?”¹⁴

The reviewer (later revealed to be Edward Nevraumont) goes on to ask “So who is going to Alpha?” and answers: “Mostly elite non-conformists,” with Alpha School parents comprising a mix of tech employees moving to Austin (e.g., from the San Francisco Bay area), Indian immigrants in tech or small business, and “non-conformist ’new media’ personalities,” typically specializing in tech-related topics.

Nevraumont speculates that “[Alpha School] will need to find a way to break through that niche into the mainstream if they want to truly transform education more broadly.” But whether or not that happens, I think it’s very possible that Alpha School and its imitators could form a parallel private school ecosystem serving a would-be techno-nationalist elite who no longer look to traditional private schools as a path to elite status.

University for a techno-nationalist elite

Assuming that Alpha School or something like it becomes the default for the would-be techno-nationalist elite, what would they do for post-secondary education? In other words, what institution (if any) would be for them what Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League were for the 19th and 20th century techno-nationalist elite?

It’s tempting to propose radical solutions to this problem. For example, perhaps these students will forgo entirely a traditional college or university experience, and instead apply for programs like the Thiel Fellowship that seek to divert talented individuals from university into doing research or creating startups. Or perhaps they’ll avail themselves of specialized educational opportunities like short-term “boot camps” that aim to prepare students to enter the workforce. (One such program, Gauntlet AI, is the source of a large fraction of the Alpha School developers.)

Another possibility is that they will in fact attend universities and colleges, but universities and colleges that (like St. Johns College) emphasize the classic works of Western civilization and (like the University of Austin) aim to act as bastions of free thought.

I think the likelier outcome is that the children of any future techno-nationalist elite will matriculate at an institution that has existed for some time now, that already enjoys an reputation as a focal point for technogy-minded folks, that is located in an area already known for its technology industries, and that is large enough to absorb a good fraction of the graduates of a nationwide network of Alpha Schools and their equivalents.

The most obvious candidate for this role is Stanford University. In this regard, note that the daughters of Joe Liemandt, the billionaire funder of Alpha School, opted for Stanford, and I would not surprised to learn that it is and will be the preferred destination for other Alpha School graduates as well. Having established a reputation as “the Harvard of the West,” Stanford would then become (more than it already is) the Harvard of the 21st century techno-nationalist elite.

Adult institutions for a techno-nationalist elite

Once the children of a new techno-nationalist elite enter the adult world, what “institutions, rituals, and social customs” would continue to bind them together as a unified class? Tanner Greer briefly mentions the Union League Clubs established in New York City and elsewhere, and the marriages that tied elite families to each other.

But Greer omits mention of one of the most important institutions for the late 19th and early 20th century American techno-nationalist elite, namely the Episcopal Church:

This was . . . an age in which, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the Episcopal Church enjoyed a social cachet above virtually all other religious groups . . . . The names of fashionable families who were already Episcopalian, like the Morgans, or those, like the Fricks, who now became so, goes on interminably: Aldrich, Astor, Biddle, Booth, Brown, Du Pont, Firestone, Ford, Gardner, Mellon, Morgan, Procter, Taft, Vanderbilt, Whitney.¹⁵

The list includes many of the most prominent and powerful financiers and industrialists of the time. J. P. Morgan in particular was such a devout Episcopalian that he regularly attended church conventions as a delegate and was appointed to a committee charged with revising the Book of Common Prayer.¹⁶

It’s thus worth looking at the functions that the Episcopal Church served for this previous techno-nationalist elite, to determine whether and what kinds of institutions (religious or secular) might serve similar functions for a future elite.

The first was to bless its adherents as an elect, not only religious (as the more Calvinist doctrines of Episcopalianism would imply) but also social and cultural, an elect whose members would serve as models for others to admire and emulate. The essential idea was that “there was an institutionalized set of touchstones of belief, behavior, and taste that were embodied in the proper sort of individuals and could serve as a beacon for a nation in profound social transition.”¹⁷ In the cultural sphere this led to the establishment of many of the great American art and other museums, as well as support of high culture in general.

At the same time, this elect was encouraged by church leaders to look within and become conscious of their own good fortune and their consequent obligation to assist those less fortunate. In the social sphere this led to the establishment of outreach programs to the poor, “institutional churches” that provided secular services on church grounds, settlement houses, and related projects in the spirit of the “Social Gospel.”¹⁸

Other aspects of the Episcopal Church worth noting:

• Membership in its establishment was restricted but also open to some degree. Being Anglo-Saxon was almost a prerequisite, as was having a certain degree of wealth—many churches even had a system of pew-rents that restricted the relatively impecunious to the upper galleries. However, within those constraints it was possible for newcomers to join the church (many arriving from Congregationalism, the Quakers, and Unitarianism), serve the church is various ways as a layperson, become accepted into church society, and gain contacts that would prove valuable in society at large.

• Churches and their services provided loci in space and time where the elite could meet on a regular basis (at least every week for diligent parishioners), work together in church activities on a relatively equal basis (e.g., as vestrymen), and build ties between families that might later be reinforced by marriages.

• Episcopalians were key to promoting the growth of the “St. Grottlesex“ network of exclusive private schools that Greer discusses as being established to perpetuate the 19th century techno-nationalist elite. Of the specific schools that Greer names, the majority were founded, funded, or led by Episcopalians; it was very common for the headmasters of these schools to be Episcopal priests.¹⁹

Are there present-day institutions that could be to our would-be techno-nationalist elite what the Episcopal Church was to that past elite? Or possible new institutions that could evolve to fill that role?

Here I must plead ignorance. While I’ve worked for Silicon Valley companies almost my entire career, my life has been lived at a remove from the Valley itself, not to mention San Francisco proper. I have even less visibility into what might be going on in Austin, Texas, El Segundo, California, or other places that might rival the Bay area as a technology hub.

So I don‘t know what public or private organizations or events are currently patronized by our would-be elite, or what might attract their attention in future. However, I’m mildly skeptical that the next Episcopal Church will in fact be a church. It’s possible that there may be a revival in religious affiliation and practice (for example, see the recent growth in interest in Catholicism), but I find it difficult to see any particular faith or denomination unifying and binding a future techno-nationalist elite.

Prospects for (re)creating a techno-nationalist elite

Tanner Greer explored the history of the last American techno-nationalist elite, and I’ve speculated about what might be needed to create a new elite for the 21st century. But how likely is that to occur?

Rather than engage in detailed speculation, I’ll consider a counterfactual. Greer highlights the experience of Union victory in the US Civil War as the crucible for the creation of the 19th century techno-nationalist elite. But suppose the Confederacy had instead defeated the Union militarily, especially early on, seized Washington and captured and executed Lincoln and most of his cabinet, and been able to force terms of surrender on the remaining Union leaders? Or what if after the fall of Fort Sumter the North had simply acquiesced to the secession of the South?

What of the techno-nationalist elite then? In a North marked by defeat or retreat, no doubt with continuing internal conflicts over slavery and recriminations over the war’s outcome, would a self-consciously patriotic and nationalist elite have formed? Or would the financiers and industrialists of the post-war North have remained divided, some making accomodations with slave power and others resisting as best they could?

If the formation of a new techno-nationalist elite depends on America facing an existential threat and emerging victorious, then I have to confess I’m skeptical as to the possibility, and incline more to something like the counterfactual scenario above: a technology industry whose leaders are divided amongst themselves, some genuinely patriotic and committed to liberal democracy (but relatively ineffectual in their promotion of it) and others willing to make accomodations with illiberalism (but in practice being dispensable junior partners of the actual ruling elite).

Here ends my thoughts and speculations. When I originally read Tanner Greer’s article and posted an X thread about it, I expressed a hope that “Tanner Greer expands on this analysis in future articles, including offering advice tailored to the present day.“²⁰ The above is my own contribution to providing “advice tailored to the present day,” until such time as we’re privileged to read a better treatment from the man himself.