In 2003, a group of suited men with elite credentials stood before the world and insisted that history could be bent toward freedom—if only America would use its unmatched power to reshape the Middle East. They were idealists, they said. Liberators. But behind their words lay something older, colder: the conviction that a centralized elite could manage the world better than the people themselves.
Two decades later, the suits have changed. Hoodies and Patagonia vests now serve the same function. The men speak not of Baghdad, but of Washington. Their voices now come not from think tanks, but from a podcast with millions of followers and political candidates on speed dial.
Today’s visionaries speak of sovereignty, localism, and common-sense capitalism. But scratch the surface, and a familiar ambition gleams through: the desire to direct from above, to architect the future through force—soft, algorithmic, often subsidized, but force nonetheless.
The so-called “tech bros” of Silicon Valley—once courted by Obama-era Democrats and praised as the vanguard of global progressivism—have not abandoned statism. They have repurposed it. Many of these same figures were instrumental in ushering in the era of digital progressivism: championing woke ideology, amplifying Black Lives Matter narratives across tech platforms, and aligning with the federal government to enforce speech codes during the COVID-19 pandemic. They partnered with agencies and policymakers to suppress dissenting views about mRNA vaccines, lockdowns, and race-related issues—often using Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube as semi-official censors. What began as progressive moralism became a framework for control—one that has since been redirected toward nationalist ends. The ideological tools of the technocratic left—central planning, industrial policy, and moralized narratives of progress—have been reforged in nationalist rhetoric. Their microphones now hum with a new kind of Manifest Destiny, one that praises border security and criticizes DEI, but demands state-backed investment in chip fabs, AI labs, and critical infrastructure.
It is not a retreat from power. It is a redirection of it.
Nowhere is this transformation clearer than in the figure of David O. Sacks, venture capitalist, PayPal Mafia alumnus, co-founder of Craft Ventures, and co-host of the All-In Podcast. Once a libertarian-leaning entrepreneur, Sacks has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s most vocal proponents of Donald Trump’s return to power.
In the summer of 2024, Sacks co-hosted a high-profile fundraiser for Trump in San Francisco, raising millions from a crowd that would’ve been unthinkable just a decade earlier—tech executives, startup founders, crypto capitalists. When asked why, Sacks didn’t demur. Trump, he said, was the only candidate serious about national security, restoring economic competitiveness, and fighting the “woke mind virus” infecting America’s institutions.
But beyond culture war rhetoric, Sacks has become an articulate advocate for industrial policy and strategic statism—the very policies conservatives once viewed as anathema. On the All-In Podcast, he regularly calls for reshoring supply chains, investing in “national champion” technologies, and using the state to counter China’s rise. His critiques of Big Government are now carefully targeted: not against power itself, but against the wrong wielders of it.
In this way, Sacks exemplifies a broader shift in elite technocratic ideology: not away from centralized control, but toward a different narrative justifying it. On December 5, 2024, President Trump officially named Sacks the White House AI & Crypto Czar—a part-time advisory role overseeing artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy. His growing influence within Trump-aligned technology strategy signals more than symbolic recognition: it formalizes a channel through which Silicon Valley now directly helps shape federal power.
There is a precedent. In the early 2000s, neoconservatives—many of them disillusioned Democrats—found a new home in the Republican Party. They did not seek to dismantle the state, but to redirect its energies. With the language of liberty and the posture of patriotism, they convinced conservatives to embrace big government—abroad. The result: regime change wars, ballooning deficits, and an empire of surveillance.
They were, as the cuckoo bird is to the nest, indistinguishable until it was too late. The cuckoo lays its egg among those of another bird, matching the shell pattern so precisely that the host parent cannot tell the difference. When the cuckoo chick hatches, it instinctively pushes the host’s real offspring out of the nest—monopolizing food, attention, and resources. The parent bird, none the wiser, feeds and nurtures the imposter at the cost of its own future. So too did the neoconservatives nest themselves within the conservative movement—redefining its values, consuming its energy, and displacing its original aims.
Today, the All-In Podcast crew—Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, and David Friedberg—play a similar role. Their style is breezy and self-deprecating, their arguments often persuasive, their appeal bipartisan. They criticize the managerial state while building a roadmap for a new one. They reject progressivism while quietly constructing a technocratic nationalism—one where the levers of federal power are still pulled, just by different hands.
The modern policy playbook is no longer about regulation vs. deregulation. It is about strategic partnerships—between defense agencies and AI firms, between subsidy packages and chip fabs, between national ambition and private capital. This marks a sharp departure from the Reagan-era model of free-market conservatism, which emphasized deregulation, competition, and minimal state interference. Where conservatives once resisted centralized planning, today’s tech-aligned nationalists embrace it as a tool of economic strategy and geopolitical leverage.
Sacks and others make no effort to hide this—they celebrate it. In fact, the neo-MAGA wing of the tech world—including Sacks and his growing legion of techno-patriots—trumpet the absolute necessity of American global domination. For them, innovation and industrial policy are not just domestic tools—they are geopolitical weapons to ensure that the United States remains the unrivaled leader on the world stage. The CHIPS Act is deemed necessary. AI export controls? Essential. A national tech agenda? Long overdue.
To the casual listener, this sounds like common sense. But as detailed in The Velvet Fist, this approach recasts government from referee to chief architect of the economy. It is not the free market. It is not socialism. It is a techno-corporatist model, wrapped in patriotic branding, executed by high-functioning elites, and sold as “realism.”
Switzerland stands in quiet contrast. Its decentralized, neutral model produces one of the world’s most prosperous societies without central planning or military-industrial ambitions. It competes through excellence, not through coercive scale. Some will argue that Switzerland still engages in state initiative and centralization—but to equate a nation of fewer than 9 million with the United States, a country of over 340 million, is to miss the point. Switzerland does not need to be, nor does it aspire to be, a global hegemon to secure its prosperity and stability. It offers a glimpse of what America once claimed to be—and what Silicon Valley’s new mandarins have long since abandoned.
Bitcoin began as a libertarian rebellion against centralized monetary authority. It promised to liberate individuals from fiat currency, inflation, and central banking. David Sacks once praised these values, as did many in the crypto venture world. But today, the narrative has shifted. Bitcoin now thrives on regulatory clarity, institutional custody, and platform compliance. The revolution has become an industry—one increasingly dependent on state protection. And yet, despite their alignment with progressive ideology and federal authority, the tech elite failed to usher in an era where only woke narratives and scientific consensus could reign unchallenged. The American public pushed back—on speech restrictions, medical mandates, and ideological conformity. Now, the same technology leaders are eyeing the capabilities of AI. What lesson did they learn? Perhaps they believe that with the right nuclear-powered tech stack—anchored by artificial intelligence and state alignment—they might yet summon the world they intended all along.
What began in rebellion is ending in integration. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once warned that the state “cannot deliver moral purpose—only security.” But in the anxiety of digital life, AI disruption, and geopolitical fragmentation, men like David O. Sacks now look to the state to do both.
This is not hypocrisy. It is transformation.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn understood something most moderns forget: that central planning is not only inefficient, it is dangerous to the soul of a society. He warned that when elites begin to see themselves as moral engineers, the line between guidance and coercion fades.
In America today, we are witnessing a quiet but profound shift. A new ruling class—draped in innovation, rationalism, and patriotic vigor—is clenching its grip on the levers of statecraft. The neoconservatives once did this in the name of freedom abroad. Today’s technocrats do it in the name of sovereignty at home. Both promise strength. Both deliver control.
David Sacks and his peers are not outliers. They are archetypes of a new era, where ideology is downstream of capability, and capability is the new moral currency. As Solzhenitsyn warned: when a society abandons truth in exchange for comfort or control, it loses the foundation of liberty itself.
The hand that once wrote code to liberate the individual now directs policy to command the collective.
And the glove is starting to clench.
