Gilded Rage

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2025 A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF 2025 'Makes a convincing case for how tech became radicalized' BLOOMBERG 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.

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.

Preface Introduction: You Could Make a Lot of Money Here 1. December 14, 2016 2. Thiel and the New Alignment 3. Tech Libertarians Embrace the Security State 4. The Digital Authoritarian Style 5. Killing Twitter, Building X 6. The Saudi Influence behind Twitter and X 7. Learning to Hate the Place You Love 8. Billionaires v. The People of San Francisco 9. A Working Model 10. Finding The Exit 11. The Great Solano County Land Grab 12. It's Free Money 13. The Crypto Swamp 14. The Tap Turns Off 15. The Companies Suck 16. TikTok, China, and the Moneyman of the Moment 17. The Road to Vance 18. Didn't the Last Guy Go to Prison? 19. Best to Be Low-Key 20. Someone Has to Win 21. Election Day Epilogue Acknowledgements Notes List of Figures Index