The Conservative Case for a Transhuman Future™
To save the nation, we must wreck humanity
Donald Trump is all in on the gray gods of artificial intelligence. In retrospect, I suppose this was inevitable. “It is a superpower and you want to be right at the beginning of it, but it is very disconcerting,” Trump told the algo-boosted elder-abuser Jake Paul last month. “It’s going to happen. And if it’s going to happen, we have to take the lead over China.”
Technology is power, so naturally, most politicians will gravitate to it.
For decades, Silicon Valley and the Pentagon have appealed to “competition” and “survival” to justify total digitization. During the contactless Covid panic, digitized survival was a core principle of the global Great Reset agenda: unplug at your own peril. As we saw during that debacle, the real world manifestation of tech fantasies looked more like sorry hominids crippled by algorithmic parasites than an archaeofuturist blend of starships and classical architecture. But optimists insist technology is “neutral” and can ultimately be steered toward nobler ends.
Steve Bannon tried to warn Trump against this progressive influence. For the most part, he was a lone Luddite in MAGA circles, raging against a two-faced Machine that would “inevitably” pick up steam. Soon after Steve was hauled off as a political prisoner, a cohort of tech accelerationists publicly attached themselves to Trump like self-assembling nano-circuits in a schizoid’s brain.
Following the botched assassination attempt on Trump—and seeing his heroic self-possession—the cyborg car dealer Elon Musk endorsed him and reportedly pledged $45 million a month to his campaign. Now that Musk’s xAI supercluster has been fired up in Memphis, Tenn., and his X headquarters is moving to join Neuralink and SpaceX in Austin, Tex., it makes sense this Gray alien would commit himself to the MAGA wing of the Red Tribe. The vibe has shifted so hard, you can feel it in your screen-worn fingertips.
Tech acceleration has become a mind virus floating in the air, along with cow farts and microplastic particles. It infects “liberals” and “conservatives” alike. If you want to compete against other individuals in your field, the future-volk insist, you have to augment yourself with the latest devices and software, especially artificial intelligence. Good luck becoming a middle manager or a superstar YouTuber with that boomer-grade flip phone. The same goes for your company as you compete with other companies, or your nation striving against other nations.
You have to fight adversarial algorithms with better algorithms. You must combat drone swarms with ever larger swarms of swarms.
There’s an unavoidable logic to this materialist paradigm. It’s a god eat god world, the thinking goes, and social Darwinism favors those blessed by digital deities. In such an ecosystem—constructed entirely by megacorporations who repurpose military technology for mass markets—you either adapt or die. By the end of this process, you’ll probably mutate into something that barely resembles a human being. But who needs a soul when your numbers are up?
Competitiveness and national security were central arguments put forward by another Gray alien, ex-Google exec Eric Schmidt, when he advised both Obama’s and Biden’s administrations. As chair for the National Security Commission on Artificial intelligence, Schmidt proposed a new American technocracy and urged the US military to embrace fully autonomous lethal weapons—killer robots that can decide life or death with no human oversight. Unsurprisingly, this year he founded the start-up White Stork to produce kamikaze death drones for Ukraine. Instead of delivering babies, these lil’ storks are more likely to kill them.
“Artificial intelligence!” exclaimed the ancient futurist Klaus Schwab, speaking to cyber-Muhammadans at last year’s World Government Summit, “but also the metaverse, near space technologies, and I could go on and on. Synthetic biology! … Who masters those technologies, in some way, will be master of the world.”
The billionaire autist Peter Thiel—who advised Trump’s first administration and mentored his current running mate J.D. Vance—despises the World Economic Forum and its culture of conformity. But when it comes to technophilia, he’s on the same page. Thiel is a gay man inspired by Catholicism, a hyper-capitalist, and a fierce individualist who famously described global tech regulation as “the Antichrist” with only the slightest hint of irony. His company Palantir, formed in the aftermath of 9/11, contracts with the US national security and immigration enforcers—as well as our allies abroad—to secure a Future™ for the West.
Since the Russian invasion, Palantir has provided militarized AI to Ukraine without charge. The company’s CEO, Alex Karp, openly admitted at last year’s WEF gathering that one benefit is to hone their digital products using real human blood. Thiel also funds Anduril, which builds AI-powered surveillance towers and VR-controlled combat drones to protect the US, Ukraine, and other allies.
In the bygone days of mean tweets and Pepe frogs, it was Trump, Thiel, and a few quiet technologists versus the rest of the tech oligarchy. The latter threw their support behind Hillary and Biden. In our current historical moment—characterized by crushing inflation, trans children, expanding wars overseas, a horrifically suspicious assassination attempt at home, a nonsentient sitting president, and a booming AI industry poised to replace any human whose job can be automated—the situation has changed dramatically.
The anti-communist conehead Marc Andreessen is also backing Trump. Andreessen and his partner Ben Horowitz believe he’s the right candidate to facilitate their “Little Tech Agenda.” This libertarian mission pits freewheeling start-ups against Big Tech megacorps who threaten to lock down the entire market via regulatory capture.
“We believe in accelerationism,” Andreessen proclaimed in his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” last year, “to ensure the technocapital upward spiral continues forever.” The spiritual implications of his declaration are jarring. “We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone—we are literally making sand think.”
Unlike their bland megacorp competitors, such as Microsoft/OpenAI or Google/DeepMind, right-leaning billionaires like Andreessen and Musk want freedom-loving, “maximally curious” sand gods that can think for themselves.
Beneath this mainstream current is an eccentric subculture of “effective accelerationists.” You’ve probably seen an e/acc designation in their X bios. These youthful wireheads are the hybridized descendants of old school transhumanists and alt-right frogs. One stated goal of their online “meta religion” is to harness technocapital to “usher in the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness”—even if that means biological humans are scrapped in the process.
In the more polished realm of politics as usual, the recently formed America First Policy Institute, staffed by Trump allies, has drafted a proposal to “Make America First in AI.” According to the Washington Post, a key focus is to develop military technology without “unnecessary and burdensome regulations.” In effect, this would shift the Future™ away from DC regulators and toward more dynamic elements in the military-industrial complex.
MAGA began by looking back to America’s past for inspiration. Apparently, MAGA 2.0 will hurtle blindly into the Future™.
Business is dirty and politics has to be the dirtiest business one could possibly go into. At the highest levels, a politician is surrounded by so many pathological liars, glad-handed backstabbers, money-grubbing shapeshifters, bloodthirsty warmongers, and whorehopping hypocrites, the idea that humans would be better off as brain-chipped cyborgs—or replaced by machines altogether—must seem sensible at times.
Bearing that in mind, according to the New York Post, Trump has been consulting with Black Rock CEO Larry Fink. That tracks in light of Fink’s bold statements about the Greater Replacement at this year’s World Economic Forum. He described his “conversations with the leadership of these large developed countries that have, ahem, xenophobic immigration policies [and] shrinking demographics.” Fink arrives at the conclusion that “social problems that one will have in substituting humans for machines are going to be far easier in those countries that have declining populations.”
So you and yours will be replaced by robots, but at least these automated patriots will patrol your borders.
Like extraterrestrials who occasionally descend to intervene in human affairs, shifting the course of history, the technological Gray Tribe stands apart from the progressive Blue Tribe and the tradition-oriented Red Tribe. I first heard this apt classification from the “network state” advocate and cyborg theocrat, Balaji Srinavasan. Unlike our Big Tech monopolists, Srinavasan believes techno-religion will host a diverse pantheon of digital deities, where “every large community builds its AGI [artificial general intelligence] that it asks for guidance—like the polytheistic idea of multiple gods.”
Imagine an AI tutor that teaches your kid the Constitution and selective excerpts of the Bible. It’s more blasphemous than “Christian” heavy metal. Yet given current trends, it’s just as likely.
Before I go on, allow me to confess my rigid intolerance for 21st century idol worship. I do my best not to be crazy, or to sound like the NPCs who irritate me the most. As you may have noticed, it ain’t easy. To take a fresh example, for over eight years now, I’ve been dogged by media-warped libtards who can’t imagine a world beyond “Orange Man Bad!” It’s so ridiculous, I get contact embarrassment.
For similar reasons, I’m put off by unimaginative Christians who hear a chaste Sikh woman pray to God in her own language—as we witnessed at the RNC last week—and then reflexively shriek, “The satanic Republicans invited a HINDOO to pray to DEMONS!!” If the Sikh divinity Waheguru and their myriad angels—who are said to uphold kindness and self-restraint—are actually “demons,” then who are the Sikh demons that tempt humans to egotism and violence? I get that you don’t like their curry, but for God’s sake, understand it is still food.
Anyway, as I empty my soul into these screens day in and day out, I try not to boil technology down to “Gray Man Bad!” or wag a self-righteous finger at their digital demons. If I’m honest, though, Gray Man is antithetical to my own values and aesthetics. I’d prefer to exorcise his unholy legion entirely and head for the hills, but I suspect their drones would follow me soon enough. For now, I’ll attempt to shoot them down.
The fact is technologists are building a world they love. Some of these people are my best friends, so I try to respect their efforts. What can I say? I love robot-lovers. Be that as it may, if we legacy humans are to coexist with nascent cyborgs, our side will need to erect high cultural barriers to wall off their digital demons.
The problem is their most ambitious homies want to invade the entire cosmos and turn every atom into computronium. Whether these zealots are demonic or just delusional, they’re pushing the rest of us toward Uncle Ted and Papaw Ned, and that shit won’t be pretty.
Things can change fast, and I’m cautiously optimistic. But at present, Donald Trump is positioned to build a hi-tech wall around America and open a portal to hell inside our borders.
Trump is a notoriously old-fashioned man. I’m told he refuses to carry a smartphone and still clips newspapers like it’s 1980. Yet for any politician or businessman, there’s a strong temptation to trademark the Future™ before your adversaries get the chance.
Perhaps, as various tech bros, transhumanists, and soft genocidal posthumanists have argued, the reckless digital mutation of the entire human race—first culturally, then biologically—is as “inevitable” as openly gay Republicans and mass immigration. That doesn’t make it desirable.
For now, our most pressing issue is to smash up the corroded husk of the current order. I get that. I’m all about it. Peel apart that rotten edifice brick by brick and salt the earth. But what good will it do to “save America” if we just transform it into a cyborg theocracy? Even if our national AI shoggoth is dotted with smiling images of Jesus, its tentacles will drag your soul down all the same.
Transhumanism is neither “Left” nor “Right.” The desire to use technology to surpass human nature transcends “globalism” and “nationalism.” Many in this camp are willing to gamble our entire evolutionary history for the promise of synthetic biology. In their materialist trance, some honestly believe it’s good to obscure our eternal spiritual connection with animate digital icons.
On the other hand, many of them are based and fun to talk to. There’s the rub.
As Americans, our immediate task is to break up the sprawling, globalized Machine that deracinates identity, inverts everything that is sacred, and turns entire nations into lifeless economic zones. That may require some unseemly coalitions. As souls enshrined in human bodies, though, our ultimate task is to ensure we don’t build an even more perverse Machine in its place.
Politics is dirty business, as sordid as it is thrilling. Nothing could be more human.
My deepest gratitude to those who support my work with hard-earned scratch.
THANK YOU!!
ICYMI
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Many Singularities, Many Masters
In this episode, we’ll go over the many visions of what a Singularity might be. That includes the psychedelic mystic Terrence McKenna, the quasi-Orthodox inventor Ray Kurzweil, the inverted Gnostic roboticist David Hanson, and the e/acc founder Guillaume Verdon—a.k.a., BasedBeffJezos.
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Great read! - essentially more observant, articulate, and thorough than most all the politically oriented blogging that interminably circulates the webosphere these days. Your post here covers more ground in one place than anything else I've seen lately, and certainly with more art (artists historically have always lead the way with their vision!)! Thanks for nailing it so eloquently!!
To wit:
"By its own fluid, the caterpillar’s body dissolves within the chrysalis to metamorphose into the butterfly. The chaos that has recently emerged on all of Earth, is the ‘fluid’ now dissolving humanity as we know it, within our global ‘chrysalis’. We the ‘Conscious Creatives’, are the imaginal cells building the new evolved Whole World out of the formless solution that chaos continues to make of us, as it expands and envelopes virtually all of humanity. It is time we redirect technology toward the truly ORGANIC evolution we so desperately need, arrest our descent to extinction, and manifest a paradigm that transcends our shortcomings."
https://bohobeau.net/2021/01/29/whole-world/
Thank god you're funny, Joe. Excellent piece.