Technocracy Roundtable with Courtenay Turner, Patrick Wood, and Iain Davis, May 20, 2025

It was an honor to be invited to participate in this important roundtable hosted by Courtenay Turner and featuring Patrick Wood and Iain Davis, two of the leading thinkers on technocracy. We got into a wide range of topics — too many to list here — but what pleased me the most was the organic way in which we kept returning (without planning to) to the various methods of deception that have been, and are being, used to sell technocracy to the public. Trump’s “base” in particular needs to understand this.Another interesting talking point was the flimsy foundations on which accelerationism — the philosophical accompaniment to contemporary technocracy — rests. Much like earlier philosophies of totalitarianism, it is intellectual garbage, yet is being embraced at the highest levels of power to legitimize the intended transition to technocracy.Although many technocrats today claim to be religious, theirs is not a brand of religion that most of us would recognize. Venture capitalist “accelerators” have been responsible for, among other things, new weapons technologies tested in Gaza and Ukraine. In 2008, the neoreactionary, Curtis Yarvin, called for a “humane alternative to genocide” involving trapping people in virtual cocoons, an idea which resurfaced during Covid when Yuval Harari claimed that the “useless class” — i.e., those rendered redundant by new technologies — should be left to play video games. Is this a future that any of us wants?Unfortunately, technocracy, which has been decades in incubation, is being rolled out fast and is now at an advanced stage, not least given the influence of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk on the new Trump administration. The public needs to recognize what it really going on. Hopefully, this roundtable will help people to see the bigger picture. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dhughes.substack.com/subscribe

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