Meet the TheoBros: MAGA’s ‘Aristopopulist’ Plans for an AI-Powered Post-Democratic Future

Meet the Theo­Bros. They’re theocrats, but they don’t live in the dark ages. On the con­trary, some of them are among the biggest tech entre­pre­neurs on the plan­et. Titans of indus­try. Oth­ers are indeed reac­tionary preach­ers with a desire to turn back the clock at least a cen­tu­ry or two. It’s an umbrel­la the­ol­o­gy. Although less a the­ol­o­gy and more a polit­i­cal move­ment built more around a wor­ship, and under­stand­ing of, pow­er more than any real val­ue sys­tem. And it’s a move­ment that is only acquir­ing more and more of pow­er thanks to this net­work’s close work­ing rela­tion­ship with the cur­rent White House. It’s ‘the Dark Ages meets tech­no-fan­ta­sist future’ walk­ing the halls of pow­er today.

The Theo­Bros aren’t real­ly a new net­work. More of a alliance of already well estab­lished inter­ests con­geal­ing around a shared vision for the future. A vision cen­tered around the promise of cre­at­ing break­away soci­eties. More specif­i­cal­ly, break­away author­i­tar­i­an-led soci­eties, where Sil­i­con Val­ley fas­cists and theocrats are free to run things as they see fit. It could be seen as the next step in the ‘Seast­eading’ ini­tia­tive Peter Thiel launched rough­ly two decades ago, or the relat­ed ‘Char­ter Cities’ ini­tia­tives, except now they’re refer­ring to the ‘Net­work State’, a con­cept built around the ide­al of build­ing both vir­tu­al and phys­i­cal ‘anti-woke’ com­mu­ni­ties that, even­tu­al­ly, col­lec­tive­ly have enough real eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal pow­er to replace the cur­rent US demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. Numer­ous fig­ures aligned with the pow­er­ful theo­crat­ic Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) are part of this move­ment along with Sil­i­con Val­ley tech titans like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and Bal­a­ji Srini­vasan, who envi­sions a future San Fran­cis­co run by and for tech firms, with spe­cial zones in the city where only ‘loy­al’ cit­i­zens are allowed to roam. Theo­Bros’ ven­ture cap­i­tal firms like 1789 Cap­i­tal and New Found­ing are rais­ing bil­lions of dol­lars to invest in not just advance tech­nol­o­gy and AI, but also cre­ate theo­crat­ic white Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ist polit­i­cal enclaves like the High­land Rim Project in Jack­son Coun­ty, Ten­nessee. And when it comes to pow­er­ing the ener­gy-inten­sive economies of the future (pos­si­bly break­away Net­work State economies), com­pa­nies like Valar Atom­ics are promis­ing to pro­vide the next-gen­er­a­tion mod­u­lar nuclear pow­er that can pro­vide data cen­ters with all the scal­able ener­gy they need. That’s the promise of a com­pa­ny found­ed by a twen­ty-some­thing high-school dropout who also hap­pens to be an acolyte of Doug Wil­son, the MAGA-aligned neo-Con­fed­er­ate Domin­ion­ist preach­er cur­rent expand­ing his influ­ence in Wash­ing­ton DC. As we’ll see, Valar Atom­ics is already lead­ing the next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear pow­er tech­nol­o­gy race, thanks to both mas­sive ‘Theo­Bros’ invest­ments but also a Trump admin­is­tra­tion that has made the devel­op­ment of next-gen­er­a­tion nuclear pow­er a major pri­or­i­ty. A Valar Atom­ics is just one exam­ple of a grow­ing array of major tech­nol­o­gy firms owned and oper­at­ed by fig­ures aligned with the Theo­Bros agen­da. An agen­da that appears to be a real-world man­i­fes­ta­tion of Peter Thiel’s bizarre the­ol­o­gy that views any reg­u­la­tion of tech­nol­o­gy as a con­tem­po­rary man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Antichrist. It’s the post-Trump/­post-democ­ra­cy vision from the same fusion of oli­garchs and theocrats we’ve long seen ani­mat­ing the MAGA agen­da and it’s not real­ly new, but more the next step in the path towards fas­cism the US has long been trav­el­ing.

The (Schedule F) Purge: Trump’s Big Revenge Plan, Brought to You By the Council for National Policy

It’s not a secret plot to purge the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment of its career staffers and replace them with par­ti­san hacks. It was a secret when then-Pres­i­dent Trump set the plot in motion 13 days before the 2020 elec­tion with an exec­u­tive order. The “Sched­ule F” exec­u­tive order plot — cen­tered around a bureau­crat­ic loop­hole dis­cov­ered in Jan­u­ary of 2019 by an obscure Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial — opened the flood­gates. And while the mass fir­ings nev­er actu­al­ly took place in the final months of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, those flood­gates remain open along with the plot. That’s the explo­sive rev­e­la­tion described in a pair of arti­cles put out by Axios back in July: The Sched­ule F plot con­tin­ues. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion isn’t wast­ing any time next time. A mass purge of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will be one of the first moves of a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion. And now that Don­ald Trump has thrown his hat in the ring one more time the prospect of see­ing this plot put into effect is very real. But as we’re going to see, that ongo­ing plot is real whether or not Trump gets the nom­i­na­tion and ‘wins’ the race. Because the ongo­ing Sched­ule F effort isn’t just a MAGA-land plot. The pow­er­ful Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy (CNP) is deeply invest­ed in it, with the CNP’s Con­ser­v­a­tive Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (CPI) play­ing a lead­ing and grow­ing role. Sched­ule F is the plan. Or at least the start of the plan. As we’re also going to see, there’s a larg­er plot being devel­oped for what to do after the Sched­ule F purge and all the obsta­cles are out of the way. A larg­er plot for that appears to be inspired by none oth­er than Cur­tis “Men­cius Mold­bug” Yarvin, whose ideas for a post-demo­c­ra­t­ic Amer­i­ca are only grow­ing in elite con­ser­v­a­tive cir­cles. That’s the plot we’re going to be cov­er­ing in this post. The plans for Sched­ule F and beyond. Plans and tens of mil­lions of dol­lars and army of CNP-activists work­ing to make them a real­i­ty.