As the Sun Sets on Sand Hill Road, Andreessen Awaits His Caesar
The Architecture of a Tyranny
The sun is setting on Sand Hill Road. Not literally—the venture capital still flows, the returns still compound, the pitch decks still promise to change the world. But the light has changed. The Valley that once claimed to serve humanity now funds its surveillance. The republic that constrained power through democratic process now bends to oligarchs who’ve learned that buying regulatory favor is cheaper than accepting constraint.
Marc Andreessen stands at the center of this dissolution. He made his fortune at 24 with Netscape’s IPO, selling the promise that the internet would democratize information and liberate human potential. Twenty-four. And then never fully morally matured, it seems. Because he still wants what is his and doesn’t want to be compelled to share it. He is the self-made man. The Übermensch. The Hank Rearden. Holding up the world by bravely venturing into the technological unknown.
This isn’t just personal psychology. Marc’s ecosystem treats founder success as moral proof. When the system selects you, it starts to feel like merit; when it keeps selecting people like you, constraint starts to feel like theft. That is how a politics of “don’t interfere with builders” quietly becomes a politics of “disable democratic interference.” Not because one man turns evil—but because a class learns to interpret friction as illegitimate. From inside that bubble, the trajectory from backing Clinton, Obama, and Hillary to funding Trump makes perfect sense. Not as abandoning principles but as following them to their conclusion.
The man who once backed Democrats now awaits Donald Trump’s authoritarian consolidation with $2.5 million in donations and a portfolio optimized for a world where democratic constraint no longer interferes with technological acceleration.
By “Caesar” I mean not a man but a political condition: the consolidation of executive power into a protective shell around capital—where democratic constraint becomes optional and enforcement becomes selective. Marc awaits that condition.
The sun sets. Caesar rises. Marc has positioned himself to profit from the twilight.
In 2021, Tyler Cowen asked Marc Andreessen a simple question: what would Web3 actually improve for a normal user?
Marc chose podcasts as his primary example.
Cowen pressed: Podcasts work now. They’re free. There are ads. People can send money directly through Patreon, Substack, Spotify. What problem does blockchain solve?
Marc gave word salad. “Unique digital property.” “Different monetization methods.” Vague abstractions about “creators owning their relationship with fans”—which RSS feeds and email lists already provide.
When a serious economist asked for concrete advantage, the man who’d raised billions for Web3 couldn’t name one.
Two months earlier, a16z partner Chris Dixon appeared on The Verge’s “Decoder” podcast. Host Nilay Patel asked why a Web3 gaming item would be better than a regular digital item. Dixon struggled. Eventually pivoted to confusing metaphor about “owning your skin” in a game. Same pattern. Same inability to justify on merits.
a16z partners excel at high-level philosophy, fail at explaining product reality. Web3 was solution in search of problem, driven by need to deploy capital.
But they raised billions anyway. Used decentralization ideology to mask sophisticated wealth extraction. Funded crypto projects early. Created artificial hype through their platform. Exited to retail investors via ICOs when prices peaked.
Traditional VC exits through acquisition or IPO face regulatory scrutiny, SEC oversight, institutional buyer diligence. ICOs bypassed all that—direct retail sale with minimal regulation, wrapped in ideology of “democratizing finance.” The core move was structural: an exit path from venture-style risk into retail liquidity before the underlying product proved durable.
The ideology was marketing for extraction. Retail investors became bagholders. a16z walked away with billions.
The capital demonstrated something crucial: sophisticated packaging and revolutionary rhetoric can mask extraction until too late. Americans will fund systems without demanding to see what those systems actually do. By the time people realize there’s no there there, capital has already moved on.
Once you learn you can exit to retail without scrutiny, you go looking for exits where the scrutiny itself can be bought.
In October 2023, Marc published “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”—his declaration of intent to claim territory beyond democratic jurisdiction.
It starts reasonably—technology good, markets work, growth matters. The language of progress and human flourishing.
Then the mask slips.
“Any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.”
“Technology must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.”
“We are not victims, we are conquerors.”
“We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.”
This isn’t just metaphor for innovation. This is the language of dominion and domination—of claiming unincorporated lands and subjecting them to rule with or without consent.
The manifesto names its enemies with precision: “sustainability,” “ESG,” “trust and safety,” “tech ethics,” “risk management,” “Precautionary Principle.” Any democratic constraint on technological expansion. Any attempt to incorporate new territories under popular sovereignty. Any limit on acceleration.
Then comes the patron saints list. He lists them explicitly as inspirations—not as historical curiosities, but as his own declared lineage. The lineage Marc claims. Listed explicitly alongside economists and futurists: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.
Marinetti founded Italian Futurism. Wrote manifestos celebrating speed, violence, machinery, war. Glorified conquest and domination. Became a literal fascist—aligned with Mussolini, contributed to fascist ideology, celebrated fascism as embodiment of his futurist principles.
Marc Andreessen put an actual fascist in his list of intellectual heroes. Not hidden. Right there in the public manifesto.
The list also includes Nick Land—neoreactionary theorist, explicitly anti-democratic, Curtis Yarvin’s intellectual ancestor who dreams of corporate city-states ruled by CEO-kings. And John Galt—Ayn Rand’s fictional embodiment of the powerful individual who owes nothing to collective governance.
The technological Prometheans have convinced themselves and seek to persuade us that power will be shaped by their technologies, and that power in the form of popular sovereignty shaping technology is a tyranny of Luddism.
This is the great inversion. Democratic constraint on technology isn’t preservation of self-governance over the commons—it’s the enemy preventing rightful dominion. Regulation isn’t accountability to those who must live under new systems—it’s murder of preventable progress. Precautionary thinking isn’t wisdom about subjecting new territories to human judgment—it’s deep immorality standing in the way of manifest destiny.
The manifesto seeks unincorporated lands precisely because they lie beyond democratic jurisdiction. Spaces where technology can expand without constraint. Where acceleration faces no popular sovereignty. Where those who control deployment can claim dominion and call it progress.
The ideology came first. What followed was the search for protection.
By mid-2024, the system Marc built faced a problem. The Biden administration was attempting to incorporate the territories he’d claimed. Cryptocurrency—the space where a16z had extracted billions from retail investors—faced regulatory jurisdiction. The SEC was pursuing what Marc called “Operation Choke Point 2.0.”
The administration was developing frameworks for AI safety—attempting to incorporate the unincorporated lands of artificial intelligence under precautionary constraint before systems could be deployed at scale.
Biden proposed taxing unrealized capital gains—directly threatening the structure where venture capital collects returns without democratic taxation.
The capital required protection. Not because Marc is uniquely villainous, but because the deployment model requires conditions where democratic constraint cannot interfere. A lord who would recognize this arrangement. Who would grant the protection to rule unincorporated lands without popular sovereignty.
In July 2024, Marc and partner Ben Horowitz endorsed Donald Trump. Framed it as “single-issue vote” but the issue was clear: Which administration will protect deployment from democratic incorporation?
Marc paid $2.5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC. Over $11 million to crypto super PAC targeting those who would subject these territories to democratic rule.
The exchange was explicit. The capital wanted crypto deregulation, AI deregulation, no wealth taxes. It paid to secure them.
By late 2025, the protection was operational. a16z allies appointed to key positions. Scott Kupor, a16z partner, heading Office of Personnel Management. Hostile regulations regarding crypto and AI “largely rolled back or stalled.”
The capital found its protection. Now it builds.
This is not conspiracy. Andy Mills characterized me as such in his podcast The Last Invention—using my warnings as the voice of paranoia against which reasonable engagement with AI optimism could be measured. When I objected, he held firm that his characterization was fair.
It isn’t. And he misunderstood which accelerationism I find most dangerous. Not Andreessen’s “effective accelerationism”—the Panglossian anti-regulatory optimism of e/acc. That’s bad enough. But the kind of accelerationism practiced by campist leftists and anarchists who seek the accelerated collapse of the United States political order. These people see power centers like the Kremlin and Beijing—for all their faults—as necessary counter-pressures to American hard and soft power. The Snowdens, Greenwalds, and Gabbards of the world who seek to defang America’s teeth and allow the world to settle into competitive spheres of influence, which they believe will contain America’s “imperialism.”
It is perhaps a grand irony that in this very moment, the very kind of American imperialist misadventures in South America that defined the 20th century is exactly the kind of misadventure the power structures these people helped propel to power as “the lesser evil” now bear down into.
An American naval armada, at the time of this writing, appears to be preparing for a regime-change war in Venezuela—illegally, without the constitutionally required Congressional approval under Article I of the US Constitution. The Maduro regime is no doubt the most evil regime in the Western hemisphere, and I am ready to celebrate its departure from its earthly bonds. But it’s deeply hard to square the non-interventionist ideology of this group with their direct support in some cases, effective support in others, and passively supportive anti-anti-left stance—for the Trump/Vance regime.
They spent decades opposing CIA coups and territorial interference. Now they’ve helped enable an administration openly discussing annexation of Greenland, takeover of the Panama Canal, and regime change in Venezuela without constitutional constraint. The accelerationists got their collapse of liberal order. What they’re getting instead is not multipolar balance but naked imperial ambition unrestrained by the very democratic institutions they worked to discredit.
Both forms serve the same dissolution of democratic constraint, just from opposite directions. Andreessen wants to remove constraint so capital can deploy without friction. The campists wanted to remove constraint so American power collapses into competing authoritarian spheres. Both get you to the same place: a world where democratic process cannot impose meaningful limits on concentrated power.
The word “conspiracy” carries the interpretive valence of someone unhinged, seeing patterns in static. What I describe operates in campaign finance records, public appointments, and published manifestos. These aren’t hidden connections requiring paranoid inference—they’re the surface of things.
This is alignment of incentives. The capital didn’t buy every regulatory decision—it bought protection for territories where its interests and Trump’s authoritarian consolidation overlap. The danger isn’t that a16z controls state machinery. The danger is that they don’t need to. Protection flows naturally when both benefit from dissolving democratic constraint. Protection doesn’t mean dictating outcomes; it means lowering the odds that democratic institutions can impose meaningful friction.
When protection is secured, the portfolio shifts from speculative assets to systems—because systems, once installed, convert consent into dependency.
We’re going to build a wall around the human mind, and retail investors will pay for it!
December 2025: a16z publishes “Big Ideas 2026”—the infrastructure they’re funding with capital extracted from those who will be subjected to it.
“Physical observability: understanding what’s happening in cities, power grids, in real time.”
Surveillance. Cameras, sensors, tracking systems across urban infrastructure. Not protecting citizens but observing them. Monitoring movement, behavior, patterns. Marketed as innovation. Funded by a16z capital. Protected by the administration that removed constraint.
“We’re no longer designing for humans, but for agents. The new optimization isn’t for visual hierarchy, but for machine legibility.”
Infrastructure optimized for machines, treating human needs as friction. Systems designed not to serve those who use them but to extract data from them.
“Healthy MAUs: consumers who aren’t actively sick but want to monitor and understand their health on a recurring basis.”
Continuous monitoring as subscription. Everyone producing biometric data—not for their own health but for platforms to analyze, monetize, control.
“The year of me: products stop being mass-produced and start being made for you.”
Infinite personalization destroying collective power. Each person locked in custom-built information environment, believing it’s freedom. No shared reality to coordinate resistance. No commons to gather. Just isolated individuals optimizing separately while capital coordinates across all of them.
If this infrastructure were neutral—if it truly served human flourishing rather than extraction—it would increase citizens’ power to refuse, not merely optimize compliance. Show me one system in this portfolio that increases collective bargaining power against capital. Show me one technology that makes coordination easier for workers than for their employers. Show me one deployment that strengthens democratic constraint rather than bypassing it.
You can’t. Because that’s not what’s being built. If none exists, then the claim that this infrastructure serves human flourishing is false by its own stated criteria.
To be fair: “observability” can mean fewer blackouts; agents can mean less friction; health monitoring can mean prevention; personalization can mean accessibility. These are real benefits. The question isn’t whether benefits exist. The question is: who owns the system, who has exit, and who sets the defaults. Under democratic constraint, these tools can serve the public. Under capture, they become instruments of extraction because the same thing that makes them useful—continuous data flows and dependency—also makes them governable by whoever controls them.
In a democratic system, the public gets an off-switch: opt-out that doesn’t mean exclusion from basic life. In an extractive system, “choice” means: accept the sensors, accept the agents, accept the monitoring—or lose the service.
Surveillance infrastructure. Agent-primacy systems. Continuous monitoring. Dissolution of collective power. All funded by capital extracted from those who will be subjected. All marketed as innovation serving them. All protected by the arrangement Marc secured.
Tyler Cowen asked what Web3 would improve. Marc couldn’t answer. Raised billions anyway. Extracted from retail investors who believed the revolutionary rhetoric.
Now ask what “physical observability” improves. What making humans secondary to agents accomplishes. What continuous monitoring achieves.
The system doesn’t require an answer. It only requires deployment.
The system Marc is funding does not require his intentions to succeed. It only requires his capital. The sequence is simple: capital funds infrastructure, infrastructure produces dependency, dependency eliminates meaningful consent, and consent gets retroactively redefined as ‘choice.’
Feudalism has learned in the 21st century to employ a performance of humbleness and anti-elitism to trick labor into thinking these wizards of high finance are selling freedom. However, the mask has slipped in recent years.
I watched clips of the All-In Holiday Party. The event charged $500 for tickets—attendees waited in freezing San Francisco cold, sat on hard wooden seats, drank cheap wine from plastic cups. Tony Hinchcliffe headlined, roasting San Francisco as a “shithole” while cracking jokes about using SpaceX rockets for deportations. David Sacks—now serving as AI and Crypto Czar in the Trump administration—received gratitude from attendees on LinkedIn for the networking opportunities with the “besties.”
This is not a digression: it’s the aesthetic logic of the new order—anti-elite branding, elite access pricing, and public-power proximity—performed as comedy so nobody has to feel the moral weight.
The sophistication lies in never announcing what’s being built. Surveillance arrives as “observability.” Subordination arrives as “agent-primacy.” Dissolution of collective power arrives as “personalization.” And feudalism arrives as a holiday party where you pay tribute for the privilege of sitting on wooden benches while the lords roast the city they’ve helped destroy.
Web3 extracted wealth from retail investors’ wallets. The 2026 portfolio extracts agency from everyone’s lives. The pattern is identical: ideology masking extraction, revolutionary rhetoric covering domination, sophisticated financial engineering enabling what couldn’t survive democratic scrutiny.
But the extraction has evolved from wealth to freedom. From retail investors to everyone. From taking money to taking agency.
Marc published a manifesto naming a fascist among his intellectual heroes. Listed those who sought dominion through violence and acceleration. Declared democratic constraint on technology to be the enemy. Called precautionary wisdom murder of preventable progress.
He secured protection from an authoritarian to ensure democratic jurisdiction couldn’t reach these territories.
Now infrastructure gets built with capital extracted from those who will be locked outside it. Systems designed not to serve but to observe, control, optimize. All marketed as progress toward abundance while building apparatus of subjection.
The capital learned from Web3 that Americans will fund their own subjection if the packaging is sophisticated enough. That by the time people realize what was built, it’s operational. That deployment happens before consequences become visible.
The system selects for this pattern: deploy capital, use innovation rhetoric, secure political protection, build before questions can be asked. By the time people realize “physical observability” is surveillance, the cameras are installed, the systems operational, the political protection ensuring democratic constraint can’t interfere.
The sun sets on Sand Hill Road. Venture capital that claimed to serve humanity now funds infrastructure to control it. The republic that constrained power through popular sovereignty bends to those who’ve learned that securing protection beats accepting democratic limits.
Marc awaits his Caesar—the authoritarian consolidation that will protect his territories from the popular sovereignty his manifesto named as enemy.
He calls it techno-optimism. Progress, abundance, human flourishing. Conquering unincorporated lands and making everyone rich.
Read the patron saints. Read the enemy list. Read what’s being funded.
Technological acceleration unconstrained by popular sovereignty. Capital deployed to extract not wealth but freedom. Infrastructure of control marketed as innovation.
The danger isn’t technology. The danger is technology deployed without democratic constraint, optimized for extraction rather than coordination, built to serve capital rather than embedded agents. Some technology liberates. This infrastructure subjugates. The difference is who controls deployment and toward what ends.
Most of us won’t resist this dramatically. We’ll accept it because it arrives as convenience, not command. Because it asks for nothing all at once. Because it never announces itself as domination. The boiling will be slow enough, the normalization complete enough, the packaging sophisticated enough.
Thomas Jefferson understood that mankind is disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, rather than right themselves by abolishing forms to which they are accustomed. The system counts on that tendency.
But once you see this pattern, neutrality becomes participation. The infrastructure is being built. The capital is deployed. The political protection is secured. The question is no longer whether this future arrives—but who will be able to say they didn’t help build it.
What these economic royalists—as Roosevelt would call them—don’t understand is that people don’t merely seek material comfort. They seek connection and meaning. And most importantly, they seek to contribute to the shape of their world. Not to have it shaped for them. Not to have the risks managed for them. Humans crave truth. And in that craving, they are called towards the frontier.
Silicon Valley has stopped providing tools and has started building a cage. Steve Jobs had a romantic view of technology. The same view I do, quite frankly. A bicycle for the mind. This age of attention management has become a prison for the heart.
The demand isn’t to stop technology. It’s to reassert democratic veto: auditability, exit rights that don’t punish the poor, bans on coerced biometric surveillance, public ownership or strict licensing for core civic sensing infrastructure, and hard walls between political favor and regulatory enforcement. If we can’t do that, then “innovation” is just the story we tell while we’re being governed.
The sun may be setting on Sand Hill Road. But some of us remember what the republic was for. Remember that embedded agents cannot exit from coordination space. Remember that unincorporated lands aren’t empty territories awaiting lordship—they’re the commons that belong to everyone.
Marc awaits his Caesar. The People await their dignity.
The wire holds. The tent stands.
Tomorrow, the powerful play goes on.
Well, that was a bleak introduction to Year II of trump 2.0...not only are the technogarchs strengthening their hold over captive audiences here at home, but — with trump's help — battering down defenses in the EU, in the latter's attempt to hold these wretched monopolies to account.
It only will get worse before it even attempts to get better.
We are going in to the New Year with fascists in charge, billionaires running the show. There’s so many people not paying attention while they rob us blind.