Reboot 2024 was supposed to shed light on the so-called “New Reality.” In promotional materials, its organizers prominently touted how this paradigm shift would lay waste to institutions and incumbents, all in the name of a revolution against the “elite.”
“To achieve that future, America will need Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley will need its window into Washington,” the website for Reboot crows.
To its credit, the all-day conference, held at Fort Mason on Thursday, coalesced a group of some of the Bay Area’s most influential figures in politics and tech, including political scientist Francis Fukuyama, media agitator Mike Solana, and Y Combinator head Garry Tan, the latter of whom is waging a war against progressive policy in the Bay Area.
But while there were a few big swings at existential issues in America, what was billed as a disruption to the status quo primarily served to reinforce a variety of conservative talking points — courtesy of a slate of far-right speakers who blame liberalism, regulation, and skepticism toward tech as anathema to human progress.
I embedded at Reboot yesterday to glimpse the intersection of technocracy and anti-establishment ideals. Here’s what I found:
Project 2025 comes to the City
The Reboot agenda billed a “special guest” for an afternoon discussion titled “Tech and the American Republic,” hosted by popular tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel.
It was Kevin Roberts, president of the far-right think tank Heritage Foundation and a primary booster of “Project 2025,” the disturbing conservative blueprint that calls for a full-blown attack on — among other things — abortion rights, LGBTQ identity, racial equity efforts, environmental protections, and undocumented immigration.
In predictable fashion, Roberts repeatedly spoke of the “deep state,” a popular term in far-right circles that suggests a conspiracy by “elites” to dominate culture through a secret network of influence that pushes “radical” ideology (like, say, protecting trans kids or asylum-seeking immigrants).
He praised the everyday government bureaucrats who strive to be “non-political”: “Ideologically driven leaders of some parts of the deep state actually undermine the dignity of their work,” he bemoaned.
Over and over, Roberts pitched Project 2025 and Heritage’s agenda as being aligned with the tech industry, suggesting that tech evangelists and e/acc futurists are “kindred spirits” with conservatives due to their love of capital (both human and financial) and liberty to do what they wish.
“There are still people who are wired for freedom,” Roberts declared. “And that, I think, we can revitalize the Republic around.”
Making America Great Again, via the Bay Area
Roberts wasn’t the only diehard right-winger at Reboot. In fact, a significant proportion of speakers have deep roots in conservative activism.
There was Jessica Anderson, the president of the Republican-boosting super PAC Sentinel Action Fund and the former executive director of Heritage Action, an advocacy group related to the Heritage Foundation. Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute and a defender of some of the most vile propagandists on the right, was a featured guest. Katie Biber, chief legal officer for crypto investment fund Paradigm, repeatedly attacked Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and championed the need to “abolish liberal nonprofits.”
At times, the conversation on stage flirted with extreme visions about how to correct America’s course as a global leader. National Security Institute head Jamil Jaffer, for example, declared that “we are days and weeks away from a mass-scale terrorist attack,” noting that a rapid increase in defense spending is necessary.
Josh Steinman, a staffer for the federal National Security Council under former President Donald Trump and co-founder of cybersecurity company Galvanick, went even further.
“I think President Trump has a really positive vision of what to do in the country, and I think he’s an amazing candidate… You want a vision? The vision is making America great again,” Steinman told the audience.
Chesa Boudin still lives in Garry Tan’s head, rent free
In a day full of softball questions from moderators who are directly aligned with the speakers, nothing compared with the plush Charmin touch of Pirate Wires’ Mike Solana conversing with Garry Tan, the hyperwealthy head of startup accelerator Y Combinator who has redefined himself as a noisy SF political activist and funder.
While he discussed his investment into “small tech” and the issues of corporate behemoths like Meta and Google, much of the conversation had to do with Tan’s view of SF during a contested election season.
He blamed former District Attorney Chesa Boudin for destroying law and order in the city, claiming that he literally does not care about anti-Asian violence and leveraging the story of Vicha Ratanapakdee, an elderly Thai man who was pushed to death by a teenager in 2021.
“I saw the reaction from the DA at the time … This is someone who literally said, ‘You know what, that’s a temper tantrum, I wanna let this person out,’” Tan claimed, in a full-blown misquote from a 2021 New York Times story.
(Boudin called the killing “heinous” in the piece, and only mentioned the “temper tantrum” while describing the attacker’s behavior prior to the murder, when the teenager was striking a parked car with his hands.)
In typical Tan fashion, he didn’t let the nuance get in the way of narrative. Without tipping his choice for the mayoral election in November, Tan said that philanthropist Daniel Lurie is off the table, solely because one of his staff members worked for Boudin. (“I do not trust this person,” Tan said.)
Otherwise, he pumped the voter guide from GrowSF — a political advocacy group he is a board member of — and suggested people join the United Democratic Club.
“This November, we’re ready to retake the Board of Supervisors and have a moderate mayor,” he said.
Tan also spoke of his vision to bring “thousands of companies making billions of dollars” into the city, but used a bizarre turn of phrase given his distaste for the progressive left.
“How do we make a thousand flowers bloom?” he asked, perhaps (accidentally?) referencing a common misquote of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
It was a talk indicative of the day: Full of bluster, dashes of misinformation, and vague appeals to revolution. But far from a new reality, Reboot primarily served as a navel-gazing exercise by the tech bourgeoise, all in the name of hypercapitalism and American exceptionalism.
