Have you ever felt that there is something wrong with how we're evolving as a society, from echo chambers in tech's social media to the fall of the USA and the rise of fascism throughout the western world?

Gil Durán lays out in painstaking detail the underpinnings of how the Silicon Valley billionaires are using their wealth and crazy self-aggrandizing philosophies to drive the USA and subsequently the world to a dystopia that I find reminiscent of the cyberpunk worlds of William Gibson, where we swear fealty to the corporate overlords and are discarded as inconsequential waste if we can't prove our worth to the corporation.

Durán lays out how Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, among others, use their wealth, connections, and influence, to move loyalists, such as JD Vance, into key positions in government, to benefit themselves financially as well as to drive their philosophies of a new tomorrow.

The premise of the book is, to be fair, biased against the American oligarchy, but Durán doesn't try to hide this bias or dress it up as impartiality. In a world where oligarchs own most media companies, I find the clear left-leaning view of what is happening to be a breath of fresh air.

The book's cast of characters is large, so prepare for some mental bookkeeping of who's who and who is connected to whom. To help, you may find the independent website, [The Authoritarian Stack](https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/) by Dr. Bria and others, useful, as it lays out the connections visually. Be mindful that it isn't connected in any way to this book, but has been independently researched based on financial data and personal connections in key roles.

So, if you want to see why the world might be moving the way it is, and how money from Thiel and Musk flows into all aspects of governments across the West to corrupt institutions and pursue their science fiction ideas of independent corporate states, The Nerd Reich is well worth a read, but beware, it is mostly depressing reading.