Mortal Gods and Machine States: The Rise of Techno-Authoritarianism

This isn’t a political shift. It’s a hostile takeover. And the architects are hiding in plain sight.

Peter Thiel. Elon Musk. Curtis Yarvin. J.D. Vance. They are not just thought leaders in right-wing tech and politics—they are the advance guard of an ideology that seeks to replace democracy with something sleeker, faster, and far more dangerous: corporate rule disguised as liberation.

Their vision is clear. Replace messy, deliberative government with a CEO-king. Turn the federal government into a startup. Fire the bureaucrats. Silence dissent. Streamline power. It sounds efficient. That’s the point. Efficiency is the justification for authoritarianism in the modern age.

Curtis Yarvin is the theorist. He writes about “mortal gods” and the need for a sovereign who rules like a CEO, advised by a board of directors. His intellectual inspiration? Hobbes’ Leviathan—not as a warning, but a blueprint. For Yarvin, democracy is outdated code. He’s called for a reboot.

Peter Thiel agrees. He’s said democracy and freedom are incompatible. He bankrolls candidates who will dismantle the administrative state. He built Palantir to give governments—and corporations—the tools to surveil and control at scale. It’s not just about national security. It’s about power.

Elon Musk wants to colonize space, implant chips in brains, and redefine free speech to mean “platforming fascists.” He believes he knows better than the public. He sees regulation not as safety but obstruction. Democracy slows him down. So he seeks to go around it—or above it.

Together, they’ve found their perfect avatar in Donald Trump. Trump doesn’t share their ideology. But he shares their contempt for institutions, and he’s willing to bulldoze them. He is chaos with a fanbase. That makes him useful.

J.D. Vance is the closer. A graduate of elite schools now posing as a populist, Vance has taken Yarvin’s ideas mainstream. He’s said the quiet part out loud: fire every midlevel bureaucrat. Replace them with loyalists. If the courts object? Ignore them. Quote Andrew Jackson: “Let him enforce it.”

This is not rhetoric. This is a plan.

They frame this agenda as anti-elitist. But it is the ultimate elitism. They don’t want rule by Harvard grads. They want rule by billionaires and their handpicked enforcers. The enemy, to them, is not just “wokeness.” It’s independence. Expertise. Accountability.

And they have a model: China. Despite the chest-thumping nationalism, they admire China’s centralized structure. One leader. No opposition. No elections. Total control. They want an American version—run by tech.

Palantir is the surveillance. X is the propaganda arm. Campaign donations fund the political machine. This is not speculative. It is already operational.

And the warning signs are everywhere: attacks on universities. Purges of public workers. State legislatures voting to override elections. A media ecosystem designed to overwhelm, distract, and disinform.

The coup won’t come with tanks. It will come with software updates. With policies buried in budget bills. With loyalty tests masked as job applications. With culture wars that are really power grabs.

We are not witnessing a debate. We are witnessing a campaign to end debate.

This is the fork in the road.

Will we be governed by public servants—or platform owners? By laws—or by code? By voters—or by venture capital?

Techno-authoritarianism is not coming. It’s here. And if we don’t resist it now, the next version of government won’t come with ballots. It’ll come with Terms and Conditions.