Cool Gray City of Tech Authoritarians: Balaji's dark vision for San Francisco

The Point: Like some mustache-twirling cartoon villain, the main tech figure behind the Network State cult lays out a "roadmap" for an authoritarian future in which San Francisco Democrats ("Blues") and poor people are barred from entire parts of the city.

Tech loyalists ("Grays") will don Gray shirts, carry Gray ID cards (for swiping into the Gray sectors of town). They will also hold weekly banquets for Gray police officers (cops who have confessed their loyalty to tech). And they'll march in "Gray Pride Parades" featuring "drones flying overhead in formation."

The backstory: My previous post introduced Balaji Srinivasan (let's call him B.S. for short), the main brain behind the Network State cult of tech billionaires trying to reinvent government and media.

B.S., a former partner at Andreesen-Horowitz and former chief technology officer of Coinbase, wrote an entire book called "The Network State: How to Start a New Country." Tech oligarchs like Marc Andreesen hold him in high regard and consider him some kind of genius oracle. His book outlines how tech billionaires can seize more economic and political power by establishing new sovereign territories under their control.

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