The Digital Tech Broligarchy’s Interest in Left-Wing Science Fiction: A Critical Reading of the Culture of Techno-Libertarianism

Abstract

A slew of recent articles has asked what the connection might be between right-wing libertarian Silicon Valley billionaires and left-wing science fiction, especially the fiction of Iain M. Banks, the declared reading preference of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Sam Altman. Bank’s Culture novels create a Rococo utopia that justifies social dislocation and political authoritarianism in the present, licensing and legitimating it under the sign of the exception through what Banks terms Special Circumstances – a dirty tricks team run by superintelligences doing evil to cause good. We argue that the combination of this utopia with reckless AI development and disenchantment with democracy is a profound change to the political economy.