The national debt is currently >$37T. This is a debt that can never be repaid. Everyone knows this. The US, everyone says, “cannot” default. From there, the line of thinking is that:
(i) we will have to keep raising the debt ceiling indefinitely no matter what; l (ii) there is no amount of spending cuts or reductions that could feasibly be made that would have any meaningful impact on this; and
(iii) at some point, currency debasement will likely be necessary in order to even make payments on the interest to avoid default.

In light of recent events, it is worth pointing out that the Silicon Valley tech overlords that have captured our government are obsessed with starting a new manhattan project & have been lobbying for this by fomenting paranoia about the necessity of the US going to war—🧵 In fact, that’s the very point of Andreessen-Horotwitz’s/a16z’s “American Dynamism”:
(2)

It has been obvious that this administration, largely through the influence of the tech elites, are intentionally destabilizing the US economy & USD. I have been skeptical of claims that they also want to push US to default.

I now believe this is likely the case.🧵 I understood the reasons for these groups wanting to create an economic crisis within the US sufficient to accelerate the decentralization of the financial system & decay of US democracy. But default would not just mean economic crisis in the US—there would be global —(2)

Not even halfway through this eight hour immigration law seminar and folks, things are looking really bleak. Biggest takeaways so far:

1. Black letter law & case law can’t keep up with executive orders; immigration attorneys feel in the dark & increasingly powerless;

2. Compared to five months ago, ICE is basically a law unto themselves; unconstrained by law or process

@jimstewartson Thiel &the PayPal Mafia have are everywhere. Their monopoly on social media & the internet gives them a monopoly on information & communication infrastructure—our infrastructure of reality—allowing them not just to manipulate but shatter our ability to form a shared reality AND @jimstewartson Also has the dual function of acting as a massive surveillance and data mining mechanism, giving them unprecedented access to information about all of us. To top it off, through government contracts in defense, intelligence, homeland security, etc. and lobbying, they have

And yet, what will come of it? What has come of it? What has come of “signalgate” (the first one)? Remember when they kicked Zelensky out of the White House? That seems like decades ago. Remember when several agencies were defunded or drastically cut? Remember when countless …

https://twitter.com/robertgarcia/status/1914780765956792363

Environmental regulations and protections were scaled back, repealed, or replaced? The policies deregulating crypto and AI, allowing for reckless acceleration of development as well as essentially legalized fraud and corruption?

The book Thiel cites as the most influential he ever read asserts that 21st century tech, namely cryptocurrency, will enable the elite to gain sovereignty from & cause the collapse of the nation-state. A 2001 article interviewing Thiel reveals just how influential it was: 🧵

https://twitter.com/philopublius9/status/1902771567416779195

The article, appearing in Wired on Sept. 1, 2001, begins with what Thiel revealed about PayPal’s successes and transformative potential at a talk attended by the journalist in Palo Alto. (2)

On Friday, 4-11-25, ICE made a $29,898,236 modification to its existing contract with Thiel’s Palantir to upgrade the Investigative Case Management (ICM) System—a massive surveillance database built on Palantir’s software & hosted in its cloud.…🧵
The ICM System, per Homeland Security, serves as “the core law enforcement case management tool for ICE Homeland Security Investigations.” The ICM system allows millions of individuals to be searched for & filtered through based on hundreds of highly specific categories (2)

My colleagues are all bright legal and political minds. Yet they, too, seem blindly optimistic or unconcerned about what is happening—I had a colleague say today “I don’t see that actually happening though—they won’t ever get the votes for that.” To which I responded 🧵 “They are currently defying a unanimous Supreme Court decision—not to mention the countless other overt violations of law and Constitution these past few weeks—why do you think they would allow not getting enough votes in the Senate to stop them?” And she looked at me (2)

Anyone who wants to understand some of the ideological foundations of what is happening in the US government should read this thread.

https://twitter.com/philopublius9/status/1902771567416779195

And this one after that:

https://twitter.com/philopublius9/status/1905265202691453116

Finished reading Hoppe’s “Democracy: the God that Failed” last night—a book which influenced the NRx/Dark Enlightenment ideologies &their adherents. Very similar to the Sovereign Individual except rather than positing rapid tech advancement would make the collapse of democracy🧵 and the nationstate inevitable and saying that’s a good thing for the cognitive elite, it doesn’t mention tech. It posits that democracy is a failure and it’s collapse would benefit the elite but it won’t fall on its own, so it must be forced to. Interestingly, Hoppes argues(2)

In a 2014 interview with Forbes (excerpt below), Peter Thiel said “The Sovereign Individual” (1997) was the most influential book he ever read. It also helped form the foundations of the neoreactionary ideology that has compromised the US government. Thus, this book is crucial🧵

https://twitter.com/philopublius9/status/1902563467602587899

To understanding this pivotal and urgent moment in American history. The primary thesis is that the “Information Age” will prove to be the “Information Revolution” and its impact on humanity would make that of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions look negligible. (2)

Continuing our look into the ideologies and world view of Peter Theil, I will now be sharing some excerpts from his 2007 essay “The Straussian Moment” (available here: gwern.net/doc/politics/2…) 🧵 x.com/philopublius9/… In the “Straussian Moment” Thiel, using the philosophies of Schmitt, Strauss, & Girard, essentially argues that 9/11 reveals the Enlightenment & the Western liberal world order that was built upon it to be a massive fraud which has been degenerative for Western civilization (2)

@BovayNicolas The tech right/PayPal mafia crew have long been rejecting democracy and liberalism in the belief that it’s inefficient and in terminal decline. They also would like to deregulate and privatize as much as possible for obvious reasons (regulations stifle their ability to @BovayNicolas push or accelerate their industrial/tech progress as fast and as far as possible). They also, for these reasons, reject globalism and the nation state. Ideally, the wealthy could purchase and use land and it’s resources however they please without any national, international, or