Citizens defeat billionaires (for now)
Less than two hours from now: Nerd Reich LIVE with Adam Becker and Wendy Liu at 12 p.m. PST. Paid subscribers, please check your inbox for the link to join (sent yesterday).
California Forever project on the ropes?
How to defeat tech billionaire power? Look no further than Solano County, California, where local citizens have stalled a billionaire Goliath in its tracks. Their struggle holds crucial lessons for the fight ahead as Americans wake up to the threat of rampant billionaire power.
In 2023, a gang of tech billionaires invaded Solano County with plans to build a sprawling “tech utopia” city called California Forever. In response, Democrats and Republicans banded together to fight back. I called it the “Miracle in Solano” because, in these politically polarized times, the billionaires found a way to unite Solano County residents—against their weird city project.
In a triumph of local democracy, the citizens of Solano County have mostly staved off the project ... for now. Not even Gov. Gavin Newsom—who tried to help the billionaires with a last-minute bill in the legislature—could overpower the will of the people.
California Forever is a bizarre project. A group of billionaires handed $900 million to a guy with zero real estate experience to quietly buy up 60,000 acres of land—in an area that has no water, roads, or basic infrastructure...but does have a host of endangered species, an active air base, and rules specifically designed to prevent this exact kind of mega project. They promised to win over the county’s voters and, when that failed, they tried to do an end-run around democracy with a sneaky last-minute bill. It didn’t work.
I wrote about California Forever in The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War On Democracy. The project fits a distinct, chilling pattern: tech elites trying to build private cities. We see this idea popping up in Honduras, in Greenland, in Venezuela, in Cuba, in Kazakhstan, and in the ruins of the Gaza genocide.
The proposed tech billionaire city is like a data center on steroids, galvanizing widespread, bipartisan local opposition. The struggle to defeat it holds crucial lessons for the fight ahead as Americans wake up to the threat of unchecked billionaire power.
Remember: the tech billionaires have enough money to buy Democratic AND Republican politicians, and they’ll try to buy both sides. (Newsom’s craven attempt to pass a last-minute bill to help the billionaires shows there is no shortage of Democrats willing to cave.)
California Forever isn’t about housing or community. More than anything, it’s about billionaire power. Right now, the billionaires are struggling in Solano County. But this is far from over.
Check out this new story in the Wall Street Journal, “Silicon Valley’s Dream City Has Crashed Into Small Town Politics” (gift link).
And here’s my very first story about the Network State cult (from Jan. 2024), which seeks to build private billionaire-funded territories all over the world:
Gil Duran
Wired Recommends The Nerd Reich!
The holiday are right around the corner, and Wired has a recommendation: The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy:
The lurch to the right in Silicon Valley politics surprised many of us. Duran charts the transference of enormous wealth into political power and builds a strong, evidence-based case for the basic incompatibility of billionaires and democracy. He doesn’t pull any punches in this appeal for us to wake up and fight back before it’s too late.
Available wherever you get your books. Use this Bookshop link to support independent bookstores and this newsletter.
Simon Hill
