‘Demonic’: Silicon Valley Billionaire Blasts Burning Man

Gil Duran

31 Aug 2025 — 8 min read

A Silicon Valley billionaire has declared Burning Man “demonic.”

This is a very heavy concept to drop on a bunch of people who are currently tripping balls at the annual festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. But Nicole Shanahan, a former Burning Man attendee—and ex-wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin and former vice-presidential running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—made the stunning accusation on Twitter yesterday.

“I have come to believe that Burning Man is not just an eccentric festival, but rather a powerful vehicle for deception,” wrote Shanahan. “In fact, it may be one of the most effective tools for Satan to misdirect souls away from our Heavenly Father. When you surrender yourself to ‘the playa,’ you do not simply embrace freedom; you also open yourself to profound distortions of what is good.”

Shanahan’s outburst reflects an emerging trend: Silicon Valley billionaires publicly discussing the devil. On September 15, PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel will begin a secretive four-part lecture series about “The Antichrist” in San Francisco. The Nerd Reich newsletter will provide Special Coverage of this historic event.

Shanahan says she attended the festival as a guest of the elite “First Camp”—among the most important camps in the Burner hierarchy, the organizational center of the festival—for several years. This makes her criticism of the scene noteworthy. Shanahan's missive brims with righteous anger and judgment against the desert art and drug party.

In her statement, Shanahan noted that she is now a born-again Christian who is “devouring” theology.

“As I devote myself to Scripture, to my family, and to walking in the light of the Lord, I find that this process of renewal continues to unfold, deepening day by day, step by step,” she wrote. “I no longer desire to 'Burn the Man;' I now burn with zeal in the Spirit.”

Shanahan's attack on Burning Man seems timed for maximum effect. The festival peaks on Saturday and Sunday nights, with intense festivities that culminate in the burning of a large wooden statue of a human figure. Many of her Burner brethren will be “sitting in mangrove valley chasing light beams” right about now.

The choice to attack Burning Man during the festival itself seems calculated. By targeting people in altered states during peak vulnerability, she supercharges the emotional impact of her unusual statement while minimizing rational pushback.

“Yes, there are constant orgies,” wrote Shanahan. “Yes, drugs are consumed in staggering quantities. And yes, sexual assault and rape occur at Burning Man, along with tragic, often preventable deaths. Nudity is everywhere. Overdoses happen so frequently that they rarely interrupt a party or shut down a camp. Yes, many openly practice magic, summoning spiritual entities as if for entertainment. Self-proclaimed ‘healers’ abound, offering their versions of medicine and ritual. Occult symbols and ceremonies are practiced so frequently that they become ingrained in the fabric of daily life.”

Describing herself as a “newbie” to demonology, she cited a 17th century book of magic to offer a possible explanation for Burning Man’s allegedly demonic influences:

Take the demon Morax, for example. Also known as Marax or Forax, he appears in several occult texts, including “The Lesser Key of Solomon and Pseudomonarchia Daemonum.” He is described as a Great Earl and President of Hell, commanding between 30 and 36 legions of demons, each capable of taunting, tempting, and tormenting humans. He is often portrayed as a bull with a human face, or a man with the head of a bull. What is striking is his supposed abilities: teaching astrology, liberal sciences, and the properties of herbs and precious stones, as well as bestowing spiritual docents. Does any of this sound familiar?

Many tech billionaires and their friends faithfully attend the week-long festival. In fact, Sergey Brin, Shanahan's ex-husband from whom she reportedly received $1 billion in a 2023 divorce, has been described as a “rabid” attendee. Google has even provided free employee shuttles to the event.

Burning Man, which draws up to 80,000 people to northern Nevada every August, features art, nudity, spirituality and heavy use of drugs, especially psychedelics. “The preliminary census — drawn from random sampling at the city gates — shows a community that remains largely middle-aged, highly educated and overwhelmingly white,” reported the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday.

Last week, the site was hit by powerful storms that flooded roads and destroyed the famed Orgy Dome. One man was seriously injured when he suffered an accidental electric shock. In addition, a 36-year-old woman gave birth to a baby girl despite claiming not to have known she was pregnant. The newborn has been dubbed “Puddles” and “Citizen Zero.”

The Official Nerd Reich Tech Politics Forecast assumes a significant uptick in religion-themed meme warfare as the Tech Right attempts to merge with the extreme religious wing of the Republican Party. For a glimpse of what's to come, read my 2024 review of Unhumans, a book which depicts Democrats as murderous communist demons. Vice President JD Vance—the main connection between the Tech Right and Religious Right—extolled the book. Steve Bannon wrote the foreword.

Full disclosure: I went to Burning Man in 2005 and 2006. It was an interesting experience, but I haven’t been back in twenty years. However, I did not view it as especially orgiastic or satanic. I saw friends, listened to music, rode a bicycle in the alkaline dust and thought about life.

Tens of thousands of people create a fantasy—Black Rock City—and fill it with art and diversions for a week. They consume heavy quantities of drugs and escape reality in a dream landscape with a “gift economy” where money is supposedly useless.

Of course, the millionaires and tech billionaires have the best camps at Burning Man, so money talks on “the playa” as well as it does anywhere. Their influence has apparently grown stronger over the past two decades. I did not witness any demonic rituals, but I camped among the regular people, not with Silicon Valley elites.

One thing I did not enjoy was the actual burning of the human effigy, which filled the air with thick smoke and made me feel like I’d sucked down three packs of unfiltered Pall Malls. It seemed like an excessive and needless indulgence on an already-burning planet.

Coming soon: Antichrist 101, a public education effort to empower citizens to debunk the coming wave of spirituality-based political propaganda.

MDMA: A Devil‘s Bargain In The Desert?

Speaking of Burning Man...

Elon Musk’s DOGE lieutenant, billionaire Antonio Gracias, has gained control of Lykos Therapeutics, the most prominent MDMA company in the U.S.

The Guardian has the jaw-dropping story of how an encounter at a Burning Man rave turned into a business deal that raises some major red flags.

DOGE has engaged in wanton destruction of government, carrying out Curtis Yarvin’s deranged blueprint. DOGE’s assault on USAID will mean 14 million preventable deaths by 2030—including 4.5 million children under five—according to the Lancet. And they’re just getting started.

Talk about a bad trip.

Don’t mistake me for an anti-drug scold. I am very aware of the promise—and the peril—of these powerful substances. However, there is no question that the forces seeking to capture our political system for tech fascism also seek to harness the power (and profit) of these drugs. And the roots of tech fascism are unquestionably tangled up in psychedelics and other substances.

I don’t believe psychedelics are inherently fascist. I don’t think psychedelics have an opinion at all. Like any technology, they can be used for good or for ill, and they can amplify darkness as well as light.

Once a year, I remind people about a book called Mindfuckers: The Source Book On The Rise of Acid Fascism in America. While most hippies sought free love and peace through LSD, some people used it for power and control.

For example, Charles Manson convinced his young followers he was a messiah destined to rule the world after a race war that would be kicked off by a sequence of horrific murders. And he convinced them that the Beatles’ White Album contained secret messages about him and this coming revolution.

On acid.

In the wrong hands, psychedelics can be used to manipulate beliefs, emotions, and perceptions. The CIA conducted experiments to see if they could be used for mind control, but they couldn’t quite produce a “truth serum” or “Manchurian candidate” drug.

In recent years, the stigma on psychedelics has lifted and science is finding promising ways to use these substances to help people. People-led movements have sprung up to decriminalize psychedelics and entheogens—and corporate interests have begun to circle.

Back in 2023, researcher Neşe Devenot warned that a “utopian discourse” around psychedelics “provides insight into the ways that global tech elites are instrumentalizing both psychedelics and artificial intelligence (AI) as tools in a broader world-building project that justifies increasing material inequality.”

You can download and read the entire paper: TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines.

Thiel Crony to Lead CDC

Sadly, there is more Thiel news.

Last week, a Peter Thiel crony became acting director of Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Jim O'Neill was previously CEO of the Thiel Foundation and was managing director for Thiel's Clarium Capital and Mithril Capital (where JD Vance also worked). He also co-founded the Thiel Fellowship, which pays young people to skip college and become tech overlords.

Kiera Butler of Mother Jones sums it up:

A longtime associate of billionaire investor Peter Thiel, O’Neill comes not from a background in epidemiology or medicine but from Silicon Valley’s world of venture capital and techno-utopianism. He is especially well-connected in the longevity movement, which seeks to extend human lifespans, and, to a lesser extent, to the “network state” vision of decentralized techno-governance championed by Thiel and other influential Silicon Valley figures.

The EnThielification of US government continues.

Read the full story:

Clarifying the Antichrist

I have been asked to clarify that Peter Thiel’s upcoming secret Antichrist lecture series at the Commonwealth Club is not an official program of the Commonwealth Club. Thiel and his crew have rented the venue, which any group can do.

The event is off the record, and tickets were clearly reserved for Thiel’s friends and admirers. However, The Nerd Reich Newsletter works in mysterious ways and I am excited to say we will be hacking the Antichrist discourse mightily. Stay tuned.

This paywall-free newsletter takes on billionaires, fascists, and racists thanks to support from paid subscribers. If you can, please become a paid subscriber today—because your support matters more than you think. Click here to join.

Good Desert Vibrations

It’s Labor Day Weekend in the USA. In honor of the workers who create all profit and progress, please crack a beer, take a load off, and let your mind drift back to simpler times with this absolute banger from 1971.