We Uncovered The Master Plan That Peter Thiel Doesn't Want You To See

I have been researching one of the weirdest stories that I've ever looked into. It's about a once fringe movement among the tech elite that aims to replace governments entirely with corporations. Privatized societies run by CEOs built for profit, not for people. Almost like they wanted their own little worlds, playlands built just for them, based on their desires. I eventually pulled away from the story because it seemed a little more silly than anything to be concerned about. But then I realized they might already be getting their way. Just look at Doge and Palantir. Replacing or breaking the basics of the government. The plans for a futuristic privatized new Gaza AI, infrastructure growth that seems immune to public opinion. And invasions of countries seemingly at random. A new power structure in society that will overcome the existing democratic power structures when billionaires suddenly have a tremendous amount of power and democracy has been proven to be exceedingly vulnerable. So I decided to dig back in. What is this movement? Where did it come from? How did the people involved get so powerful? Where is it going? And importantly, what can we do to stop it? Let's go back to the weird origins of all this. In 2008, Peter Thiel first got involved in philanthropy, if you can call it that. He opened the Thiel Foundation, a non profit that invested in building the world Peter Thiel believed in. And one big investment sticks out. The Seasteading Institute. The Seasteading Institute was started by Patrie Friedman, the grandson of Milton Friedman, the famous economist who gave politicians the academic backing to rip off the global working class. The goal of TSI was to build self sustaining societies at sea, ruled by new governments on newly constructed land. This was particularly appealing to libertarians who wanted to escape the constraints of modern governance. The question of whether Seasteading is desirable or possible in my mind is not even relevant. It is absolutely necessary. Peter Thiel provided the seed money for this project and set up TSI with some office space in a conference room in the Palantir office. He also hooked Friedman up with one of the co founders, Joe Lonsdale. You know, we're the guys who create institutions that are changing the world and we've changed a lot of industries so far here in Silicon Valley, but we haven't been able to change the government. That's a pretty hard one. Silicon Valley. Changing the government is exactly what Thiel wanted. I spoke with one of the people who's been following the rise of this movement better than anyone else, Gil Duran, journalist and author of the Nerd Reich, to get a better understanding of the philosophy behind all of this. There's a long history of people seeking to escape democratic societies or else to bring back monarchy or authoritarianism. In 1997, there was a book that came out called the Sovereign Individual. It argued that in the 21st century, two technologies would result basically in the overthrow of democracy and the demise of nations like the United States cyber currency, which we would call crypto today. And the other one was advanced automation that would create a world without jobs. And that wealthy individuals who were savvy investors could profit from this coming doom and prepare for it by making the right investments. This book had a major impact on Peter Thiel, and of course it influenced the people Thiel was paying. Joe Lonsdale got to work. He started a nonprofit, California Common Sense, allegedly dedicated to transparency and government spending so that voters could make a difference if they found they were unhappy with. On the surface, that Sounds great, but two founders of that nonprofit started a for profit OpenGov. OpenGov is a software service for government agencies to manage data. The idea of replacing democratic processes in the hands of all of us with technology in the hands of few was becoming less fringe. And other nonprofits with similar goals started popping up. But while the idea of using technology to make a decentralized country had some illustrious backers, in the mid-2010s, I'm going to leverage technology to create a new country. And yes, I did say country, not company. It never really materialized on a serious level. But the think tanks would herald a few successful versions of their privatization plan. Like Sandy Springs, Georgia, famously the first city in America to privatize nearly all government services. It was the darling of the libertarian press. Everything for profit, nothing public. And a consulting firm making a little cash off the taxpayers at every juncture. Those extra taxes for corporate profit started adding up, though eventually Sandy Springs un privatized, saving taxpayers millions of dollars a year. There are also nascent communities focused on Christian values that the network's state media heralds. Battleground Washington, where a data center billionaire is buying up all the property to own the town. The mayor is on his payroll. And Highland Rim, a series of developments in Appalachia run by the investment firm New Founding. And that's not even including the California Forever project, a proposed tech city in Solano county funded by Marc Andreessen, Reid Hoffman, Sam Altman and other billionaires. But what if this was never really about these little mini governments? Here's Peter Thiel saying the quiet part out loud in 2010. Technology is this incredible alternative to politics, and the task in this world where politics has become so broken and so dysfunctional is to find a way to escape from IT tech instead of politics. We already had Doge and Palantir becoming the operating system of the United States with a stated goal of being more powerful than the governments using it. How can we help the government stop the bad guys while also putting systems in place to make sure nobody within the government was doing anything inappropriate. So you have to have, you have to have systems that watch the watchers. After leaving Palantir, Lonsdale, through his firm 8VC, continued investments in what's called govtech tech for government clients. That's surveillance tech, AI drones, AI weapons, even tech to replace 911 with AI. All aim to replace, privatize and profit from tasks normally attributed to democratically accountable officials. What's happening now though, is, is that the companies are becoming more powerful than the governments they serve. We suddenly have all these billionaire oligarchs spending so much money they were able to actually capture the federal government with Trump. So there it's this interesting moment now where we're getting a glimpse of what government by technology company would look like. And Lonsdale is working to convince you that we need this by making you scared. Lonsdale founded the Cicero Institute, a think tank that pushes anti homeless messaging. Not anti homeless mismessaging, but messaging attacking the homeless themselves and even legislation creating concentration camps where unhoused people would do forced labor. You actually can go into states, you can like partner with governors, you can pass laws, you know, Ciceros in 15 states, we're getting dozens of laws passed and then we're going to teach people that and go to the national level. Riling people up is definitely part of their game plan. That's what we saw in the San Francisco recalls. San Francisco had a spike in crime during the pandemic, but so did almost every big city in the United States. Only in San Francisco, which has extremely low crime rates compared to most cities in red states, did they create this massive panic using social media and doom influencers to convince everybody that everything was worse than it ever been. And as Lonsdale got into nonprofits and think tanks, Petrie Friedman, remember him? Milton Friedman's grandson started his own VC firm with backing from Peter Thiel called Pronomo's capital existing entirely for investing in privatized governments. In Honduras, Pronomos invested in the first government run entirely by a for profit corporation, Prospera. Prospera is this little enclave on the island of Roatan in Honduras that claims to be its own little charter city that was funded by American venture capitalists and has been touted as the flagship project of the network State movement. But the real flagship project is something bigger, the entire United States government. It shows in policy. Remember the whole thing about taking over Greenland? That idea emerged and was celebrated by the people we've been talking about. I think having a frontier is very healthy. I think part of America being great is that it's, it's growing and creating more wealth for everyone. If the people in Greenland want to be part of us, we can use those resources better and make sure Russia and China don't get advantages in the Arctic. The Freedom City as a name didn't really gain momentum, but the idea is there and the influence in the administration is clear. Joe Lonsdale helped staff up the Trump administration and just recently accompanied administration officials to the Philippines to christen a new regulatory zone. Just last week we signed a historic deal with the Philippines. 4,000 acres right next to Subic Bay, where we're going to build a first of its kind AI native industrial park. But I was there for a day in the Philippines with everyone. They're excited what you guys are doing. That sounds a lot like a startup city. They've also embedded themselves with the rest of the right wing movement. I could not have envisioned that J.D. vance, a Peter Thiel protege, would be the Vice President of the United States. And so when Vance got onto the ticket, then it became real that this stuff could travel to the White House. In September 2024, there was a conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco called Reboot 2024 and its website announced that we were now in a new reality and that Silicon Valley was waking up and about to become this powerful force in politics. And the guest speaker was Kevin Roberts of the Heritage foundation, who is the guy who had shepherded Project 2025. So here you had tech VCs in San Francisco and Kevin Roberts in the same venue proclaiming the new reality. And the new reality is where we are today. And that's showing in actual policy, like the administration's quietly announced plans for maritime prosperity zones, districts on American soil with fewer regulations for corporations to build ships and reinvigorate the industrial base. Then there's the new American Industrial Alliance, a tech industry interest group pushing for unrestricted data center growth. They were listed as co sponsors of the Blueprint for America Lobbying for Prosperity Zones on American Soil, a plan to sell federal and public land to private companies to build low regulation, low tax havens for progress. Their co sponsor on the Blueprint was the company behind Prospera in Honduras, whose lobbying disclosures show they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars pushing for prosperity zones. But they also spent big on begging the American government for handouts of your money. They've lobbied on refunding the U.S. international Development Financial Corporation, a government organization run by Epstein associate Ben Black that uses tax dollars to invest in American companies abroad. That's privatized foreign aid, and they might finally get their way. Black went to Honduras and promised investment in real estate and technology there, including an investment in La Cieba, which is slated to be absorbed by Prospero. But it's more than just government handouts. It's war crimes. So we did a master plan and we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza. We've developed it into zones. It was sort of insane to see it all come together in this way. But again, wherever you look these days, with Trump or with these tech guys, there's always the idea of a new city that they're proposing. And it's not clear why we need these new cities. You know, Gaza should be rebuilt for the Palestinians, but these guys see it as an opportunity to take the land. And so that shows you the degree to which this thinking is starting to imbue everything that they do. Look at how the people in this fringe movement reacted to other invasions. In 2019, Mark Lutter, leader of a Peter Thiel funded new city think tank, said that overthrowing the Venezuelan government would be an opportunity for these projects. And when the invasion did happen, Lutter suggested America establish a Florida or Texas style government there. He cites America paying for a wholesale development plan after regime change, which is exactly what we're doing in Iran today to the tune of $300 billion. Palmer, Luckey, Lonsdale and Thiel, associate and founder of AI defense contractor Anduril, pictured here in cosplay, suggested a privatized city on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, which President Trump also threatened with invasion. Again, nobody wants this. They know that. That's why they hate populism. That's why they hate democratic representation. Despite all of this being couched in freedom, what they're asking for is to exit entirely from any government structure. But that's just not how it works, especially when most of these guys are government contractors and are still wanting to have the benefits of our society without having the responsibilities of our society. These are people who don't like being told no, they're angry at the pushback against data centers, that we don't want AI to take over everything, that no one supports annihilating a civilization to replace it with one they can profit from. People need to understand that the billionaires have become radicalized against democracy and they're in the process of using everything they have to try to destroy it. And that's the battle of our moment. That's the battle of our time. It's not too late to push back. Public response to data centers works. Many of the governance as a service startups are starting their work in towns and states where you can still have a voice to stop them. The billionaire class wants to turn your home into their playlist, completely change how everything is run to funnel more wealth to themselves, create chaos and then when everything is all fucked up, walk away with their winnings to their own private enclaves. All under the guise of fixing a broken government. A government that they broke. And yeah, sure the government is broken, but it's not because of democracy or lack of corporate privatization. It's because of corporate power. We need more democracy and less corporate control. Thank you so much for watching and if you want to see more important journalism like this, please don't forget to like and subscribe. And if there's something else you want to see us cover next, let us know in the comments.