Technocracy Re-Animator

Above: Technate map; Spanky of the Little Rascals in 1933's "The Kid from Borneo”

The US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) set up by Trump and led by tech billionaire Elon Musk has outlined a vision of efficiency cuts by slashing bureaucracy, jobs and getting rid of leaders of organisations and civil servants he thinks are advancing “woke” values (such as diversity initiatives). This slash-and-burn approach also fits with some of the ideas of the 1930s Technocrats, aka Technocracy Inc, which proposed merging Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the US and parts of central America into a single continental unit called a “Technate.” It was to be governed by technocratic principles, rather than by national borders and traditional political divisions. The Technocrats viewed elected politicians as incompetent, and advocated replacing them with experts in science and engineering, who would “objectively” manage resources for the benefit of society. Advocates argued that traditional economic systems such as capitalism and socialism were inefficient and prone to corruption, but that a scientifically planned economy could ensure abundance, stability and fairness. It looks good on paper!

The movement gained significant attention during the Great Depression, grew rapidly in the early 1930s, but quickly lost momentum by the mid-to-late ‘30s, as critics feared that a government run by unelected experts would lead to a form of authoritarian rule, where decisions were made without public input or democratic oversight.

In 1940, the Canadian police arrested members of Technocracy Inc, charging them with belonging to an illegal organization. One of the arrested was Joshua Norman Haldeman, the maternal grandfather of Elon Musk. Nine years ago, the Technocracy, Inc. website announced a "Transition Plan 2016" and an online meeting in April 2021 before, one presumes, going underground for four years.

Well, it's back. “The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk told reporters after visiting the White House in early February. Technocrats believed that mechanisation and automation could eliminate much of the need for human labour, reducing work hours while maintaining productivity. Musk’s ventures, such as Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink prioritize innovation and automation.

Dr. Philip Low, neuroscientist and former close friend of Elon Musk, explained that the latter's two Nazi salutes at that Trump rally were calculated moves of a megalomaniac. “His narcissistic self was hoping the audience would reflect his abject gesture back to him, thereby showing complete control and dominion over it, and increasing his leverage over Trump. That did not happen.” Musk is “not a Nazi per se—he is something much better, or much worse, depending on how you look at it. Nazis believed that an entire race was above everyone else. Elon believes he is above everyone else. He used to think he worked on the most important problems. When I met him, he did not presume to be a technical person — he would be the first to say that he lacked the expertise to understand certain data. That happened later. Now, he believes he has all the solutions…Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. That is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control.”

Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 calls for unprecedented cuts to scientific agencies that, if enacted, would deal a devastating blow to US science, policy specialists say…the proposal would cut all non-defence spending by 23%, but it targets the US National Science Foundation (NSF) for a 56% funding reduction, and would slash the budget of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) by roughly 40%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would be hit by a 55% cut as the administration seeks to eliminate what it calls “radical” and “woke” climate programmes. On the day the budget was released, the EPA announced plans to dismantle its primary research division. Trump has been defunding university research.

“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will no longer track the cost of climate change-fueled weather disasters, including floods, heat waves, wildfires and more. It is the latest example of changes to the agency and the Trump administration limiting federal government resources on climate change.

Trump issued an executive order directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors to "cease federal funding for NPR and PBS," the nation's primary public broadcasters, claiming ideological bias…PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger called it a "blatantly unlawful Executive Order, issued in the middle of the night."

As everyone must have realized by now, Trump and Musk are megalomaniacs—they have an obsessive desire for power and, for that reason alone, they don't belong in a center of power like the White House. Musk is also aligned with Peter Thiel and his in-house philosopher Curtis Yarvin, who coined the name of DOGE's pre-cursor, RAGE, which stands for Retire All Government Employees. DOGE is on the way to accomplishing this.

How is that about efficiency? Well, Curtis Yarvin, “in-house philosopher” of billionaire Peter Thiel, conceptualised the neocameralist state, where the state functions as a sovereign corporation (“gov-corp”) managed by a CEO-king accountable only to shareholders—wealthy stakeholders who drive decision-making based on corporate efficiency rather than electoral legitimacy. This vision of governance aligns closely with the ambitions of Silicon Valley moguls who see democracy as an outdated, inefficient system unable to keep pace with technological progress.

Their new ideological paradigm—known as the Dark Enlightenment and its philosophical ally, accelerationism—advocates for a future where corporate-led technocracy supplants democracy, prioritizing efficiency, hierarchy, and unregulated technological progress over participatory politics and social stability. Silicon Valley elites like Thiel and Musk are trying to dismantle democratic institutions in the United States under Donald Trump’s renewed presidency. The fusion of corporate power and technology is not merely a futuristic vision but an active political force, eroding democratic accountability in favour of an authoritarian digital feudalism.

As Trump and his family exploit his presidency for personal profit, government messages from the State Department and US embassies have pushed foreign countries to approve Starlink, the satellite business of the world’s wealthiest man, Trump sidekick Elon Musk, who also gets to pressure leaders in private meetings.

At the core of both Dark Enlightenment and accelerationism is a fundamental rejection of Enlightenment values—democracy, equality, and humanism. British philosopher Nick Land, who first articulated the Dark Enlightenment, critiques liberal democracy as a failing system that fosters mediocrity, inefficiency, and social decay—as fascists Mussolini and Hitler did in the 1920s-30s. Land and his followers advocate for a return to hierarchical governance, where power is concentrated in the hands of a technological elite rather than dispersed through democratic institutions.

Yuval Noah Harari: "The surprising thing about Donald Trump’s policies is that people are still surprised by them. Headlines express shock and disbelief whenever Trump assaults another pillar of the global liberal order — for example by supporting Russia’s claims for Ukrainian territory, contemplating the forced annexation of Greenland or unleashing financial chaos with his tariff announcements. Yet his policies are so consistent, and his vision of the world so clearly defined, that by this stage only willful self-deception can account for any surprise.”

Nuff said?