The government’s acting second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, held a Sumar rally this weekend where she mentioned the “technological elites” and a supposed “Plan B” to “flee the world and protect yourself.” “These elites are aware that we are going to hell,” he said. This is not Díaz’s idea, as some media have claimed. It refers to the reflections of Douglas Rushkoff (New York, 62 years old), a thinker and journalist who recently gave interviews in Spain on the occasion of the Spanish edition of his latest book “The Survival of the Richest”. His work reveals the thoughts of several billionaires related to the thriving technology sector. The focus is particularly on their escapist strategies to save themselves from the possible end of the civilization they are contributing to.
In 2017, Rushkoff had a private meeting with five senior executives with ten-figure assets. They didn’t want to learn about the latest technologies and networks, their area of expertise, but rather to discuss how they would be more likely to survive the “event” that will ruin everything, be it in the form of an environmental collapse, social unrest, or a nuclear explosion , solar storm, unstoppable virus, major computer sabotage or uprising of the machines. These ultra-rich preppers asked him, among other things, about the best possible locations for private underground bunkers or how they could gain the loyalty of the security guards in their bunkers, which include former Navy SEALs or elite police officers, so that they don’t turn against the boss. He also says that Rushkoff’s answer to that last question (treat them well from now on and pay them good salaries) caused laughter.
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The intellectual understood that the elite that controls the tech industry are not only immensely rich: they also assume that we as a civilization are not on the right path and are therefore preparing strategies to flee and take cover when disaster strikes. The richest go beyond the luxury bunkers. Jeff Bezos wants to travel to space; Elon Musk, colonize Mars. Peter Thiel (Palantir) wants to reverse the aging process. Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Ray Kurzweil (Google) upload their thoughts to computers. Mark Zuckerberg escapes into the metaverse.
“Many people see these titans of technology as our heroes,” Rushkoff tells EL PAÍS. “I want it to be clear that the vision of the future that Thiel, Musk or Zuckerberg have is very bleak. “We should not only imitate them, but laugh at them.”
Rushkoff is the author of twenty volumes, three documentaries, and a weekly podcast, and is a regular contributor to Time and The New York Times. MIT is considered one of the world’s top ten thinkers on technology issues.
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