The “Cognitive Élite” Seize Washington

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The Washington Roundtable discusses the ideological underpinnings of Elon Musk’s DOGE with the former Democratic operative and San Francisco-based journalist Gil Duran. Duran writes about the so-called cognitive élite, the right-wing Silicon Valley technologists who want to use A.I. and cryptocurrency to unmake the federal government, on his newsletter The Nerd Reich.

This week’s reading:

• “The Most Powerful Crypto Bro in Washington Has Very Weird Beliefs,” by Gil Duran (for The New Republic)
• “Uncertainty Is Trump’s Brand. But What if He Already Told Us Exactly What He’s Going to Do?,” by Susan B. Glasser
• “The Felling of the U.S. Forest Service,” by Peter Slevin
• “Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections,” by Sue Halpern
• “Who Gets to Determine Greenland’s Future?,” by Louise Bokkenheuser

To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to [email protected] with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

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