'A means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.'

The Earth's carrying capacity, that is, how many people it can logically feed, provide clean water for, and allow to survive with good health, is 4 billion people, according to the International Union for Scientific Study of Population. It's generally held to be accurate that if people want a good quality of life, this is the number. In 1975, the Earth was at that number or fewer. Today, in roughly fifty years, that number has doubled. The Earth is carrying 8 billion people, double its carrying capacity to provide a sustainable, middle-class life for its residents. What America is This? Takes days to prepare and is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. That explains a lot. Here's what our current and growing population creates: resource scarcity, which leads the way to intense competition for the things we need to survive, such as clean drinking water and usable farmland that yields healthy food. So if you're wondering what all the feverish nationalism and intensity about migration is about, this is an undiscussed subtext: people know scarcity as a result of climate change is coming, and they're worried about running out of those necessary resources, so strongmen and authoritarians take to the stage and point to immigrants as the cause: 'those people' are to blame for your lack of resources. If we move them out, we'll have more for us. But they will go somewhere else, and that carrying capacity remains and still affects us. When farmland becomes a desert, and the sea is stripped of salt water so we can drink—you're killing everything. The oceans won't come back, and neither will the farmland. At least not on their own unless you have years to wait. Immigration is a clean and easy narrative. Untrue but tidy. The Earth still carries the same load. Oceans, rivers, mountains, icepack, and fertile fields are all connected. The Earth doesn't pay attention to maps. It's one resource. And yes, those resources are strained everywhere. Some places feel it first, but everywhere feels it eventually. Locking the door to hoard what you have makes sense for a bit, but eventually you starve behind that door. You're signing your own death warrant by thinking closed borders will do any long-term good. Responding effectively to climate change is the only good. And immigrants do all kinds of good things, like bringing knowledge and culture, doing jobs, paying for things, and generally assisting in the work at hand, which often creates more resources, not fewer. No, the real solution to the Earth's already too-heavy load would be things like education and innovation, which lead to using fewer fossil fuels, and eliminating massive and unnecessary factory-farm techniques that require fossil-fuel-based nitrogen to produce beyond capacity and destroy the soil more each year. It would mean shutting down cattle feedlots and the monocropping of corn on thousands and thousands of acres to feed that cattle, which produce an ungodly amount of methane. And far less food per acre than any other food. Factory-farming cattle also uses 74 trillion gallons of drinking water each year. For context, the entire City of Los Angeles uses 159 billion gallons per year. We're giving our soil, where we could grow healthy and diverse food, and our water to cattle so one guy can order the steak with his scotch. That was one thing in 1975, when we had 4 billion people, but in 2026, when we're double the Earth's carrying capacity, it's a very different thing. Saying that doesn't make me woke; it makes me awake. Immigration is less of the problem; our food supply is by far the bigger problem. Now cue the tech bros billionaires. They know what I know. They've talked about it for years. Peter Thiel has often said the real resources to guard are land for growing food and water. Bill Gates bought up thousands of acres of farmland. But it's not to produce healthier food and feed millions, sadly. He bought it to study biofuels for aviation and trucking—basically growing food but putting it in the tank, rather than on the table. And of course it balances his portfolio. I'm not proclaiming he isn't doing some good work somewhere, but whatever good he may do doesn't scale to his roughly 150 thousand acres of usable farmland. I imagine when he needs the land for food, he'll be able to grow a nice amount to feed himself and whoever else he invites to the bunker. And here's where the dark story turns pitch black. The bunkers. If you're a billionaire or trillionaire who can buy thousands of acres of land, who can sequester water, who can build rockets to pester the moon, it's likely you could use those same resources to create mass transit, low-impact trains that run on solar; you could use lab grown meat which is a single dna thread turned into a steak without ever having to have thousands of animals to feed and water. You could treat wastewater at every treatment plant to the point where it can be used for irrigation, saving billions of gallons of drinking water. You could grow edible food forests everywhere. With that kind of money, you could actually save the world. And the world's government could respond in kind. But that's not what's happening. It clearly could. But it isn't. Why not? Just ask yourself, without cynically scoffing, without getting angry, why not? I said it would get dark. Now it is. The Guardian's Eduardo Porter, in March of this year, began laying the groundwork for the case I now make to you: the tech bros oligarchs could save the world but prefer that we die and they live. They prefer to emerge from their bunkers to find far fewer people struggling to survive, people starving, thirsty, sick, and desperate, so they can exploit them. All evidence- think about this in your own knowledge bank- indicates they are hastening the thing they see coming, which is massive die-off, so they can become gods on Earth. If that sounds absolutely crazy and maniacal, it is. But crazy and maniacal have existed alongside us since kings existed. Think about it-you are born to some guy who has money and power because his dad did, and that birth makes you God's rep on Earth and in charge of everyone else. Does that sound logical? Tech bros gods are in that same vein. The case:in 2025, the top ten money-makers include: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, and Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The top 10 have a $16 trillion war chest, roughly 8% of the US Gross Domestic Product. But what do they make? Musk makes some things we mostly don't want or need, but the others use existing systems to market products they don't create. Porter asks,'What happens when a narrow clutch of oligarchs at the helm of the technological revolution, sitting at the apex of wealth and power, get to determine the direction of humanity?' He further asks:'Is human-or even superhuman-level artificial intelligence a goal we should strive for? Do we know what that means? How many trillions of dollars and terawatts of energy should we deploy to get there? What business models will survive it? Will it wipe out human labor?' While these questions ought to be answered by the laborers impacted and the governments that serve them, that's not how it's working. There is no apparent appetite to bring this into a regulatory or democratic process, and that is our first tell that absolutely none of this has us in mind. How they've chosen to use their money: $200 million so far, is to prevent states from imposing AI regulations. It tells us they aspire to let AI rip freely and build the future, which may or may not include humans. These same oligarchs state openly that transhumans, artificial intelligence, and robotic bodies are what they classify as 'immortal bodies,' which they prefer. Zuckerberg doesn't believe in death: 'Not all humans need to die.' I'm guessing he's referring to himself. Peter Thiel plans to freeze his brain and body in liquid nitrogen until they can be transferred to an immortal body. And Musk, with his Neuralink, is working to patch AI into human minds to invest in a new form of human. Tech oligarchs are all kinds of woke in defense of AI and even offended by the defense of humans. 'People talk about how much energy it takes to train an AI model, but it also takes a lot of energy to train a human,' says Sam Altman. What the F**k? But it doesn't cost billions, does it? Humans don't consume entire cities' worth of water and electricity in math class. And do humans now have to justify our existence as worthy to be alive? Yes, it gets darker still. 'Our current technological revolution is unusual in a particularly unsettling way. It comes at the hands of a small group of very powerful people who hold themselves and their preferences in very high regard. However, troubling their views of the future may be, nobody seems willing to stand in their way.'Once again, I quote Porter. So, back to the load on the Earth: food, water, and that bunker I keep mentioning. This group of oligarchs is running from the technology they're building, which they know will destroy the Earth for most of its people. They know it will bring the Earth's population down—as in massive amounts of human suffering and death. And they plan to remain in their bunkers until it's over, when they will emerge to rule the few left. Yes, that's really the plan, and they aren't hiding it. 'Never before have our society's most powerful players assumed that the primary impact of their own conquests would be to render the world itself unlivable for everyone else. Nor have they ever before had the technologies through which to program their sensibilities into the very fabric of our society. The landscape is alive with algorithms and intelligences actively encouraging these selfish and isolationist outlooks. Those sociopathic enough to embrace them are rewarded with cash and control over the rest of us. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This is new,'writes Douglas Rushkoff, a humanist who writes about the impact of digital technology on our lives. Then he really brings it home by saying,'The mindset allows for easy externalization of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused.' So these guys know they're killing people and our planet, and they'd prefer not to think about the horror of it because it benefits them. And that's where we come to the most chilling part of it all: 'Instead,'writes Rushkoff,'of just lording it over us forever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame.'He goes on to say, 'They require an endgame that resolves to a winner and loser, the saved or damned. Actual, imminent catastrophes, from the climate emergency to mass migrations, support the mythology of offering these would-be superheroes the opportunity to play out the finale in their own lifetimes. For the mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.' So they destroy the world knowingly, jump into their bunkers, and play with their AI until they figure out how to escape and survive the mess they made, which killed the rest of us and was part of their goal. Remember, we have double the humans on Earth than its optimal carrying capacity. They figure the few who somehow survived will become their slaves because the oligarchs have food and water, and the desperate will give in for a sip and a snack. I feel less certain about that. I think if I'd been sucking on rocks and eating bugs for a decade and some rich asshole emerged from his glorious bunker, I'd probably kill him and have a feast with all my friends. But keep in mind they'll have those horror AI dogs and other defense mechanisms to stop that. So if we get there, let's hope we quickly get some brakes; but if we never do, I'm sure it will be a mixed bag of continuing nightmarish hell. And you may ask, why are the right-wing Christian Nationalists on board? Most of them aren't obscenely rich and hoarding a secret life in a 50,000-square-foot bunker. But they share the tech bros' death cult. They also have a faith-based escape. In their story, Jesus comes back to Earth, and they rise from their graves, or SUV's if living, and are transported through the air to heaven for their eternal reward. And honestly, they can't wait. They're also hastening the end, as expressed through Revelations in their particular Bible, which tells this story, because they're certain there's a better place. I've heard this story my whole life. Apparently, these sorts of Christians find everyone else exhausting and loathsome. In both of these groups, there's a deeply antisocial mindset that seeks only their safety, protection, and abundance, and frankly, the death- not a sweet, peaceful death, but a vengeful, horrible death for the rest of us. And yet, many of us want to talk to them, change their minds, or negotiate. It's one thing to want us all dead and burning in hell, as my former church taught; it's another to elect a man you think will make it happen. And it's a whole other thing to support giving all the money and resources to a handful of oligarchs who can and will make the world end for their own reasons. These two entirely different sets of sociopaths have found this moment to join forces. And lest I've chosen too many words, let me sum it up this way:tech oligarchs do not need you to consume, work, or live. You are in the way, and they would like to first make you obsolete and then dead. And right now, nothing stops them—no regulations and no incentives. As for the Christian Nationalists-they're strolling down the lane with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, certain they're winning. Their motivation is that the ones who don't see the world their way absolutely do not matter. They are an abomination unto the Lord. The difference is they don't have the money, and when Jesus doesn't show up, they're as stuck as the rest of us. But they acted as the foot soldiers for the tech oligarchs and still would for a loaf of bread. They aren't your friends. I wouldn't trust them unless they could prove they've changed their minds. Sorry, not sorry. So what will we do with this very dark reality? One: oppose AI, surveillance, digital currency, and the centralization of more banks, and push for regulation. And frankly, keep in mind this is serious, so it's important to do ALL we can. I wish a well-worded letter would do it. I think it's not going to change things. The Data Center and FLock surveillance are starting points—keep that going at the highest speed possible. No backing down. Without the data centers, they lose. Two: No mercy for the Nationalist right-wing Christians. Their belief is that you should die, and they're helping end the world with their 'imperfect vessel.' We must do everything in our legal and moral power to stop them. And their churches should pay taxes because they break the law every Sunday and Wednesday by speaking politics. How dark is it? It could be the darkest before the dawn or the darkest day since the Middle Ages—-we choose. What America is This? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.