The “Cognitive Élite” Seize Washington

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 themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices