TL;DR: Silicon Valley billionaires are spending over $500 million through AI and crypto PACs to buy influence across both parties and push for corporate-run states as our next sociatal structure.

The Interview

A lot of people feel like tech billionaires are running politics behind the scenes, but it's hard to pin down how. Journalist Gil Duran recently laid out the specifics in a DW News interview about his book, "The Nerd Reich".

He tracks how tech figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk treat democracy as something to bypass. Tech-funded PACs have put together more than $500 million to back candidates in both major parties.

• AI and crypto PACs have over $526 million ready for elections, which is more than what oil companies or banks put in.

• The money goes to both Democrats and Republicans so tech companies stay protected no matter who wins.

• Their long-term goal is replacing traditional government with corporate-run "Network States," drawing on ideas from books like "The Sovereign Individual".

• Billionaires are also buying legacy news outlets and social media platforms to control what people see and hear.

The China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) reported on October 12 that retail sales of gasoline-only cars in China fell 49% year on year in September 2026, while plug-in cars reached a record 67% of sales

Recent news headlines related to alcohol consumption decline:

"Total US beer production dropped from 158.1 million barrels to 148.3 million barrels — the lowest in the past decade. Beer production began declining in 2022 and has continued to fall since then."

"Wine sales in the US have dipped more than 20% over the past five years."

"The French drink half as much wine as they did in the 1970s. In Britain, consumption per person has fallen 14% since 2000."

"There were 37,350 pubs and bars in the UK in March 2026, down from 44,680 in 2010."

"Older Men are Top Beer Drinkers in Japan."

"The number of bars and clubs in the United States has fallen by over 60% per capita since the late 1970s."

Waymo's safety hub now covers 271 million driverless miles: 0.01 serious-injury crashes per million miles, against 0.21 for the human benchmark in the same areas. An independent IIHS study on older data (2021-2024, about 50 million miles) found 81% fewer injury crashes, though Austin came out slightly worse than human drivers. Semafor now reports Waymo wants to go from about 4,000 cars to 20,000 by the end of 2027, funded by a $5 billion loan.

A tech company has said it still plans to build the UK's largest AI data centre despite Microsoft pulling out of the project. Nscale announced last year it had pledged £2bn to build and open a pioneering facility in Loughton, Essex. However, the BBC understands that Microsoft, which said it would fund a supercomputer at the site, has terminated its involvement…..The data centre was due to receive its power supply at the end of the year. But as first reported by the Telegraph on Sunday, Nscale has been told this will not happen until the 2030s.

As the AI firms measure success by tokenmaxxing and usage, they're incentivized to use ever more electricity. Most everyday use cases don't need frontier models. In a more rational world, they'd be done by smaller hyper-efficient Chinese models. Now economics may force those decisions.

Microsoft pulls out of UK's largest AI data centre

Four innovation leaders join forces to bring AI-powered robotics into automotive logistics. Agile Robots, Audi, Dassault Systèmes and NVIDIA announced today at NVIDIA GTC Berlin a proof-of-concept to automate parts sequencing at Audi's Ingolstadt plant using mobile humanoids.

The climax for MMX will come in 2029, when the spacecraft will attempt up to two landings on Phobos.

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Quantinuum’s Helios computer achieves a world-record 99.9995% logical fidelity—just five errors in a million operations—using the company’s error-correction architecture.

NASA's plans are to narrow down 4 contenders to just 2 in April 2027, and at a later date commit to just one. The 4 contenders are Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Starlab Space, and Vast. Starlab and Axiom are focusing on single modules they want to test on the current ISS. Vast and Blue Origin plan for standalone stations, with Blue Origin planning for a much bigger station than Vast.

The route to space commercialization was always going to be difficult. If investors are going to commit to the hundreds of billions involved, where does the revenue come from? We all know it will happen one day; the prospect of asteroid mining demonstrates that, but how to bridge the gap before it becomes a reality?

A more immediate barrier? The AI boom means the stock market is at 1929 levels of over-valuation; we all know it's going to crash. So where does that leave these 4 companies? Without the draw of something like asteroid mining, I struggle to see how a commercial space station, with minimal government support, becomes a reality in the near future.

The commercial space station competition finally begins

In the next decade, quantum technology could create trillions in value and break encryption, delivering opportunity but also risk. Leading companies are acting now to secure a competitive advantage.