Tech Oligarchs and the Rise of Silicon Valley Pronatalism

Why is it dangerous when corporate executives, entrepreneurs and investors with enormous wealth and power collectively control the development and deployment of our most pervasive technologies? Most answers to this question focus on the technologies themselves, or the ways in which the interests of these individuals, with their vast wealth and influence, are counter to the interests of democracy. Most Tech Policy Press readers are well aware that their social media platforms shape opinions, their money buys elections, and their AI models seem poised to dominate the economy.

But among a certain subset of Silicon Valley elites, a stranger set of ideas has emerged in recent years that corresponds to much more significant ambitions to reshape society than merely to propagate artificial intelligence across every aspect of life and work or to subjugate governments to corporate power. Understanding these ideas and their implications is important to resisting the power and influence of these individuals.

One of these ideas is pronatalism. Connected to the political, economic, and technological visions held by a number of billionaire tech oligarchs, the Silicon Valley strain...