How Marc Andreessen’s Signal group chats helped spawn the tech right
The power elites have a Signal group chat, too - and the ones that seem to be reshaping the government, according to a recent report, are the ones Marc Andreessen created to bring the American right wing and the technocracy together.
Semafor's Ben Smith published a massive article on Monday detailing an ecosystem of private, disappearing group chats between hundreds of powerful Silicon Valley figures and high-profile right-wing pundits and academics. Though Smith himself was unable to get many of the texts - they were all set to "disappearing" mode - several members of the groups shared details of the nature of the chats, some of them on the record, while other members have described the chats on podcasts and blogs.
The existence of private Signal group chats for extremely powerful people has only become public knowledge after the White House accidentally added a journalist to one, but they have, apparently, existed for years. This particular network, spawned by venture capitalist Marc Andreessen beginning in 2018, has become the backbone of the technocratic right currently gaining dominance in Washington. These chats were known for holding nothing back between its participants: …