As American tech titans grow bolder and more open in their influence on politics, Gil Duran has been diligently working to sound the alarm.
He doesn’t pretend, or aim, to be neutral.
“A journalist can’t be neutral in the face of fascism because that journalist becomes a fascist journalist,” he tells PIJI.
“You have to be on the side of journalism mattering. You have to be on the side of democracy being important.
“If you can’t summon up the courage to take a side on that question, then nothing you do will be worth anything.”
Duran says he did not launch his newsletter, The Nerd Reich (initially titled Parallel Mirror), in 2024 with any aspirations beyond keeping public tabs on tech politics, something he felt unable to do while working for a local San Francisco newspaper.
What started as a hobby soon overtook all his other interests and has since “snowballed” into a popular podcast and a book deal with a major publisher.
But Duran says his motivations are separate to these markers of success.
“I’m hoping to leverage my own experience, expertise and voice to influence other journalists to cover this aggressively,” he says.
Early signs
Duran began his journalism career in the ‘90s, but has spent most of the last two decades in politics working for Democrats, including then-California attorney general Kamala Harris.
After returning to his roots in 2018, he was left disillusioned by the layoffs and tensions plaguing the journalism industry.
The machinations behind a spate of Californian recall elections in 2021 and 2022, including a failed Republican-led attempt to recall state governor Gavin Newsom, piqued Duran’s interest.
The campaign against Newsom was prominently supported by a mix of business donors, far-right conspiracy movement QAnon and Silicon Valley venture capitalists, including former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya. (It should be noted, Newsom also had some billionaires in his corner).
“That confluence of right-wing money and Silicon Valley money is what got my interest, because it was very unusual,” Duran says.
He says he realised the issue ran deeper after hearing comments such as those made by Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan in 2023, when he discussed building parallel institutions – including media, education and nonprofits – to reform the “tech political machine” from an internet-first standpoint.
When Duran started focusing more on the connections between tech billionaires, right-wing politics and propaganda tactics, colleagues looked at him strangely or quietly ignored his work.
But since Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election, and the ensuing wave of tech CEOs bending the knee and the president’s ear, Duran says attitudes have changed.
“I think the question for me when I saw so many people ignore my work was, ‘Am I perhaps emphasising the importance of this too much?’” he says.
“But Trump won, and the masks came off, so now it’s very clear that I was ahead of the curve on this.”
Making noise on low steam
The Nerd Reich is certainly not ignored now; the newsletter has 10,000 subscribers, 800 of whom are paying. The Nerd Reich podcast has almost 26,000 YouTube subscribers.
However, ad revenue is non-existent. As Duran says, who would put their logo on a newsletter taking on billionaires?
He says most of the newsletter revenue currently goes to his podcast producer, but if he were to use it as his own salary, he would be earning less than he did fresh out of college in 1998.
He knows the current model is unsustainable. Duran has been ‘burning’ through his savings, although a recent advance for his upcoming book has helped.
But he says financial profit isn’t the goal anyway.
In fact, he is “proud” that he does not make much money, especially after weathering accusations from Tan and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan of being on the payroll of the likes of billionaire George Soros.
“I like the fact that you don’t have to have funding, you don’t have to have billionaire or corporate backing, to challenge these powerful people,” Duran says.
“All the money they have, they can’t stop that … and they’re so horrified by it that they accuse you of being an agent who’s funded by George Soros, which I think is hilarious.”
The threat to public interest journalism
Much of Duran’s work with The Nerd Reich involves going through what certain figures have publicly stated, as he says the people he writes about refuse to speak with him.
He also focuses on lifting up voices of those who have been trying to raise awareness about these issues for years, from academics to fellow newsletter writers.
Duran sees himself as doing the work established media outlets are neglecting, and warns public interest journalism will not be immune to the consequences of the increased influence of tech leaders.
He points to CBS News, which has faced several allegations of editorial interference since Bari Weiss was appointed editor-in-chief by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison.
Ellison is the son of billionaire Oracle Corporation founder Larry Ellison, and has cultivated closer ties with Trump since the latter’s re-election. If his current attempt at a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery succeeds, CNN could also be brought into Ellison’s domain.
Duran says we’re seeing the likes of tech elites and venture capitalists “eat media alive”.
“If you look at what they talk about, capturing media or creating new media outlets that are shaped to their worldview and serve their purposes, is a very big part of the plan,” he says.
“They call it parallel media.
“They make it look like the news and sound like the news, but it’s not really the news. It’s public relations described as news … We’re in real danger of seeing independent journalism disappear in the 21st century.”
If journalism is to detach itself from corporate funding, Duran says it will need to be viewed as an important part of public infrastructure, akin to roads, electricity and water.
“We can’t have a democracy without it,” he says.
“People will continue to find creative models, and I think we’re only at the beginning of that search.”
Sezen Bakan