The Authoritarian Stack – How Tech Billionaires Are Building a Post-Democratic America — And Why Europe Is Next

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The Authoritarian Stack
A project led by Prof. Francesca Bria with xof-research.org, 12 December 2025. https://www.authoritarian-stack.info/

Research and editorial team: Francesca Bria, José Bautista
Data analysis: Autonomy Institute
Map development and design: xof-research.org
Web development: José Núñez
Supported by: Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
Funded by: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) Future of Work

The Contract That Changed Everything

In late July 2025, deep within the Pentagon’s bureaucratic machinery, the U.S. Army quietly signed away a piece of its sovereignty.

A ten-billion-dollar contract with Palantir Technologies—one of the largest in the Department of Defense’s history—was framed as a move toward “efficiency.”

It consolidated seventy-five procurement agreements into a single contract.

A strategic handover of core military functions to a private company whose founder, Peter Thiel, has declared that “freedom and democracy are no longer compatible.”

The Authoritarian Tech Network:
The Kingmakers

J.D. Vance, propelled to the vice-presidency by $15 million from Peter Thiel, became the face of tech-right governance. Behind him, Thiel’s network moved into the machinery of the state.

Under the banner of “patriotic tech“, this new bloc is building the infrastructure of control—clouds, AI, finance, drones, satellites—an integrated system we call the Authoritarian Stack. It is faster, ideological, and fully privatized: a regime where corporate boards, not public law, set the rules.

Our investigation shows how these firms now operate as state-like powers—writing the rules, winning the tenders, and exporting their model to Europe, where it poses a direct challenge to democratic governance.

Silicon Valley isn’t building apps anymore.
It’s building empires.

State Capture: Personnel Pipeline

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To understand why this capture is happening so rapidly, follow the personnel. The revolving door no longer spins between government and industry—it locks them together into a new architecture of power.

Detachment 201: The Army’s Executive Innovation Corps

This goes further—commissioning Silicon Valley executives directly into military ranks. In June 2025, four tech executives were sworn in as lieutenant colonels:
The line between contractor and commander has been erased.

The Pipeline Made Visible

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Unlike old authoritarianism built on fear and force, this new system rules through code, capital, and infrastructure — making resistance feel architecturally impossible.

It’s a self-reinforcing loop:
Ideology fuels venture capital → capital captures the state → the state feeds the same private systems that built it. A new model of power — privatized sovereignty.

Each layer reinforces the others. Ideology justifies investment. Investment captures state power. State power secures contracts. Contracts build infrastructure. Infrastructure becomes indispensable. Indispensability generates returns. Returns fund more ideology.

The Capital Machine: Financial Flows — From Taxpayers to Venture Capital

Follow the Money

Funding

Government

Tech Companies

Venture Capital

Founders Fund, Thiel’s $17 billion flagship, led Anduril’s $1 billion round at a $30.5 billion valuation. It was the first institutional investor in both Palantir and SpaceX. Palantir’s quarterly revenue now exceeds $1 billion—up 53 percent in government contracts. 1789 Capital epitomizes dynasty.

Founded by Thiel’s confidants and joined by Donald Trump Jr., it grew from $150 million to over $1 billion. It channels tens of millions into Musk’s empire—SpaceX for orbital dominance, xAI for military AI. 

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), through its “American Dynamism” fund, backs defense tech and what it calls builders of the American state. Andreessen rallied Silicon Valley’s billionaire class to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Smaller giants like 8VC and General Catalyst reinforce the pattern. 8VC poured $450 million into Anduril; General Catalyst led a $1.48 billion round.

The Stack: Five Domains of Privatized Sovereignty

Critical state infrastructures are being privatized across five domains—data, defense, space, energy, and money—the foundations of democratic power. These domains form the architecture of privatized sovereignty: a technological regime where power flows through laws, infrastructure and automated platforms.

Crypto Sovereignty

The Nuclear AI Complex

SpaceX: Orbital Infrastructure

Anduril: Autonomous Warfare

Palantir: The Operating System of Government

Privatizing the state’s data and decision making.

Systems

• Gotham (intelligence)
• Foundry (DOGE budget automation)
• ImmigrationOS (ICE tracking)
• NHS Federated Data Platform

Contracts

ICE Immigration Platform (2025)

$10 B U.S. Army Enterprise Agreement

Europe’s Deepening Trap

y mid-2025, its reverberations were already felt across Europe. In Rome, Italian defense officials moved to integrate Elon Musk’s Starlink into military communications. In Berlin, Rheinmetall and Anduril expanded their joint venture to deploy autonomous drone swarms for NATO. The German variants of its drones still run on Californian code. Musk livestreams with the AfD’s Alice Weidel, endorsing the German far-right while supplying NATO infrastructure.

In London, the NHS scaled Palantir’s £330 million Federated Data Platform across tens of millions of patient records, By May 2025, the government had to pay KPMG £8 million just to encourage hospital adoption. Meanwhile, a £1.5 billion defense partnership binds Britain to Palantir’s AI systems.

None of these decisions provoked real debate. Few reached front pages. Together, they reveal the systematic outsourcing of European sovereignty to American oligarchs whose ideology openly undermines democracy.

It is a paradox with devastating implications: pursuing digital sovereignty while ceding control through every signed contract.

Each new contract deepens the trap. Once Palantir becomes indispensable, once Anduril’s drones are NATO standard, once nuclear facilities power AI that runs everything else— the transformation is irreversible.

Europe faces an existential choice: build genuine technological sovereignty now, or accept governance by platforms whose architects view democracy as an obsolete operating system.

The Infrastructure of Control

ilicon Valley’s Authoritarian Tech Right is not theorizing this world. They are already building it. The pipelines are operational. The feedback loops are functioning. The sovereignty transfers are completing.

Democracy persists as a legacy interface— maintained for stability, while being systematically hollowed out and replaced.

The question now is whether democratic societies can recognize this formation for what it is—and build alternatives before the infrastructure of control becomes too deeply embedded to dislodge.

The Authoritarian Tech Complex

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December 13, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, politics international, USA