Bunkering Down: Exit Architecture of Failure
American elites are building fortresses against the chaos they created.
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction.”
—James Baldwin, “Stranger in the Village”
Writing on the Wall
In this historical moment, there is a strong case that the three most destructive Americans are Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel. For over a decade, it is the collaboration of the techno-fascist billionaire class with Trump’s quasi-religious political cult that has propelled America to the edge of a cliff. While their only common interest is the end of liberal democracy—because it gets in the way of their messianic desire for total power—it has been enough to keep their alliance intact.
Donald Trump could not have won the 2016 election without Thiel’s help. Trump could not have won the 2024 election without Musk’s help. As immigrants, neither Musk nor Thiel is eligible to run for president—so they outsourced the role of nation-destroyer to a Russian-compromised reality TV conman. This arrangement has give all three men free rein for a decade to destroy our common reality while they enrich themselves.
The Biden administration was the last, best chance to stop them—and we blew it.
However, if their project were truly succeeding—if they believed they had tamed America and expected to retain their status as our overlords—they would not be bunkering down.
It appears the billionaires see the writing on the wall.
Ratlines
Peter Thiel, of all people, might be expected to be gloating about his tremendous success filling the government with his lieutenants—and filling his pockets with wildly overvalued Palantir stock. Thiel’s project to create “a technological means… to escape from politics” to satisfy a “small minority” has in many ways been a rousing success.
Thiel has positioned his personally-created mascot JD Vance just one 80-year-old heartbeat from the presidency. And his software company has infested the entire government.
Nevertheless, Thiel recently moved his family to Argentina and declared that he has essentially given up on America. Several months ago, Thiel melted down because Gavin Newsom announced that a 5% “billionaire tax” would be levied on the wealthiest Californians. Thiel also notably sold all of his Nvidia stock.
Argentina’s president Javier Milei, who infamously used a chainsaw to describe his policies, welcomes the move.
"All billionaires of the world who want to flee countries increasingly regulated, with higher taxes and governments that persecute their citizens, are welcome in the Argentine republic, the new land of freedom"
—Manuel Adorni, spokesman for Javier Milei
Of course, Argentina has an infamous history of accepting fascists running from accountability—through underground ratlines after WWII. The modern ratlines, on the other hand, are not hidden at all.
Thiel appears to be planning to use Argentina as a testing ground for his network state concept, in which there is no need for politics, because all decisions are made by billionaire dictators instead of the people.
“It was an anarcho-capitalist who met another anarcho-capitalist who is bringing things to life”
—Javier Milei, on meeting Peter Thiel
State of Musk
As I’ve written, Thiel’s longtime collaborator Elon Musk is also trying to create a kind of network state—through his company SpaceXAI.
But recently it’s been reported Musk now also intends to fold Tesla into his mega-company. This would create a multi-trillion dollar behemoth, completely controlled by Musk, with no way to fire him.
Perhaps the most harmful consequence of SpaceX going public is that many of the protective rules the markets have on public companies are being changed or dropped—just to be able to list Musk’s stock.
Profitability Requirement: Historically, the S&P 500 required 12 months of public trading and four consecutive quarters of positive GAAP earnings. S&P gutted this requirement to admit SpaceX.
Seasoning Period: Nasdaq reduced its inclusion seasoning window from 90 trading days to 15, and FTSE Russell cut its requirement to just 5 days. S&P 500 historically required a 12-month public trading wait.
Free-Float Minimum: Nasdaq and CRSP eased their minimum float thresholds to accommodate the relatively thin initial float (around 3%–5%).
This means index funds, which are held in most retirement accounts, will be forced to buy Musk’s unprofitable company. In effect, the richest man has figured out how to make almost half of America subsidize his empire, with vastly less oversight than it should require.
As diabolical as this is, however, it appears to be a defensive move, not an offensive expansion. Musk, like Thiel, seems to be bunkering down by consolidating his operations under one authoritarian roof.
But for what? Why is the broligarchy so nervous?
Full-Court Failure
Donald Trump’s pathologies were identified a decade ago by people like Bandy X. Lee but they have deteriorated rapidly into a scenario not seen on the world stage since Stalin’s decline in the early 1950s.
At a Cabinet meeting, just after his third medical exam in 12 months, Trump’s dementia was unleashed on a new scale. I’ve watched a lot of Trump’s appearances, but I’ve never seen him go off on a completely absurd tangent for nine full minutes. I posted the full transcript here.
This was remarkable because it showed so clearly that the president has completely lost the ability to care what anyone else thinks—even if they’re sitting right next to him. He could have ended his rambling story dozens of times, but couldn’t resist another line about how amazing his pool guy is, or how disgusting things used to be in the “reflecting lake.” This went on for nine minutes, with his entire Cabinet around him.
Escape From the White House
Psychologically, for those nine minutes, Trump was in his happy place—construction, the art of ripping off and paying off contractors, etc.—and it just never occurred to him that his Cabinet and the world was cringing along with every sentence. He is deeply oblivious to the real world.
Trump wanted to relay how DC was “crime-ridden,” “disgusting,” and “filthy” before he heroically cleaned it all up—“ten dumpster trucks of garbage.” It was a microcosm of his internal model of the world, overlaid at length on our most sacred national monuments.
But like Thiel and Musk, underneath it was really about his desire to escape from the real world, from the numerous disasters he has created himself. Trump is trying to rebuild his own reality to soothe his deeply wounded ego.
Here is what the former White House looks like now. His pathologies are visible to the naked eye.
Trump is setting up for a UFC match on the White House lawn, and a “State Fair” complete with musical acts on the National Mall for the 250th anniversary of America. But he ran into a snag,. Two-thirds of the musical acts who were announced have pulled out—citing the fact that they did not know the event would be “political.”
While Vanilla Ice has confirmed his attendance, the infamous late-80s flash-in-the-pan Milli Vanilli, who lip-synced their own music, declined to attend.
It is hard to imagine a more humiliating outcome for Trump.
But what Trump is really focused on is his ballroom which he has called a “shield” for the bunker below. Trump is physically bunkering down—at least eight floors below the ground if reporting is accurate.
Exit Architecture
Nearly every criminal authoritarian in history, when confronted with the lie of their own omnipotence, has done what Trump and his broligarch allies are doing now: burrow in, bunker down, and prepare for a siege—Qaddafi, Hussein, Ceausescu, Hitler, Escobar, Marcos, Howard Hughes. The list goes on.
Typically, authoritarians don’t make this move when things are going well. They make this move when threatened with being overthrown.
This is not the strategy of winning; this is the exit architecture of failure.
This does not by any means imply that Thiel, Musk or Trump has abandoned their ambitions for America. But Thiel fleeing to a country that would never extradite him is not a coincidence.
Thiel is not worried about the chaos being created—that’s a feature, not a bug. Thiel is worried about subpoenas from Congress, and ultimately indictments from a future DOJ for his political and financial crimes. The Epstein files alone are a smoking gun.
Thiel’s retreat is strategic, but it does imply he believes a reckoning is coming.
Similarly, if Elon Musk believed that his multi-trillion dollar empire was really worth that much, he would not be consolidating everything under one roof and rushing to go IPO. If he thought his companies could really do what he claims, he would let them accumulate value. But that’s not what’s happening.
Musk is bringing his companies together to bury massive fraud, because like Thiel, Musk is at serious legal risk from a near-future Congress—and a new administration.
Trump’s ballroom, Thiel’s Argentinian retreat, and Musk’s consolidation are all the same exit architecture: bunkering down.
Multiple waves of chaos are converging, and the elites are trying to avoid accountability.
Slipping and Falling
The crash of the AI bubble is coming. The signs are everywhere. The data centers are grinding to a halt. Chatbots are not going to replace people—ever. But the deliberate propaganda about AI is going to make a lot of people suffer. The economic chaos from unwinding this mess is going to be, well, biblical.
Trump’s catastrophic war in Iran is similarly poised to wreak a tsunami of economic pain that radiates all around the world. For months, nations and oil companies have been drawing down their reserves to keep prices down, relative to what they might be—but those reserves are running at historic lows.
“You can’t print molecules.”
All week long, Trump used his social media accounts and stenographers in the press to manipulate the markets by falsely and repeatedly asserting “we’re very close to a deal.” In every case, the Iranians have said something different. There is still no “deal” and the White House says Trump is now thinking about it
The stark reality is that there are no good options for Trump. Every outcome of this deal is a humiliation—which is processed differently for him than most of us. Trump sees the shame of losing as an existential threat to his very being. It is his ultimate red line that must never be crossed. This means he will try to save face at all costs.
This is the trap every narcissist authoritarian, be they political or corporate, ultimately falls into—a trap of their own making. The more the world differs from their internal model of reality, the harder it is to keep under control—so they reduce the input they receive to only be what they want to hear. This causes mistakes, which makes the dissonance worse. In the end, they all bunker down.
For the rest of us, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that some elites feel that the stranglehold they thought they could get on America is slipping through their fingers. The bad news is that by slipping through their fingers, we are falling hard to the ground.
When the shockwaves from the multiple economic and geopolitical disasters that Trump, Musk, and Thiel have created meet, the waves will reinforce each other and America will once again be in a self-inflicted crisis.
To survive this manmade disaster, Thiel is building a jurisdictional bunker; Musk is building a corporate bunker; and Trump is building a literal bunker.
For the rest of us, those who cannot afford a bunker, it will be a form of siege warfare to evict them. The fortresses they’re building are formidable.
But always remember: we still vastly outnumber them.
“The more successful a liar is… the more likely… he will end by believing his own lies.”
—Hannah Arendt, “Lying in Politics”
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Many of us geezers are thrilled about the AI bubble bust 👏🏼 Leopards are eating their faces.