Tech Billionaires Build Apocalypse Bunkers to Save Themselves from the World They Destroyed

But who will protect them from us once they've all retreated to their underground shelters? (1,800 words)

Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together. — Douglas Rushkoff

I just read an excellent new paper by law professors at Boston University, titled “How AI Destroys Institutions.” Woodrow Hartzog and Jessica Silbey advance a damning case for how generative AI systems are destroying the civic institutions — “the rule of law, universities, and a free press” — upon which democratic states are founded.

I was already sympathetic with the conclusion before reading, but approached the paper with some degree of skepticism about their particular arguments. However, my skepticism evaporated entirely by the end of the article: they provide an incredibly cogent and compelling case that generative AI systems pose a dire and immediate threat to society. This is (another) code red warning. I’d highly recommend reading it, if you have the time.

This got me thinking about an episode of Dystopia Now that I recorded with Kate Willett last summer about the tech billionaires who’ve invested millions — or hundreds of millions — into bunkers to survive the impending collapse of civilization. Many of these people are pushing policies and building technologies that, as Hartzog and Silbey show, are undermining key pillars upon which our societies are built. They understand this and expect society to collapse in the near future. That’s why they’re buying up land, and entire islands, in Hawaii, New Zealand, and elsewhere.

Listen here.

Here are some examples:

Sam Altman claims not to have a “bunker.” But he has built, um, what he calls “structures” to protect himself when society collapses. In 2016, he told The New Yorker that “I prep for survival” and, toward that end, has acquired “guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to.”

Big Sur, demarcated by the red and white line at bottom, is located in California. From here.

He added that in the event of a global catastrophe like a pandemic or nuclear war — the latter of which is what the potassium iodide is for — he has a “backup plan … to fly with his friend Peter Thiel … to Thiel’s house in New Zealand.” According to Thiel, “Sam is not particularly religious, but he is culturally very Jewish — an optimists yet a survivalist, with a sense that things can always go deeply wrong.”

Incidentally, New Zealand is one of the best places to be on Earth if there’s a nuclear war that triggers a nuclear winter. As The Guardian observes, “New Zealand has come to be seen as a bolthole of choice for Silicon Valley’s tech elite.” This is why Thiel made “plans for an elaborate bunker-like lodge in a remote part of New Zealand’s South Island,” although they were ultimately rejected by the local council because they’d “negatively impact [the] surrounding landscape.”

Nonetheless, the New York Post reports that “several wealthy individuals have been rumored to have constructed vast tunnels and underground networks in preparation for potential disaster, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Tesla CEO Musk and disgraced rapper Kanye ‘Ye’ West.” All hope to save themselves when civilization collapses. And that’s just the tip of it.

According to the PayPal mafia member Reid Hoffman, “50-plus percent” of tech billionaires have an escape home to seek refuge in when the sh*t hits the fan. (He adds that “saying you’re ‘buying a house in New Zealand’ is kind of a wink, wink, say no more.”) As Wired tells us:

In 2012, then Oracle CEO Larry Ellison bought almost the entirety of the smaller island of Lanai [in Hawaii] for $300 million, which he has been developing into a luxury resort destination. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former TV presenter and businesswoman Oprah Winfrey both have outposts on Maui. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been secretly buying up large swaths of the Big Island for unclear purposes. Billionaires pay top dollar, driving up property values.¹

Wired also reports that Mark Zuckerberg “is constructing a massive compound at an estimated cost that exceeds $300 million.” Consistent with Zuckerberg’s “evil billionaire” image, this compound is located on the Hawaiian island of Kauai atop an Indigenous burial site! Surrounded by over 2,300 acres and entirely self-sufficient, it consists of multiple buildings ranging “in size from 7,820 to 11,152 square feet” and will include “a huge underground bunker.” Wired writes:

These new buildings differ from the opulent mansions on the other side of the ranch, with few fun amenities and only one dedicated common space, a lanai larger than 1,300 square feet. Two of them seem designed to accommodate as many bedrooms and bathrooms as possible, and feature 16 of each between them, lined up like a motel or boarding house. As always, security is tight — with each new property featuring cameras, keypad locks, and motion detection devices.

This goes along with previous development across the ranch: two mansions with a total floor area comparable to the size of a football field, a gym, a tennis court, several guest houses, ranch operations buildings, a set of saucer-shaped treehouses, an elaborate water system, and a tunnel that branches off into an underground shelter about the size of an NBA basketball court, outfitted with blast-resistant doors and an escape hatch. Recent documents also show plans for a new water pump building, to go along with two existing pump buildings and an 18-foot-tall water tank. … The property could comfortably house more than 100 people.

Local workers building this compound are sworn to secrecy by NDAs, meaning that if they uncover the bones of Indigenous peoples, “it’s going to be a challenge for that to ever become public knowledge.” The total cost of this compound, according to Wired, will be “at least $270 million” — pocket change for multi-billionaires like Zuckerberg, though likely “one of the most expensive [properties] in the world.”

When Bloomberg asked the Facebook CEO whether he’s building a “Doomsday Bunker” in Hawaii, he denied such reports, saying: “No, I think that’s just like a little shelter. It’s like a basement.” LOL.

---

These people do not give a shit about anyone other than them and their billionaire buddies. They are well aware that their pillaging of the planet, exploitation of workers, attempts to replace the entire workforce with AGI, and companies now flooding our information ecosystems with AI-generated slop, junk, clutter, and garbage will lead to the breakdown of society — to say nothing of their alignment with American fascism.

What, then, will the arsonists do when the house burns down? Retreat to their vast compounds and bunkers, take their potassium iodide pills, put on their Israeli gas masks, grab their guns, and watch the fire spread across the globe.

In his fascinating book Survival of the Richest, Douglas Rushkoff writes about being invited to a “super-deluxe resort to deliver a speech” on “the future of technology.” There, he ended up hobnobbing with a bunch of billionaires who asked him the most pressing question on their minds: “New Zealand or Alaska? Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis.” Rushkoff continues:

It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: climate change or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What is the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked, “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The Event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy SEALs to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers — if that technology could be developed “in time.”

Rushkoff later describes how these billionaires were driven by what he calls “The Mindset,” which is very similar to what Timnit Gebru and I mean by “TESCREALism.” He writes:

The most devout holders of The Mindset seek to go meta on themselves, convert into digital form, and migrate to that realm as robots, artificial intelligences, or mind clones. Once they’re there, living in the digital map rather than the physical territory, they will insulate themselves from what they don’t like through simple omission. Just as our proprietary GPS maps don’t show us the restaurants that refuse to advertise on the platform, the digital landscape to which they have migrated will be free of poverty, pollution, and whatever else the rest of us have to deal with.

As always, the narrative ends in some form of escape for those rich, smart, or singularly determined enough to take the leap. Mere mortals need not apply.

The idea of escaping a world that they themselves have destroyed is also why folks like Musk and Bezos are obsessed with building O’Neill cylinders and colonizing Mars. The biospohere is dying, civilizational collapse seems inevitable, and at some point the demos may, in their desperation, violently revolt against their tyrannical overlords. It sure would be nice for the economic elites to have an escape hatch!

This is precisely what the film Don’t Look Up satirizes at the end: a bunch of billionaires leave Earth for an exoplanet where, satisfyingly, they are eaten by dinosaur-like beasts upon stepping out of their spacecraft.

None of this ends well for anyone — including the billionaires. If only they were smart enough to realize they wouldn’t need apocalypse bunkers in the first place if they opted instead for “partnership and solidarity as the best approaches to our collective, long-term challenges,” to quote Rushkoff.

F*ck the billionaires. Eat the rich. Down with the oligarchy.

Thanks so much for reading and I’ll see you on the other side.

1. Wired adds: “Following publication of this article, a spokesperson for Benioff clarified in a statement that a majority of the land purchased had been ‘donated to philanthropic causes.’” Yeah, sure.