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The a16z Show
Monitoring the Situation #3: Who Is Nick Land?
00:52:44
Zach Dell is founder and CEO of Base Power, an energy tech company that builds affordable, reliable power via home batteries. In this episode of Monitoring the Situation, a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg, Katherine Boyle, and Erin Price-Wright sit down with Zach to discuss the current state of home power generation, what’s misunderstood about the data center buildout, and how to fix the US electricity grid. Plus, Erik and Katherine talk with a16z crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin about Silicon Valley’s favorite Dark Enlightenment philosopher, Nick Land.
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- [00:00]
Eddie Lazarin
Nick Land's work is very vibey. It's really vibey. He has an intense, prosaic writing style that is provocative, intentionally grandiose.
- [00:12]
Zach Dell
What's happening is new technology is being created, which is leading to a ton of demand for a thing, which is exposing the fact that we don't have a bunch of supply for that thing. And so now a bunch of supply is getting built to unlock new demand. And so new technology will get created, which will unlock new demand, which will expose more supply that hasn't been built. And the flywheel will go. And that's where we get, you know, prosperity and economic growth and, you know, gdp, Marriage finest. Exactly like. This is what it's all about, baby. This is why we're here, building companies.
- [00:39]
Podcast Host (Katherine Boyle)
In America in 2025. The grid is cracking under its own weight. Data centers are multiplying, home batteries are surging, and the line between energy and tech is starting to blur. On this third episode of Monitoring the Situation, I sit down with A16Z general partners Katherine Boyle and Aaron Priceright, along with Zach Dell, the founder and CEO of Base Power, to talk about the future of energy. We dig into how to make local power generation affordable, what most people get wrong about the data center buildout, and how we might actually fix the US electricity grid. Then Katherine and I are joined by A16Z's Eddie Lazarin to discuss the philosopher shaping parts of Silicon Valley's intellectual underground, Nick Land. Let's get into it.
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Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Zach, welcome to Monitoring the Situation.
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Zach Dell
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
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Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
So congrats on the series C. For people who are unfamiliar, why don't you explain Base the company mission and we'll get into the state of it today.
- [01:34]
Zach Dell
Yeah. Basis and energy technology company working to bring affordable and reliable power to America. So we started the business almost three years ago, now focused on Texas homeowners installing batteries on their homes and using those batteries as a grid resource when the grid is up and running and then giving that battery capacity back to the homeowner when the grid goes out to protect the home from power outages. And we also sell power to the homeowner, so we're able to save people on the order of 10 to 20% a month on their electricity bills. That was kind of how we got started, using off the shelf hardware, all custom built software, and over the course of the last two and a half years, we've really built out this vertically integrated strategy where we're now building our own batteries, designing them, manufacturing them, our Own installations, owning them, operating these batteries in wholesale markets. And now we're starting to enter other markets. So we have a regulated utility partnership model where we take our technology, our hardware, our software, and we sell it to these utilities and help them do the same thing. Lower cost, increase reliability on the distribution grid. So really the mission here is bring down the cost of electricity for all. Make power more affordable, more reliable. Do it through technology, vertical integration. Yeah, that's quick, high level.
- [02:40]
Eric
I feel like people talk a lot about generation with data centers and all new types of power. And is it more gas plants or is it more solar or nuclear and pulling generation closer to the actual usage. But maybe talk to us about why energy storage is such an important part of the puzzle in keeping electricity prices down.
- [03:02]
Zach Dell
Yeah, so again, it all comes back to price. Right. Electricity is a commodity, and the best electron is the cheapest electron. And when you think about electricity prices, there are two components to price. One is the cost to generate the electron, and the other component is the cost to move the electron. And over the last 20 years, actually the cost to generate electrons has gone down very significantly, largely due to the build out of solar, Wind as well, but mostly solar. Right. So cost to generate power has gone down, but the total cost of the electron has gone up. Which means that the cost to move electrons, the cost of distribution and transmission has gone up really significantly. And this is because our infrastructure is aging and these poles and wires are breaking and they need to get replaced. And so there's a lot of capex that has to go into building out this transmission distribution infrastructure. And what we realized is poles and wires move power through space and batteries move power through time. Right. So batteries and software are actually a way more efficient alternative. And there's a kind of academic term for this in nwa non wires alternatives, not the other nwa. And it's a very effective mechanism for driving down the cost of electricity because you can capture the decrease in the cost to generate the power by really also helping bring down the cost to move the power by having batteries on site. So we deploy batteries where the load is, where interconnection is, and that makes for a much more efficient system.
- [04:16]
Catherine Boyle
So can I pop up for a second? Because I want to get back to your origin story, which I feel like you were in a very unique position. Remind us again when you started the company, but you had been thinking about energy even a lot longer before BASE was founded, and I was wondering if part of it was that you were spending so much time in AI. You know, it's like ChatGPT had the big moment in November 2022. You were an investor at Thrive. Like how were you thinking about energy being such an important component of this AI revolution? And what made you say, okay, like this is where we need to be spending time, especially on the consumer side, just given how energy is about to. Energy needs are about to explode.
- [04:53]
Zach Dell
Yeah, I mean this was really a five plus year buildup for me. I started working on energy projects in college actually, and I was kind of really in the weeds, working to develop a way to do anaerobic digestion to turn human waste into biogas in rural parts of the world to create low cost energy and also a sanitation solution. And that was a sticky, painful, messy problem to say the very least. But that was kind of my first foray into energy. And then actually at the end of college, I, I tried to put together this deal to go lease a bunch of lava rock in Hawaii and put solar panels on it and sell the power back to the government and went to a bunch of banks to try to get financing and they were like, what? You're in college, who's going to manage this? And I was like, okay, fair point, maybe this doesn't make sense. Then ended up going to Blackstone and I was on the private equity team there and looked at a bunch of stuff all across energy infrastructure there. And I think really when I was at Blackstone, that's where this paradigm shift hit me, where I saw, okay, the last five decades of energy have been defined by coal and then natural gas and the next five decades are going to be defined by solar and storage. And really what that means is the marginal megawatt, the low cost marginal megawatt is going to be solar and storage. And that is going to change the way our energy infrastructure looks and works and the way the value chain is kind of built out. And this really stuck with me. And then I left Blackstone obviously and joined Thrive Capital. And I got to see really exemplars for companies that were innovating and taking market share from big incumbent dominated industries that were not engineering led or technology driven R and D focused. Obviously SpaceX and Aerospace and Anduril and Defense being the kind of core examples. And this energy thesis kind of stuck with me. It was like, well, this paradigm shift is coming. Energy is really the last great part of the economy that's gone undisrupted. Why can't we go do to energy what those companies did to those respective industries? And then of course, towards the end of my time At Thrive, we became large investors in OpenAI. And to your point, Aaron started to see this massive tidal wave coming of this data center build out. And I think found ourselves in the midst of a generational increase in electricity demand. And now that has just reached a total fever pitch. And we're seeing this insane build out of data centers in Texas, you know, in Northern Virginia, obviously we've been having for a long time and really across the whole country and the constraint is electrons. It's not chips. Right. Like, the whole economy has been kind of constrained by electrons now, which is a new phenomenon. And so utilities are uniquely open to new technologies, new solutions. And so that's been a really awesome opportunity for us to build into.
- [07:16]
Eric
Honestly, like, I feel like we're kind of like staring down the barrel or in the early innings of basically the largest industrial buildout that the US has seen ever in all of history. Like, bigger than every industrial buildout that we've ever seen combined, which is great news for us as American dynamism investors. Like, we don't have an industrial base, we don't have a military industrial base, we don't have all these other things. So I'm grateful to AI honestly for pushing us to figure out a lot of these thorny challenges that we're going to have to figure out if we want to be able to win a war with China, et cetera, et cetera.
- [07:48]
Zach Dell
Yeah, these are very good problems to have. Right. What's happening is new technology is being created, which is leading to a ton of demand for a thing, which is exposing the fact that we don't have a bunch of supply for that thing. And so now a bunch of supply is getting built to unlock new demand. And so new technology will get created, which will unlock new demand, which will expose more supply that hasn't been built and the flywheel will go. And that's where we get prosperity and economic growth and gdp.
- [08:12]
Eric
America at the finest.
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Zach Dell
Exactly. This is what it's all about, baby. This is why we're here, building companies in America. So it's the greatest time in history to be building a company in this great country.
- [08:21]
Catherine Boyle
Totally. I will say the speed of also matters so much because on monitoring the situation, we spent a lot of time on the Internet and one of the memes that's really popped up recently, both on the left and the right, is, okay, all of this AI is taking way too much energy and it's actually driving consumer energy prices up, it's rising costs up. It's something that is not sustainable. So I would love to hear your thoughts on how quickly you have to build, what needs to be done. I mean, in some ways, Texas has figured out, and maybe you can talk a little bit about why Texas is such a unique place, place to build, but Texas has figured out how to deregulate and to make things much more affordable. Maybe talk about sort of what you could see that as a model for the country, not only building, but also sort of the regulatory regime.
- [09:01]
Zach Dell
Yeah. So price economics 101. Right. Price is a function of supply and demand. And when you have a ton of demand and low supply, you have prices going up. And that's largely what's happening in the energy space today in Texas. You have to your point, Catherine, a competitive free market. So market participants are exposed to price signals, and there's a strong incentive to go build when prices go up. Right. And that's why Texas leads the nation in solar and wind. Now, it also happens to sit in the middle of the Sun Belt, in the middle of wind corridor, which is really helpful, but it's got liquid price signals. And so there's a strong incentive for developers to enter that market. That's why you're seeing a lot of these data. I mean, the second biggest data center market in the country behind Northern Virginia is Dallas Fort Worth. Right. And it's really easy to build there. There's a lot of developers around. You can interact with the wholesale power markets in creative ways. And so I think. And if you kind of rewind the clock and you look at the early 2000s, like, why did so much of the kind of wind boom, solar boom happen in Texas before other places? Well, because it was the first state to deregulate, actually, not the first. California deregulated first, and then Enron put a quick stop to that. And so Texas kind of picked up the torch and ran with it. And so you had a bunch of developers go to Texas, and now Houston is really the energy capital of the country. And that's because of this free market dynamic. And so I think that over time, the more that we can expose people, companies, organizations to price signals, the more innovation we'll have, the more technology will get deployed. And you'll see prices go down over time. Right. Because demand goes up, supply stays the same, prices go up, a bunch of supply comes in to arbitrage that away, and then prices go down, demand goes up again. Right. And that's what markets are for. So I'm optimistic that we will see prices come down as more supply gets built out. But this is Kind of the natural cycles of markets. And I think it's largely healthy.
- [10:44]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
We've seen a little bit of, you know, we're all excited about but there's some backlash to, to the sort of data center surge or build out. What's misunderstood about or what do people not fully appreciate about what, what's going on here?
- [10:58]
Zach Dell
Well, I, I think it's really easy in, you know, we've seen, I mean I haven't seen all that many, I'm not that old. But there's, you get these boom bust cycles all the time, right? You know, whether it's you know, crypto or you know, Labubus or whatever, you've got just like crazy hysteria that happens around big paradigm shifts and big demand cycles. And we're seeing this in AI, right? It's like we all remember the first time we used chat GPT and our minds were blown and you know, these products and then Claude came out and Grok came out and you know, all these, all these new things and you know, cursor and cognition and all these new products that our team uses every day and all the companies you work with use every day and that has created this just insatiable demand for compute and the build out and the investment. I mean the speculation in this market is really unprecedented. I mean you're seeing, you know, I've got friends that work at hedge funds who have, you know, landman equivalents of people who are driving around Texas looking for land to buy to put data centers on and they're just writing checks blindly from their offices in New York because they're like, hey, someone's going to take this off our hands. And you know, everyone in their, and their cousin is in the powered shell business now, right? And so you're seeing just incredible amount of speculation and it's like, well, we overbuilding? Are we underbuilding? And the answer is like probably both, right? Like we're going to overbuild and then we're going to underbuild and then we're going to overbuild and then we're going to underbuild and there's going to be this just because it's such a big part of the market and there's so much demand, there's so much capital, you're going to have, you know, boom bust kind of market economics play out. So I don't know that I have anything all that intelligent to say about. Oh, there's this thing that no one's talking about that's you know, under the under the scenes here, you know, one thing would be, you know, model efficiency. Right. Like, we saw the deep seat breakthrough and I think there's other things kind of happening with being able to train these models and run inference in more efficient ways that need less compute. But, you know, it's anyone's, anyone's guess to determine like, where the computer kind of battle is going to end. And you've got these, you know, all these public companies that their stocks have gone totally crazy and who knows how it's going to play out. I think that there will be a bit of a snapback and then I think, I do think the kind of the steady march of demand will keep going and over time we will need a lot of this compute. But it's really hard to get the supply demand math correctly in the near term and there will be some, some ugly outcomes as a result.
- [13:23]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah.
- [13:24]
Eric
One thing that, you know, has been big in the news this week, at least for, for people who, who read, who, who read the news in Chinese, is the, basically the closing down of a lot of the critical metals and minerals that are probably upstream of you in the supply chain from China would look like how, like, know, how should, how does that affect this whole power build out? Like, how are you guys thinking about that? What should we, what should we all be thinking about more as we look towards those upstream Chinese supply chains?
- [14:00]
Zach Dell
Yeah, I really have two minds here. One is maybe not what you're expecting me to say, but, but is, is my real opinion, which is like, I believe a global economy is a better economy. It's a bigger economy. And I, I believe in, you know, free markets and labor specialization. And I think that, yeah, a global economy where we can collaborate and coordinate with large global powers, whether it be China or otherwise, is, is good for the world. But we are in a time where there are a bunch of forces at play and we have a particularly aggressive president with regards to tariffs. And if you are in the business of making things and some of the things that you need are largely made in China, you've got to take matters into your own hands. And you know, we've been very loud about this. Like, we accelerated our plans to build a factory in Texas to make this stuff ourselves because of what's happening in the geopolitical arena. Right. And so if you source rare earths or, you know, components or batteries or whatever it might be from China, like, you better have a backup plan. And there are some things that you can get in other places like Vietnam, Indonesia, you know, Thailand Japan. And there's some places, some things that you. You can't. And you're gonna have to make yourself. And does it make sense to make them in the US or should you actually make them in Mexico or make them. Make them somewhere else? Right. And it's all about transformation cost. And, well, actually, you know, where do you source the components and how are they assembled? And so there's no one size. It's all. It's not like, oh, yep, ahead, and just make everything in the U.S. let's just like, click the. Click the reshore button and then, you know, put a billion dollars in the ground and then it happens. It's. It takes time and it's. It's all nuanced. But, you know, I'll just speak for base. I mean, we are doing as much as we can to control our destiny here and make as many of the things that are core to us that make sense from a kind of transformation cost perspective. Ourselves in Texas now, we also highly value having engineering and manufacturing very close to each other and having this tight feedback loop and iterations. And maybe not all people value that, and so they want to make stuff elsewhere and engineer it far away, and that's fine, too. And I think it very much depends on the product strategy and the kind of company you're building. So, yeah, it is a hard time to be building things because it's just always hard to build things. And, you know, I think the best thing you can do is kind of take stock of your situation relative to your company and the thing that you make and just figure out the most strategic way to control your own destiny, so to speak.
- [16:37]
Catherine Boyle
I will say it's. It's pretty nice to have a backup plan where you can raise $1 billion to build in Texas. Like, that's a really nice backup plan and one testament to you all.
- [16:47]
Zach Dell
Yeah, it certainly. It certainly helps. We're. Look, we're very grateful for the support of our investors, Andreessen included, who see this big vision. And it's not. We're not like, oh, you know, tariffs hit. We need $1 billion because, like, our stuff's getting more expensive. Right. It's like, okay, we. We have a plan. Here it is. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. This is what's going to cost. Right. And so we're going to execute against that plan as quickly as we can.
- [17:10]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit more about just building in Texas, because I think a couple of Years ago. And you know, we talk a lot about this on the American Dynamism team. It was like everything was concentrated in California. Saying you were going to build in a new ecosystem, like Austin was sort of seen as radical or crazy and like the sort of, the kind of top line kind of that everyone would say is, well, there's not enough talent. Like you're going to have a hard time getting the engineering talent, as you said, like manufacturing engineering need to be near each other. How are you going to be able to do that? And so you are sort of proving all the naysayers wrong. Maybe talk about why Texas is the future and why if we're looking 20 years out, we might see 10 new, you know, physical world ecosystems that are really benefiting from this movement.
- [17:53]
Zach Dell
Yeah, look, I'm, I'm very biased here because I was born and raised in Austin, so this is home for me. But first of all, Austin is an amazing place to live. It's an amazing place to build a family. It's got great schools, it's got great, you know, outdoor nature. It's got the arts, it's got music, it's got the Texas Longhorns. It's, you know, has all the charm of a small city and all the resources of a, of a, of a big city. It's got the restaurants that's important and barbecue. Right. And great Mexican food. And so the livability is extremely high. So, you know, we do a lot of relocating people to Austin, right? We're like, hey, you know, and it's a good selection mechanism for people who are really serious. Because look, we, we work really hard here. Like this is an intense place to work. And if you're not willing to pick up your life and move to Austin, like, you're probably just not the right fit for the company because it's just an intense group of people. And so we've been able to relocate a lot of people here because it's a great place to live. But the actual fundamentals of the city make it a really good place to build. It's incredibly pro business. There is a massive, highly competent set of young college educated people coming out of the University of Texas. Elon has built Gigafactory here, which has brought tens of thousands of incredible engineers here, many of which we've hired. And you know, SpaceX now has a, has a site in Bastrop, you know, Amazon and Apple and Meta and you know, all these companies have big offices here. So it's become a technology hub. The hiring, the local hiring pool has gotten better. Our ability to recruit people here has, has gone up as the city has gotten better. And as someone who grew up here and, you know, spent the last, you know, whatever, 30 years here, like the next 10 years for Austin are going to be a lot better than the last 10 years. And we're kind of hitting this inflection point where it's becoming a major metro in the country. And so I'm extremely bullish on the city. And obviously our friends at Sironic are building a really incredible hardware company here, and we're excited about what they're doing, and there's going to be more behind us that are, that are, you know, building hard things, doing hard work here in, in Texas. And it's really exciting to see Zach.
- [19:55]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
So modernizing the grid is an important topic that people talk a lot about. Obviously not the most the sexiest topic, but, you know, I think it's pretty sexy. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It needs to be done. What. Why don't you give an overview of how the grid got so bad in the first place and, and what needs to happen?
- [20:12]
Zach Dell
Yeah, so the, the backstory here is, is interesting and, and, and complicated. I mean, the, the grid was largely kind of federalized and, and, and, and regulated, right. And, you know, in the early 1900s, when we started building out what is now a grid infrastructure, the available technology was, was less. Our kind of cities were more rural. You had to have like a ton of coordination to get these things done. And so you had a lot of these municipal utilities get built out. They're, you know, run by the city. And then over time, you know, you saw other parts of the economy deregulate, right, like, you know, trucking and airlines and telecom. And the grid just largely didn't. And it stayed, you know, highly regulated. And, you know, I think, and think that when you have parts of the economy that are controlled by the government, you definitionally have less innovation. And so, you know, right now, on the order of 40%, 50% of grid infrastructure was built in the 60s. And so there has not been a strong incentive. When you have monopolies, you don't have competition. There's very little incentive to innovate, right, because there's no competition. And so you have old infrastructure, there's no incentive to, to, to upgrade it and, and, and rebuild it. And so we have a system that is basically old and too small is kind of the punchline. As I mentioned, in the early 2000s, late 90s, this deregulate the grid kind of movement started in California, it was quickly cut off at the, at the knees around the Enron, Enron situation. Texas picked up the church, deregulated, and then a bunch of states in the Northeast followed by, but it kind of stopped there. And a lot of the country is still regulated and partially for. For good reason. I mean, I think that at least the transmission distribution, it does make sense to have regulated monopolies in that part of the economy because it doesn't make sense to have, you know, 10 different power lines running through the neighborhood, right? So the, it's kind of like the roads, right? Like most roads are not privately owned. It makes sense to have these roads owned by the government, but the cars that drive on them and the kind of stores that line them up are not, are not government owned. And it's kind of like other, you know, their proxies in the economy. When you have no competition and government regulation, you don't have innovation and you have very little incentive to upgrade. So we have to change that. And we're starting by entering the deregulated market of Texas, where there is an incentive to innovate and we are exposed to price signals. And that's why Texas has become a laboratory for energy innovation, because it's a free market and you can go capture market share and profits by coming up with great technology. Now what we're doing is we're taking all the technology we've built over the last two and a half years in Texas, the hardware, the software, the deployment operations, and we're packaging it and bringing it to those regulated utilities across the country who are seeing this once in a generation increase power demand and saying, we need technology and they know that they're not really built for R and D, right? And so they need, they need a partner. And, and we show up and say, hey, we are your outsourced R and D. We have this technology we can provide to you. It's going to help you decrease your cost and increase your reliability. I'm like, okay, that sounds pretty interesting. So we're working on partnering with these regulated utilities. We're not here to deregulate them, right? We're here to partner with them and help them do their jobs better outside of Texas. And then the other deregulated markets, we're going to compete in the free markets, right? And I hope that other competition shows up. Right? Competition is good. Competition equals lower prices and better services for consumers, and it'll help us do, do better at our job. So I hope there are more energy technology companies that show up in the competitive parts of the market and help us push us to do better and then conversely, also go to the regulated parts of the market and start building technology and, you know, doing R and D on behalf of these regulated utilities.
- [23:57]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Yeah, I think it's a great, great explanation. I wonder if that's a. If that's a inspiring and. And good note to. I like the phrase about the competition is good because, you know, zero to one got so popular. People have, like, been. Been less excited about competition as. As it relates to the terms of, you know, its overall benefits to the. To the ecosystem. So I appreciate you calling that out.
- [24:15]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah.
- [24:15]
Zach Dell
If you're gonna, you know, winning in an uncompetitive market is like. That is not really a thing. Right. Like, any. Any good. Any good opportunity gets competed. If. If what you're doing is actually that interesting economically and societal, like, it should be competed on. Right. And someone should show up and say, hey, I. I want that too. Right? So, you know, right now, if you said, hey, Zach, like, who else is working on this in this way? Like, actually, there's. There's nobody. Like, there are other people that make batteries or other people that write software for batteries. No one has the model that we have. Someone better show up soon or else. Like, what we're doing clearly isn't working. Now I think it's working, and the market thinks it's working. The business model works and the customers love it. And so I imagine that someone will show up soon. Now I think we've got a nice head start, and, you know, we're rather competitive people, so, you know, bring it on. But I do think that, like, good competitive markets are healthy.
- [25:12]
Catherine Boyle
Totally. Totally. Yeah. To our friends. If you want to read more about base, Arena Mag has the definitive profile of you guys and what we're building in Texas. Check it out this weekend.
- [25:27]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Aaron, did you want to say something?
- [25:28]
Eric
Oh, I was just.
- [25:29]
Zach Dell
You.
- [25:29]
Eric
You brought up Peter, Thiel, Eric, and zero to one. And, you know, it's better to not have a competitor than have a competitor. And I loved. I loved Zach's. Zach's spicy tape. And I remember, you know, and I was at. When I was at Palantir, we talked a lot about not having a competitor. And now every company I talk to is Palantir for xyz. So I imagine we'll, you know.
- [25:50]
Zach Dell
Yeah, Palantir is tons of competitors. Nvidia has tons of competitors.
- [25:53]
Eric
In 10 years hearing OpenAI.
- [25:55]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Yeah.
- [25:57]
Zach Dell
Name a great business that doesn't have competition. I mean.
- [26:00]
Eric
Yeah.
- [26:02]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Awesome. Well, on that note, Zach thanks so much for coming to the Monitoring situation.
- [26:06]
Zach Dell
Thanks for having me, guys. It was fun.
- [26:07]
Podcast Host (Katherine Boyle)
Great.
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Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Well, we're now excited to have our second guest on the Monitoring the Situation segment, Eddie Lazarin, who's going to be talking to us about who is Nick Land? Eddie, we've been looking for an excuse to bring up Nick Land in Async Z podcast for a while now, and I think we finally found it. Tucker Carlson had a guest on the podcast which talked about the Nick Land phenomenon in Silicon Valley and how it's inspired AI and they're worried about, you know, it being a sort of the summoning of the demons, so to speak. There was a great profile on Tablet on, on who is Nick Land? Nick Land also went on a podcast.
- [26:38]
Catherine Boyle
In this debate with the current issue of Tablet.
- [26:41]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Yes, yours, exactly. And Catherine, Nick Land also did a debate with Alexander dugan on, on McIntyre's podcast. So in the news right now, and people are asking, who is Nick Land and what is his connection to Silicon Valley? Eddie, help us make sense.
- [26:58]
Eddie Lazarin
So, so I'll say I'll, I will layer on caveat after caveat until maybe we get an answer, right? Like, maybe that will, maybe that's how we'll get there. But so for first, I'll say, like, I don't think people need to understand who Nick Land is any more than you need to understand who Deleuze and Guattari are or who Hegel was or, you know, who any of these somewhat inscrutable continental philosophers are. Right. I don't, I don't think that you necessarily need to, although I think these figures do have an effect on mainstream culture. They do. It's usually through their ripple effect over layers and layers of culture as they're kind of digested and recomputed by, by people. Right. We kind of achieve an understanding of them. So I'll say Nick Land is that type of figure. So he's incredibly difficult to understand, not just because he's from an intellectual school that's hard to understand, like the continental philosophers in general, but because the topics he chooses to talk about are themselves inscrutable. His writing style is inscrutable because it's sort of taking these flourishes and density from these famous, like, 20th century French philosophers and stuff like that. Obviously he's writing in English and he's very much an Englishman, but all these layers make it incredibly difficult to understand who Nick Land is. So first, if you have no interest in continental philosophers, if you have no interest in this type of thing, you don't need to know. You're good. Turn it off.
- [28:26]
Catherine Boyle
Skip the podcast this week.
- [28:28]
Eddie Lazarin
Enjoy, have a good afternoon, you know, whatever. But if those types of things are interesting to you, then Nick Land is very, very interesting. And I find, I'm a huge fan. I find it very interesting. What makes him interesting is that he takes a lot of the most interesting post industrial revolution themes and he modernizes them into an ultra modern cypherpunk context. Right. Now, as I said, he's hard to explain, so I'm being really reductionistic here, right, And I'm overly simplifying what he is. But Nick Land has had two famous phases, two phases in his intellectual development, which is not uncommon for people like him. People who are kind of playing in this really complex mind space and trying to make sense of things using really high level conceptual tools. In his earlier phase, which I think is maybe exemplified by like this cool essay called meltdown from 1994, Nick Land was taking all these themes about industrial development and capitalism and the Internet and cities and the, you know, the, the intensity and heat and chaos and entropy of modern culture as we saw it in, in the 90s, in the 70s and 80s and 90s in a way we'd never seen before. And he's trying to make sense of it in terms of its grand historicity. What does it mean in the big picture of the development of humanity? And during that period, I think he was a little more cynical about capitalism. Like he kind of flipped his views on how he thought about capitalism, technological development as, as something that was creating a lot of problems for people, but also something that was brimming with incredible potential. In his more recent period, maybe like since 23rd, 2012, 2013 ish or something like that, he has remained focused on similar themes, but he has kind of flipped around a little bit where he sees technological development and the feedback loop of capital and technology and capital and technology and money and capital and technology as maybe culminating a huge project. Now, whether it's a human project or whether it's a project from an AI from the future is kind of a complex idea, but gets at another theme of his, which is this esoteric mysticism. Now I, I'm not a particularly esoteric mysticism type person. I actually, I studied philosophy in school, but I studied analytic philosophy, which is like the boring draw math equations and logic, you know, logical explanations type philosopher. The type who maybe makes things clear at the expense of them being interesting, right? But the continental school Land school is very much the opposite, maybe, and leaning maximally into Interestingness, maybe at the expense of clarity. Right, yeah. And, and, and I'd say that Lan's unpacking of all these ideas is often layered with his esoteric tools. Right. And those are things like, like the numigram, which I'm. I regret I crunched up slightly, but it doesn't help. It wasn't going to make sense anyway. Right. So the, the, the. I'm not going to bother to try to explain the Numigram. There's actually a really cool 3 hour, 33 minutes podcast. We'll link to it on YouTube or where he explains it in depth. But the way that I maybe rationalize it to myself is I think of it like that brilliant friend of yours who really does have a great grasp of people, but maybe relies on tarot as like a tool of their brilliant, otherwise brilliant psychologizing. Right. That's kind of how I think about it. So what makes Land so interesting to Silicon Valley people?
- [32:25]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Right. Cause that's just to push back on the Hegel or Deleuze. Like they're not people who inspire Silicon Valley in the same way. So Land is more relevant and more pertinent.
- [32:33]
Eddie Lazarin
And that's because he takes a lot of the interesting themes from those philosophers. I'm trying to avoid getting a little too deep into the specifics I can, and I'd be happy to, but he takes a lot of the themes that these philosophers talk about and he embeds them very, very specifically in technological progress in the Internet, in what is new. He has, and I say this like very much being a part of the crypto team and on the crypto fund. He has probably the most interesting, dense treatment of Bitcoin as a philosophical object that has ever been written. For sure. I found super, super interesting and always seems to surprise me with ideas when I go back to it. It's like a 150 page book or so. Right. So part of what makes his appeal so great is specifically embedding these things in contemporary technological themes and developments as opposed to kind of waving the hand and looking at like, I would describe most philosophers as kind of looking at technological progress as like, well, look, they're making more stuff faster, you know, like, okay, they made the pin factory 10 times cheaper. Wow, those industrialists, you know? Whereas I think Land identifies a qualitative change. Right. In technological progress, we see something maybe almost spooky. And I think that that's where that spookiness is what Tucker's guest was correctly identifying. Now, I think his analysis was maybe not the way that I see Land, and I think there was a lot of projection from his personal analysis of things. I think that I really. I thought it was very entertaining and fun, but the truth is I don't think it was particularly accurate. But he is correctly picking up at least on the spookiness. There is something a little bit spooky sometimes about the rate that technological progress compounds and the way that it maybe erodes at the same time that it adds on to the human condition. And I think that makes it really interesting. Now, I'll say just to maybe situate the prompt about Silicon Valley a little bit more specifically. I don't actually know that many people in Silicon Valley who like Nick Land. I'm going to be honest. It's not like you go around the streets of San Francisco and you talk to people. This really cool book, this compilation of Land's blog posts from Passage Press, came out. Yes, I think last year.
- [34:59]
Catherine Boyle
That's what I was going to ask.
- [35:00]
Eddie Lazarin
Because.
- [35:02]
Catherine Boyle
I first, I feel like Nick Land's a name you've heard if you've been in Silicon Valley, but it's also a name you've heard if you've been in certain circles online. And I think the Passage Press point is a very good point. Right. Like, they published Sino Systems. I'd love to get into what that is and why it's important. But on the online. Right. He's also a figure that people care about. And now that he's sort of mainstreamed into like, the mainstream online. Right. With Tucker, curious why you think those worlds are colliding. Because his work, if, you know. And again, I think the tablet piece that came out a couple weeks ago goes through like, the entire history of what he's done. And he's not really a typical, like, American. Right. Figure. Right. Like, he doesn't really have that context. He was. He's, you know, at the. At the. It was at University of Warwick. That's right, yes, in England. And then he moved to Shanghai. Right. Like, he's not really part of American politics or American culture, yet he's had an influence on these kind of very small pockets. So I would just be curious, maybe we'd start with what is Xenosystems? And the book from Passage Press. And then how does he fit into all of these weird subcultures in a peculiar way, but doesn't necessarily, as you said, you'd be hard pressed to find someone in Silicon Valley who's read a lot of Nick Klan's work.
- [36:18]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, no, yeah. I don't. I really Honestly, of course, I don't mean this in a disparaging way. I don't really see Nick Land's ideas as being like, broadly influential in Silicon Valley in the way maybe they were characterized in the Tucker Project.
- [36:29]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
But there's kind of this, the accelerationist thing leading to eak.
- [36:32]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah. So distillations of some of the ideas that have been kind of like reimagined and digested have made their way in. And part of that is because, and this is, I'm going to. Maybe this is a funny way to try to put it, is that Nick Land's work is very Vibey.
- [36:47]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Yeah.
- [36:48]
Eddie Lazarin
Okay. It's really viby. Okay. If you go look at that meltdown piece from 94 or you look at a random essay from Xeno Systems, like, he has a intense prosaic writing style that is provocative, intentionally inflammatory, not inflammatory, intentionally grandiose. Right. And he can create a lot of imagery in his work. So the way he describes acceleration is it's more than just like making the pins faster and cheaper. Acceleration is like almost an, you know, it's like a world changing project. Right. He describes Bitcoin as like maybe the most profound thing that's happened on the Internet. Right. Like, like, like he, he, he has incredible theater to what he says that comes from the Continental school. So people have taken that and really enjoyed that. Right. Like, I think if you read any of his stuff, you'll see that. So, like, what is Xenosystems? And so on. So I'll say his presence in the online. Right. Xenosystems on the online. Right. He is a very, he got there in an interesting way.
- [37:52]
Catherine Boyle
Right.
- [37:52]
Eddie Lazarin
I think if people are kind of familiar with horseshoe theory. Right, Right. Land was not, has not always been like a figure on the right. In fact, many have described his earlier phase with the ccru, kind of this, like, ragtag, very interesting, very artistically sensitive writing group, basically art group. I think of them as an art group, at least they would have described him as actually on the far left.
- [38:23]
Zach Dell
Right.
- [38:24]
Eddie Lazarin
As if afar on the anti capitalist left. And his arrival on the right was kind of jumping across the gap in the horseshoe, so to speak. A very good friend of mine, a philosopher who identifies as more of a communist, a college friend of mine, he says, I often feel like when I read Nick Land that I could reach across and kiss him over the gap in the horseshoe. Right. So I wouldn't say that he's a representative figure of Silicon Valley. I don't think Silicon Valley is like this. Right. But he is A fantastic poster and very insightful and cutting and controversial. And I think that that has made him very exciting and very interesting to the right, to the online right recently. Because the online right doesn't really have this type of voice. Right. Someone with, you know, deep in the continental weeds, so to speak.
- [39:18]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
And so what explains his shift from.
- [39:20]
Podcast Host (Katherine Boyle)
Left to right, basically?
- [39:22]
Eddie Lazarin
You know, it's funny, he hasn't really explained that himself. Right. Nick Land. I mean, if you read his themes, it's not like the subject of his attention has changed totally. It has certainly evolved. And there's all kinds of things he posts about and talks about today that he. In the past. So he has certainly evolved, but he kind of disappeared for a while and then he just kind of came back and everything had changed. Right. And now he just writes from that perspective. Very. I can say the types of things that he believes. Right. You know, like, he's very preoccupied with liberalism. When I say liberalism, I mean in the European sense. Right. Where like, big capital L liberalism, like, you know, right liberals and left liberals being, like, generally the American political landscape. Right. In the freedom, you know, individualist sense. He's very preoccupied with, like, liberalism in the west and, like, what that means and how it has evolved and in particular, how it has pathologized in some ways and evolved into, like, contemporary progressivism, which he sees as, like, not just its own kind of isolated political system, but as something that is clearly identifiable as an evolution of Protestantism, of older liberalism, of the change in the makeup of the Western electorate and so on.
- [40:50]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
But the debate he was having with Dugin was whether that's kind of endemic to liberalism or whether that was just a mutation but not necessarily inherent to the form.
- [41:01]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, yeah. So those types of themes are part of why he's also so interesting to the right. Because I think a lot of people on the online right today, and I don't mean like the whole right, remember, I'm speaking in generalities, obviously, but I'm talking about the type of people who are very interested in trying to take a diagnostic lens to what has happened in American politics and American culture over the last 20, 30 years, maybe in light of the Internet specifically, and trying to understand it in its big historical frame. Right. And that's an interesting project. It's a difficult project. I don't pretend that he has the answers, necessarily. I don't think he would even. I mean, he's trying to understand. Makes him interesting.
- [41:42]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah, yeah. No, I just thought the Tucker podcast was fascinating how it sort of brought together These sort of weird cultural things. Again, if you're truly monitor, there are things happening across the Internet like discussion of Revelation, the Antichrist, and really linking Nick Land and accelerationism to sort of this bigger question of are we at the end of the world? And I'm very curious, was that more of like the Tucker framing of it or is that like actually part of Land's work that we hit? I mean, I know he's talked a lot about singularity and sort of these forces coming together. I've never thought of his work as like end of the world project, so I'm curious how it's getting lumped.
- [42:21]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, I mean, he does see history as this grand project. Right. He is very preoccupied with the shape of history and the shape of time. A lot of really interesting crazy sci fi themes in there. But I don't really, you know, he, he's somebody that I'm sure could hold a conversation about like the Antichrist and so on and eschatology in the Western tradition. That is something he's talked about now and then. But I don't see that as a key theme in his works. And like, you know, as an example, that's not a key theme in Xeno Systems. Right. Like the book that like kind of has reignited some interest and some attention in his work. You know, I say this, this is not like a content warning. I'm not that. But, but you know, I'd say if you're the type of person that wants to clutch their pearls and like get upset about like things that you read, then don't, don't read Xeno Systems. Right? But, but if you're the type of person that wants to read a wide array of ideas from someone who's dedication as a philosopher to unfettered idea work and you can appreciate the sort of sloppiness and craziness of someone who's really trying to think through things, then I think that it's a really interesting piece from a perspective that is pretty uncommon.
- [43:35]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah, the one thing that really came out from a lot of the conversations and discourse happening this week on him is like, I actually don't think Silicon Valley has its own philosophical community. Like there aren't. Like you can't point to someone in Silicon Valley and say this is the, the key philosopher. Because most people in Silicon Valley are doers and they're building things and they have a very different way of how they interact with, whether it's their art or their projects. And so I guess is part of this that we just Lack such a philosophical culture. He's getting credit for something that's very, very distinct.
- [44:08]
Eddie Lazarin
No, I agree with that. I think that's a great read. And in fact, I'd extend that read. Something that's been. I'm amazed to mention this on a podcast. This is kind of like an Eddie Shower thought here, but. But for some time, because I told you I did philosophy in school, it's been like a longtime interest of mine. Right. I kind of have this, like, lingering belief, you know, not something I'm totally sure about, but like a feeling that. I think a lot of the great philosophers were epiphenomenal, to use a philosophy word, which means that their work was sort of capturing what was already in the spirit of the culture that they were occupying and that they may have made. And in their. A lot of their works, this is not always the case, but a lot. A lot of the time were actually doing a brilliant job capturing the spirit of the times and capturing what thinkers were working on. And we look back on them as causal. As causal, right. As having caused those periods. But in fact, they're just taking a beautiful crystallized snapshot that now becomes retroactively representative of that period. I think moving to Silicon Valley gave me conviction in this belief because I thought of when I came to Silicon Valley in 2011, when I came by, I thought that to embark on such grand projects, I always heard about the incredible ambition of Silicon Valley. You know, I. That was always something that stuck out to me, like the massive. The willingness to change the world, this sort of craziness. I thought of this as something that required a distinctly philosophical motivation, if not a spiritual motivation, But I thought of it as something that required this. And so I thought that when I came to Silicon Valley, I'd meet a bunch of people who adhered to very specific, you know, explicitly held in their hearts these types of systems. And they don't at all. Right? They don't at all. And what actually is the case is that people live in this. It's like a fish in water, right. They just kind of like swim in this culture. And some people can. Are so good at getting a little grip on it and like capturing it in words. It's spirit in words through aphorisms, if not fully developed philosophical treaties. Right. And. And land captures some of that. Some of the. I would say the kind of. More Some of the most extreme and interesting cypherpunk elements of it, for sure. And he has gone on an interesting evolutionary journey that many have in their reaction to the Internet. But I don't see it as causal. Right. I don't think people are acting out developing AI following Nick Land. Like that's, that's honestly absurd to me. But instead Nick Land's like profound enthusiasm about it and his seeing extreme consequences in its development is something that a lot of people in Silicon Valley share for a variety of other reasons.
- [47:14]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah. One thing I think he's also very good at that Silicon Valley actually understands and sort of the builder culture versus the thinking culture is he's extremely good at memes, extremely good at naming things.
- [47:25]
Eddie Lazarin
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [47:26]
Catherine Boyle
And Silicon Valley cares about that. Right? So it's like, of course, accelerationism is like a beautiful, it's a beautiful concept, it's a beautiful word. And it's also something that sticks, right. Like we need those words. So I guess there's something about that too where we're so devoid as an ecosystem of writers and thinkers, because people don't come to Silicon Valley to write, they come to Silicon Valley to build. And if you come as a writer, you get co opted into some aspect of our ecosystem where you're not writing in many ways that it just, it feels like, like he's kind of connected at places where our world actually understands certain parts of the language, even if we don't understand the actual doctrines.
- [48:05]
Eddie Lazarin
Totally, totally.
- [48:06]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
And some people make this critique that they say, hey, accelerationism. Some people had this view that it was kind of like burn it all down, but we needed to. Things needed to be burned down to get better and sort of accelerate. That's like one branch of it, but that we've sort of. Silica Valley has sort of adopted that to mean that term acceleration, but in a more positive like, you know, build up in some sense. And some people would critique and say, oh, because we're doing that where like we don't quite understand the original philosophy.
- [48:36]
Eddie Lazarin
Or something, but maybe in fact we're.
- [48:37]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
Just using it for our own purposes, you know.
- [48:39]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, well, but the history of thought is full of these types of versions of co opting. Like left accelerationism, right? Which is like this idea that you heighten the contradictions of capitalism by like being faster, bigger, make the pin factory a thousand times bigger, make the planet a pin factory, right? And then like, then like it will eventually detonate and then we can return to whatever communists think. But then, but of course, right acceleration, like in fact, I'd say I think there's a lot of nuance in right acceleration. There are some people who think that it leads to kind of A bizarre cataclysm. And there are, in a good way, whatever that means. And then there are some people that think of it as just a fundamentally productive project. Yeah, right. Is like abundance creates abundance creates abundance. Right. Acceleration creates acceleration. And we've enjoyed these fruits so far. Why not? Why not more?
- [49:32]
Catherine Boyle
Yeah. So could I ask, you know, for. For people who have heard a couple podcasts this week and are like, actually, I'm really interested for the novice, where do you begin? What's the most interesting work to dive into first? Like, where would your sort of Eddie's tour of Nick Land begin?
- [49:49]
Eddie Lazarin
Well, like I said at the beginning, the truth is, you don't need to understand Nick Land. It's okay. Turn off the podcast Touch Grass and do your thing.
- [49:57]
Catherine Boyle
You don't need to show us the picture again. Just show us the picture.
- [50:01]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you really want to understand this? Do you really want to understand the newer guy?
- [50:05]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
It's Sunny in Philadelphia, Danny.
- [50:07]
Eddie Lazarin
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think you do. But if you really do want to understand these types of things, like, I'd say bring an LLM along to support you, because there's all kind. It's a very dense. His work is very, very dense, full of references to other philosophers and specific phrases and framings. I think Xenosystems is a great place to start if you want to just get the vibe. I think that meltdown essay is really good. It's again, content warning or whatever, but I think that that's a great way to get the vibe. Yeah, I think that's. I mean, I could say more. Maybe I'll put some links in the notes. He's also great on podcasts. He's such a. It's so funny we hear this. I remember the first time I heard of him, like, 15 years ago or so. I remember he was explained to me as a menacing figure almost, which is incredible in retrospect. But if you listen to him on one of the podcasts, he's like the most gentle guy. He's like the sweetest guy. He's like literally the sweetest guy. I can't even. I mean, I've never met him, but he seems like a very.
- [51:08]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
And very clear.
- [51:09]
Eddie Lazarin
A very clear, very careful, very deliberate with his words type of guy. I think you'll enjoy it. You might have to play things at 1.5x. That's not. I recommend the same thing for my. My stuff, my videos, for what it's worth. But, yeah, I think just, you know, just. Just dive in and I think I've been pretty impressed candidly with the the ways LLMs, especially when you give them some think time and you let them look at some links, they do a really good job of putting things into very legible form.
- [51:37]
Podcast Host (Aaron Priceright)
So I think it's a good place to good place to wrap. Eddie, thanks for coming on.
- [51:41]
Catherine Boyle
Thanks so much for coming.
- [51:45]
Podcast Host (Katherine Boyle)
Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating, or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X1 6Z and subscribe to our substack@A16Z.substack.com thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see a16z.com disclosures.