Project 2025 is a blueprint for a second Trump Administration. The document, nearly 1000 pages in length, outlines in vivid detail the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s radical plan for reshaping the federal government, eliminating the rights Americans have long taken for granted and enriching the country’s top 1% at the expense of the rest.

The project’s website states its intentions boldly: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration.”

Liberal San Francisco would seem to be the last place where Project 2025 would gain traction. And, yet it has. Oracle Corp, the software giant founded by right-wing billionaire Larry Ellison, is helping the Heritage Foundation create a database of Trump loyalists to staff a future presidential administration. William Hume, heir to a food fortune, sat until his recent passing on the Heritage Foundation board of directors. Hume was a contributor to fellow Republican William Oberndorf’s Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, a local effort to move the city in a dangerously right-wing direction.

If there is any doubt that radical right politics has appeal with the city’s monied elite, look no further than an upcoming conclave scheduled for September 4th and 5th  at Fort Mason Center. Reboot 2024: The New Reality will feature speakers from right-wing think tanks — including the Heritage Foundation, tech lobbyists, and Silicon Valley luminaries. General admission tickets, priced at $1000 per attendee, are sold out.

Hosted by the Foundation for American Innovation, a libertarian think tank that advocates for lowering regulations on the tech industry, the event offers a strange mix of authoritarian and libertarian views. It spotlights speakers warning against the danger of regulating emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and crypto payments schemes, as well as those with edgier views. One panel discussion focuses on “pro-natalism,” often defined as a project to encourage childbearing among select members of the population. The “movement” has taken hold in Silicon Valley where it is believed those with superior intelligence have a moral responsibility to reproduce. Among pro-natalism’s adherents is Elon Musk who has currently 11 children by three different women.

Another session is “From Sand Hill Road to Pennsylvania Avenue.” Sand Hill Road is headquarters for Silicon Valley’s top-flight venture capital firms. Among the presenters are Chris Koopman, chief executive of the Abundance Institute, a libertarian think tank backed by right-wing billionaire Charles Koch; Adam Kovacevich, head of the Chamber of Progress, a technology lobbyist bankrolled by Amazon, Uber and Twitter; and Kara Frederick a director of the Heritage Foundation, author of Project 2025. The purpose is to create a roadmap for venture capitalists to take control over national politics.

Among the group’s highlighted speakers is none-other than Garry Tan, the centi-millionaire behind GrowSF, the political organization spending lavishly to move San Francisco to the right. Earlier this year, Tan became infamous for drunkenly tweeting a death threat to 7 members of the Board of Supervisors who he believes are standing in the way of his plan for his adopted city. Since then, he’s continued to cozy up to fellow techie and right-winger Musk and hosted a talk on tech and theology with J.D. Vance’s mentor and top financial backer, venture capitalist Peter Thiel.

Like many of his tech brethren dabbling in San Francisco politics, Tan proffers an agenda of lowering taxes on the uber-wealthy, giveaways for real estate speculators, and a return to failed law-and-order policies like criminalizing drug use and homelessness. He has also latched onto more sinister schemes like the one concocted by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan urging tech elites to exit democracy and form their own sovereign “network states". 

A plan for a network state in southern Solano County was recently scrapped after it faced staunch opposition from long-time residents. For now, Tan and his fellow travelers consider San Francisco to be fertile ground for their dystopian experiment. "Because if we can build here, we can take over the whole country – we're going to take over every nation in the world," Tan said.

On the website hyping its conference, the Foundation for American Innovation asks: “Can we bulldoze obstacles to a brighter future?” The word “obstacles” seems like tech-speak for democracy, but for those who are not members of the tech elite, a natural follow-up to that question is this:  A better future for whom?