Rob Reich, a Stanford political theorist, recounts in his book System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot it that he was once invited to a dinner convened by a Silicon Valley mogul to imagine a state organised to maximise scientific and technological progress under commercial models.
According to Reich, the technologists gathered at the dinner were attracted to the idea of founding a small nation-state dedicated to that project. When Reich asked whether such a state would be democratic, he says he received a blunt reply: "Democracy is too slow, and it holds science back," and was told that "to optimize for science, we need a beneficent technocrat in charge."
The episode, as described in Reich's book and reported by The Guardian, has been used to illustrate a broader tension between rapid technological ambition and democratic governance. The newspaper notes that "the push against datacentres speaks to the frustration of people who don’t feel they are making the choices in their lives," framing local resistance to tech infrastructure as part of a wider political reaction.
Those accounts point to a growing debate over who should set the rules for large-scale technological projects such as AI and data infrastructure: a small group of experts or entrepreneurs striving for speedy progress, or broader democratic processes that many critics say can be slower but offer accountability and public consent. The exchange recounted by Reich highlights the cultural and institutional friction at the heart of that debate.