How Tech's San Francisco Values Gave Way to the Right

How San Francisco's tech culture went from countercultural idealism to right-wing power, and what it means for the rest of us. Jonathan Weber, editor at large at The New Yorker and author of City on the Edge, joins Eric Newcomer to trace the 30-year arc of how San Francisco became the center of the tech universe, and how the industry that once promised to change the world ended up changing politics instead. From the early commercial internet to the rise of OpenAI and Anthropic, Weber connects the dots between Silicon Valley's cultural roots and its dramatic political shift toward the right. The conversation covers the dot-com boom and bust, the sharing economy's broken promises, why tech executives became dismissive of public concerns, how AI is accelerating the disconnect between the industry and everyday Americans, and what history tells us about where this all goes next. City on the Edge is available now wherever books are sold.

You can listen to How Tech's San Francisco Values Gave Way to the Right online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How Tech's San Francisco Values Gave Way to the Right is an episode from Dead Cat by Eric Newcomer | newcomer.co.

This episode is 01:06:45 long.

This episode was published on May 29, 2026.

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