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Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left
A “devastating” (Nation) examination of how a cabal of tech-billionaires is colluding with once-idealistic journalists to create an entirely new media landscape
Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.
Owned examines how this shift has allowed spectacularly wealthy reactionaries to pursue their ultimate goal of censoring critics so to further their own business interests—and personal vendettas—entirely unimpeded while also advancing a toxic and antidemocratic ideology.
A rich history of the decades-long rise of this new right-wing alternative media takeover, Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape. It is a biting exposé of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.
Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.
Owned examines how this shift has allowed spectacularly wealthy reactionaries to pursue their ultimate goal of censoring critics so to further their own business interests—and personal vendettas—entirely unimpeded while also advancing a toxic and antidemocratic ideology.
A rich history of the decades-long rise of this new right-wing alternative media takeover, Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape. It is a biting exposé of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.
245 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 4, 2025
57 people are currently reading
1114 people want to read
About the author
Eoin Higgins
2 books11 followersEoin Higgins is a journalist and historian from New England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
February 2, 2025
I remember Glenn Greenwood from his role in the famous Snowden leak, so I was shocked to learn of his conservative turn. That's why this book piqued my interest, but I found it a bit disappointing. Sure, there are some interesting facts about the connections between the media and tech moguls (yes, Elon Musk included) described here, but it's a bit chaotic and not very engaging. And the process of radicalization itself is much better analyzed in Naomi Klein's brilliantly insightful Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.
Thanks to the publisher, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Thanks to the publisher, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Read
April 18, 2025very shallow and dry. probably 80% of this book is recitation of various tweets, blogs, and interviews. Higgins never really attempts to pull together any thoughts on his theory. I can't imagine this book would hold anyone's attention if you didn't already have in interest in the tech-culture war dynamic, and for those readers I'd caution that you probably already know everything that is reiterated here
October 20, 2024
Inelegantly, our continuing Decision '24 coverage could be summed up as: what the **** is going on?
No book so far captures that sentiment as Owned. Possibly with the appending of a "dude." The book is a micro-biography of two journalists, Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, and a nano-biography of silicon svengali-i Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. The book focuses on their rightward shift, including questioning whether it is a shift, but what stands out by the end of the book is the eeriness. How does someone like Greenwald, who bust open a legitimate government conspiracy, end up now doing laundry for chemtrails-grade conspiracy-advocates?
The standout here is the author's journalistic effort. He tries to let the principals speak for themselves, especially Greenwald, who to Greenwald's credit seems to have engaged in an extensive, candid, and far ranging interview with the author. Taibbi seems to have told him to **** off; first briefly, then at length. The author is plain about when they are right, not just in their careers before the flop, but also afterwards, and when the author feels that they have been maligned unfairly on some point at any time. This applies more generally in the author's treatment of his sources. He is clear about his own feelings on the matter, but tries to get out of the way and let the people's words work for themselves. Decent reporting: who knew it could still get you published?
The weakness of the book is necessitated by its brevity. There are a few topics - Russian attempts at U.S. election interference, the status of free speech rights in the U.S., and the curated releases from Musk about Twitter policy are the standouts - where the author is too summary, and relevant context is elided. I also expected more about the reactionary centrist infrastructure. (remember when this was a joke?) and figuring it into the context of these journalists and crypto-monarchist finance.
I liked the book less at its start. Parts feel aimless, or without any sort of theory. I wondered if this book is too soon to write, that we need more perspective to reach consensus on what the ****. But a thesis starts to resolve, which is how the inclusion of the tech conservatives matters. Yet it is not the one promised by the subtitle, which takes the book away from a tepid go at salacious exposé and into challenging content.
Is this personality? Or is this politics?
How much of...of....everything, every single thing that is absurd right now in the U.S. is driven by kayfabe gone awry, where personality is policy? Alternately, is it Velma pulling off Taibbi's face to reveal William F. Buckley, Jr.? Is it that the subjects of the book have always been reactionaries, and now have achieved a place to act out that agenda?
The book presents both arguments, resolving its own answer in a sort of lateral approach that would be cowardly if it were not functional. The shocking part is that the personally-based argument comes off as colorable. Particularly across the reach of their biographies, the Greenwald and Taibbi come of as useful assholes, pseudo-contrarians who are capable of providing social good if pointed away from user. They are not even in it for the money, but who are people doing that one thing they are best at: playing knight and being as expert agents of the post-information age itself.
Oh, and who think that trans people are icky.
The same operable thesis works for the billionaires as well, (including the Fear of a Queer Planet). For all the ideological notions, Thiel and Andreessen come off as 'what if Amy Dunne got into D&D' enacting trivial revenge at a Enlightenment-busting scale, the distinction being that Greenburg & Taibbi swim in the water that Thiel and Anderseen drown.
There is a lot to say on the topic, all of which extends past the scope of a review. And that is why this is a good book. It has a solid basis in interesting and well-reported information. It has structural flaws, mostly related to context. It is mis-subtitled. But it is a detailed discussion prompt to a topic of immediate international importance.
My thanks to the author, Eoin Higgins, for writing the book and to the publisher, Bold Type Books, for making the ARC available to me.
No book so far captures that sentiment as Owned. Possibly with the appending of a "dude." The book is a micro-biography of two journalists, Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, and a nano-biography of silicon svengali-i Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen. The book focuses on their rightward shift, including questioning whether it is a shift, but what stands out by the end of the book is the eeriness. How does someone like Greenwald, who bust open a legitimate government conspiracy, end up now doing laundry for chemtrails-grade conspiracy-advocates?
The standout here is the author's journalistic effort. He tries to let the principals speak for themselves, especially Greenwald, who to Greenwald's credit seems to have engaged in an extensive, candid, and far ranging interview with the author. Taibbi seems to have told him to **** off; first briefly, then at length. The author is plain about when they are right, not just in their careers before the flop, but also afterwards, and when the author feels that they have been maligned unfairly on some point at any time. This applies more generally in the author's treatment of his sources. He is clear about his own feelings on the matter, but tries to get out of the way and let the people's words work for themselves. Decent reporting: who knew it could still get you published?
The weakness of the book is necessitated by its brevity. There are a few topics - Russian attempts at U.S. election interference, the status of free speech rights in the U.S., and the curated releases from Musk about Twitter policy are the standouts - where the author is too summary, and relevant context is elided. I also expected more about the reactionary centrist infrastructure. (remember when this was a joke?) and figuring it into the context of these journalists and crypto-monarchist finance.
I liked the book less at its start. Parts feel aimless, or without any sort of theory. I wondered if this book is too soon to write, that we need more perspective to reach consensus on what the ****. But a thesis starts to resolve, which is how the inclusion of the tech conservatives matters. Yet it is not the one promised by the subtitle, which takes the book away from a tepid go at salacious exposé and into challenging content.
Is this personality? Or is this politics?
How much of...of....everything, every single thing that is absurd right now in the U.S. is driven by kayfabe gone awry, where personality is policy? Alternately, is it Velma pulling off Taibbi's face to reveal William F. Buckley, Jr.? Is it that the subjects of the book have always been reactionaries, and now have achieved a place to act out that agenda?
The book presents both arguments, resolving its own answer in a sort of lateral approach that would be cowardly if it were not functional. The shocking part is that the personally-based argument comes off as colorable. Particularly across the reach of their biographies, the Greenwald and Taibbi come of as useful assholes, pseudo-contrarians who are capable of providing social good if pointed away from user. They are not even in it for the money, but who are people doing that one thing they are best at: playing knight and being as expert agents of the post-information age itself.
Oh, and who think that trans people are icky.
The same operable thesis works for the billionaires as well, (including the Fear of a Queer Planet). For all the ideological notions, Thiel and Andreessen come off as 'what if Amy Dunne got into D&D' enacting trivial revenge at a Enlightenment-busting scale, the distinction being that Greenburg & Taibbi swim in the water that Thiel and Anderseen drown.
There is a lot to say on the topic, all of which extends past the scope of a review. And that is why this is a good book. It has a solid basis in interesting and well-reported information. It has structural flaws, mostly related to context. It is mis-subtitled. But it is a detailed discussion prompt to a topic of immediate international importance.
My thanks to the author, Eoin Higgins, for writing the book and to the publisher, Bold Type Books, for making the ARC available to me.
February 22, 2025
“With a half dozen immense corporations dominating media and with non commercial media such as NPR, increasingly dependent on corporate funding, opportunities for discussion about systemic uses of power have become increasingly rare. In this context, delving into such topics becomes a reason not to get invited back on the show as though a sort of Emily post of politic manners has said it’s not polite to talk about corporate power in a public forum just as it’s said don’t argue about religion at a family reunion.” Good compliment resource to Vulture Capitalism, Corporate Gossip pod, Diabolical Lies pod.
Read
February 11, 2025DNF as I couldn’t get through this book length Bluesky post about the “wrong” kind of journalists. To be sure, Greenwald (especially) and Taibbi have taken a dark turn in recent years and have fallen off my radar in terms of people I rely on for info. I recall the early 2010’s Salon posts from Greenwald which would generate 5x the comment amount of their regular posts when he was firmly focused on civil liberty issues, and Taibbi’s solid reporting on financial crimes after the GFC and also his former books that are still worth reading. But this screed about their latest apostacy was just way too doctrinaire seemingly written to solely appeal to fellow ideological travelers without really fleshing out any of the issues that might matter today. Yes, their bacon on the table these days seems to come from appealing most to your typical online MAGA type and for that reason I don’t follow them, but then again I almost never see them referenced any longer on media sources I do trust, so the ‘system’ seems to work OK in spite of their current leanings? Also, when the author puts up as a paragon of integrity a very problematic person like Taylor Lorentz it really erodes their own credibility in this space.
February 19, 2025
Higgins starts from asking how and why the career trajectories of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald took the turn they did in the past decade or so, and goes from there into an analysis of the ideological development of Silicon Valley Technofeudalists and their rightward turn to explain that change. As Higgins himself has admitted on Twitter, the book has taken on horrifying relevance in the early days of the second Trump administration.
A particular strength of the book is the history of Silicon Valley's political development, focusing on Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Elon Musk. These chapters are vital reading. I was surprised that he was able to have such an in-depth interview with Greenwald, as those chapters make clear, while equally unsurprised the prickly Taibbi blew him off when asked for comment.
As DOGE rampages through the government, this book makes for timely reading. Higgins writes judiciously of his subjects, in a limpid, engaging style.
A particular strength of the book is the history of Silicon Valley's political development, focusing on Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Elon Musk. These chapters are vital reading. I was surprised that he was able to have such an in-depth interview with Greenwald, as those chapters make clear, while equally unsurprised the prickly Taibbi blew him off when asked for comment.
As DOGE rampages through the government, this book makes for timely reading. Higgins writes judiciously of his subjects, in a limpid, engaging style.
January 22, 2026
In recent times, we have seen books investigating how Silicon Valley billionaires are using their money to further right-wing politics in the United States. Jacob Silverman’s ‘Gilded Rage’ chronicles how Silicon Valley’s elite has morphed from liberal-leaning libertarians to vocal supporters of right-wing authoritarianism. Karen Hao’s ‘Empire of AI’ characterizes OpenAI functioning like a modern-day colonial empire, extracting resources for the benefit of a few powerful companies, replicating historical injustices. Eoin Higgins in this volume examines how once-prominent leftist reporters like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have shifted toward right-wing ideologies. He argues that financial incentives and the influence of conservative tech billionaires who seek to dismantle traditional media structures fueled this transformation. I wanted to read this book to explore whether Glenn Greenwald has shifted to the political right. I admired Greenwald’s work in helping the whistle-blowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden between 2010 and 2013. To those familiar with Greenwald’s past work, imagining his turn toward right-wing politics is startling. I have not read Matt Taibbi. So, I will restrict myself only to looking at the author’s criticism of Greenwald’s politics in this review and analyzing whether it is convincing.
Between 2010 and 2020, the net celebrated Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi as voices of the Left. But now in 2025, journalist Eoin Higgins presents a multifaceted critique that they have since become “vassals” of right-wing tech billionaires. He does not believe it is their natural, organic evolution as they have grown older. Instead, he charges them with shifting their ideological perspectives because the billionaires dangled big money incentives in front of them. According to Higgins, the super-rich and powerful are trying to dismantle traditional media. They are trying to lure journalists, pundits, and intellectuals to social media platforms they control. Higgins points out the irony that Greenwald built his career fighting the national security state, its surveillance and imprisonment of whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning. Greenwald now writes on the Rumble platform and gets income even though the billionaire Peter Thiel funds this platform. Besides, Thiel also owns Palantir, a surveillance company that performs the very government-contracted tasks that Greenwald opposed fifteen years ago. Greenwald used to call Fox News “disgraceful” and “conspiratorial”. Higgins says he began praising the network as soon as he became a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox. Part of the reason for the political shift of both men, says Higgins, is driven by “reflexive contrarianism” rather than consistent principles. He says one can note this with Greenwald’s knee-jerk tendency to oppose or reject prevailing opinions and conventional wisdom. often without deep critical thought. Nowadays, he defines himself by opposition rather than by independent, evidence-based reasoning.
Changing one’s political views is not a crime or capitulation. British journalist Christopher Hitchens was a contrarian in the 1990s but changed his views to support the US in the Iraq War. Feminist author Naomi Wolf too has moved right from her earlier leftist positions. Historians have observed substantial change between the young Karl Marx and the mature Marx. In his twenties, Marx was a romantic idealist. He moved on to a rigorous materialist analysis of economics and history in later years. In his defence, Greenwald says that the modern Democratic Party and mainstream left have abandoned civil liberties and adopted pro-war, pro-intelligence agency stances. He declares his commitment to defending free speech for everyone, including those on the right, asserting this position aligns with libertarian-left ideals, not a conservative realignment. He wants to hold power accountable. Since the liberal establishment has become aligned with the “national security state”, his focus has shifted to criticizing it. He contends it is the “liberal media” that has changed, becoming authoritarian, turning against anti-authoritarian principles. Greenwald argues that the traditional “Left/Right” divide is misleading. From his perspective, the more relevant conflict is between the centralized political establishment and those who maintain a consistent anti-authoritarianism. People who have followed Greenwald’s postings on Substack can decide whether his defence holds water.
Apart from Greenwald and Taibbi, Higgins makes strong criticisms of the social media site Substack. He says the service is courting right-wing authors to come and spread their views without censorship. Investors have poured money into the service, and with that influx of cash, the site pursues writers with clear conservative politics. To recoup VC investment, weaponizing outrage and anger presents the simplest path. Substack took advantage of the attention generated by the culture war, taking on cancel culture and free speech by promoting right-wing contrarian types.
I have a problem with this criticism of Substack. The venture arm of billionaire Marc Andreeson, a16z, has funded Substack to the tune of $80m. Other substantial investors also fund the website. Many right-wing journalists post their blogs, videos, and podcasts on the site. But prominent liberals and left-wingers also post on the platform, including Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Nobel Laureate and liberal economist Prof. Paul Krugman writes nowadays on the site instead of the NY Times. The move nets him millions of dollars each year through subscriptions. Sources say Glenn Greenwald earns $1-1.5 million per annum from his Substack posts. When one can make a lot more wealth writing for social media compared to writing for traditional media, why wouldn’t journalists move? It does not imply they sold their souls to cash and support the billionaires’ views. I have been reading Prof. Krugman for years. He moved to Substack from The New York Times a year ago. I cannot see any ideological change in his postings as a liberal economist. I do not read Greenwald on Substack because his posts are available only through subscription, unlike Krugman's. However, the headlines in his posts suggest he may not be a right-winger yet.
Higgins calls Substack the primary tool in the “broligarchy’s” strategy to reshape the media landscape towards the right, away from traditional media. I don’t think it is bad to challenge traditional media. It provides an opportunity to voice one’s views only to a minuscule of the population. Whereas anyone can get a free account on Substack and post their opinions. If the audience likes it, they can follow it up and make money from the site. Independent progressive researcher Kyle Tharp says that Substack has emerged as a progressive platform with ‘liberal thought-leaders’ flocking to it. He notes that online pundits and anti-Trump resistance leaders have built sizable audiences on Substack by weighing in on the news of the day. Some examples are Heather Cox Richardson, Dan Pfeiffer, Simon Rosenberg, Norm Eisen, Steve Schmidt, and Mary Trump. Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore and California Governor Gavin Newsom use the site to promote their liberal political views. I feel Higgins has not made his case against Substack in the book. However, he admits he used it in 2018/2019 and found it a very user-friendly site to get started with expressing his viewpoints. Higgins maintains that right-wingers use the platform to disrupt media structures. But Paul Krugman has a different view. As of 2026, Krugman says center-left or “never-Trumper” voices dominate the top ten list on Substack. This suggests that the sincerity of writers like Heather Cox Richardson has outshone the bombastic rhetoric of right-leaning contrarians.
However, near the end of the book, Higgins strikes a mellower tone. Beyond finances, he believes other factors contributed to Greenwald and Taibbi’s rightward trajectory. This might derive from innate caution associated with growing older, feeling secure, seeking personal branding, and a desire to satisfy one’s employer.
Higgins does not provide us with any silver bullets to solve the problem of the billionaires’ hold over society. He shares the same belief as other books on the subject. Reshaping society to eliminate billionaires is the only way to break their power over politics and media. Society should allow no one to have so much wealth that they can use it to influence the political process and control the information the public receives. But it is not a solution we can achieve in the short-term. The only short-term takeaway he gives is to differentiate between the squeamish careerists and the men in the arena eager to own their voices. He wishes us to identify the Greenwalds, Taibbis, Higginses, Krugmans.
I finished reading, and Higgins had not persuaded me that Greenwald had shifted to the political right, or that he had done so for financial gain. There is no money trail to establish that the erstwhile liberal writer has done it for money or ‘smoking gun’ as Higgins himself calls it. The evidence Higgins provides does not establish that Greenwald's political views have undergone a complete transformation from his earlier left-leaning stance. Nor does he make his case against Substack. Despite these misgivings, I would say the book is a worthy read. This subject is a hot issue in the US and Silicon Valley today. Books like this help us keep an open mind and question every blog post, irrespective of who is writing it.
Between 2010 and 2020, the net celebrated Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi as voices of the Left. But now in 2025, journalist Eoin Higgins presents a multifaceted critique that they have since become “vassals” of right-wing tech billionaires. He does not believe it is their natural, organic evolution as they have grown older. Instead, he charges them with shifting their ideological perspectives because the billionaires dangled big money incentives in front of them. According to Higgins, the super-rich and powerful are trying to dismantle traditional media. They are trying to lure journalists, pundits, and intellectuals to social media platforms they control. Higgins points out the irony that Greenwald built his career fighting the national security state, its surveillance and imprisonment of whistle-blowers like Chelsea Manning. Greenwald now writes on the Rumble platform and gets income even though the billionaire Peter Thiel funds this platform. Besides, Thiel also owns Palantir, a surveillance company that performs the very government-contracted tasks that Greenwald opposed fifteen years ago. Greenwald used to call Fox News “disgraceful” and “conspiratorial”. Higgins says he began praising the network as soon as he became a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox. Part of the reason for the political shift of both men, says Higgins, is driven by “reflexive contrarianism” rather than consistent principles. He says one can note this with Greenwald’s knee-jerk tendency to oppose or reject prevailing opinions and conventional wisdom. often without deep critical thought. Nowadays, he defines himself by opposition rather than by independent, evidence-based reasoning.
Changing one’s political views is not a crime or capitulation. British journalist Christopher Hitchens was a contrarian in the 1990s but changed his views to support the US in the Iraq War. Feminist author Naomi Wolf too has moved right from her earlier leftist positions. Historians have observed substantial change between the young Karl Marx and the mature Marx. In his twenties, Marx was a romantic idealist. He moved on to a rigorous materialist analysis of economics and history in later years. In his defence, Greenwald says that the modern Democratic Party and mainstream left have abandoned civil liberties and adopted pro-war, pro-intelligence agency stances. He declares his commitment to defending free speech for everyone, including those on the right, asserting this position aligns with libertarian-left ideals, not a conservative realignment. He wants to hold power accountable. Since the liberal establishment has become aligned with the “national security state”, his focus has shifted to criticizing it. He contends it is the “liberal media” that has changed, becoming authoritarian, turning against anti-authoritarian principles. Greenwald argues that the traditional “Left/Right” divide is misleading. From his perspective, the more relevant conflict is between the centralized political establishment and those who maintain a consistent anti-authoritarianism. People who have followed Greenwald’s postings on Substack can decide whether his defence holds water.
Apart from Greenwald and Taibbi, Higgins makes strong criticisms of the social media site Substack. He says the service is courting right-wing authors to come and spread their views without censorship. Investors have poured money into the service, and with that influx of cash, the site pursues writers with clear conservative politics. To recoup VC investment, weaponizing outrage and anger presents the simplest path. Substack took advantage of the attention generated by the culture war, taking on cancel culture and free speech by promoting right-wing contrarian types.
I have a problem with this criticism of Substack. The venture arm of billionaire Marc Andreeson, a16z, has funded Substack to the tune of $80m. Other substantial investors also fund the website. Many right-wing journalists post their blogs, videos, and podcasts on the site. But prominent liberals and left-wingers also post on the platform, including Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi. Nobel Laureate and liberal economist Prof. Paul Krugman writes nowadays on the site instead of the NY Times. The move nets him millions of dollars each year through subscriptions. Sources say Glenn Greenwald earns $1-1.5 million per annum from his Substack posts. When one can make a lot more wealth writing for social media compared to writing for traditional media, why wouldn’t journalists move? It does not imply they sold their souls to cash and support the billionaires’ views. I have been reading Prof. Krugman for years. He moved to Substack from The New York Times a year ago. I cannot see any ideological change in his postings as a liberal economist. I do not read Greenwald on Substack because his posts are available only through subscription, unlike Krugman's. However, the headlines in his posts suggest he may not be a right-winger yet.
Higgins calls Substack the primary tool in the “broligarchy’s” strategy to reshape the media landscape towards the right, away from traditional media. I don’t think it is bad to challenge traditional media. It provides an opportunity to voice one’s views only to a minuscule of the population. Whereas anyone can get a free account on Substack and post their opinions. If the audience likes it, they can follow it up and make money from the site. Independent progressive researcher Kyle Tharp says that Substack has emerged as a progressive platform with ‘liberal thought-leaders’ flocking to it. He notes that online pundits and anti-Trump resistance leaders have built sizable audiences on Substack by weighing in on the news of the day. Some examples are Heather Cox Richardson, Dan Pfeiffer, Simon Rosenberg, Norm Eisen, Steve Schmidt, and Mary Trump. Leftist filmmaker Michael Moore and California Governor Gavin Newsom use the site to promote their liberal political views. I feel Higgins has not made his case against Substack in the book. However, he admits he used it in 2018/2019 and found it a very user-friendly site to get started with expressing his viewpoints. Higgins maintains that right-wingers use the platform to disrupt media structures. But Paul Krugman has a different view. As of 2026, Krugman says center-left or “never-Trumper” voices dominate the top ten list on Substack. This suggests that the sincerity of writers like Heather Cox Richardson has outshone the bombastic rhetoric of right-leaning contrarians.
However, near the end of the book, Higgins strikes a mellower tone. Beyond finances, he believes other factors contributed to Greenwald and Taibbi’s rightward trajectory. This might derive from innate caution associated with growing older, feeling secure, seeking personal branding, and a desire to satisfy one’s employer.
Higgins does not provide us with any silver bullets to solve the problem of the billionaires’ hold over society. He shares the same belief as other books on the subject. Reshaping society to eliminate billionaires is the only way to break their power over politics and media. Society should allow no one to have so much wealth that they can use it to influence the political process and control the information the public receives. But it is not a solution we can achieve in the short-term. The only short-term takeaway he gives is to differentiate between the squeamish careerists and the men in the arena eager to own their voices. He wishes us to identify the Greenwalds, Taibbis, Higginses, Krugmans.
I finished reading, and Higgins had not persuaded me that Greenwald had shifted to the political right, or that he had done so for financial gain. There is no money trail to establish that the erstwhile liberal writer has done it for money or ‘smoking gun’ as Higgins himself calls it. The evidence Higgins provides does not establish that Greenwald's political views have undergone a complete transformation from his earlier left-leaning stance. Nor does he make his case against Substack. Despite these misgivings, I would say the book is a worthy read. This subject is a hot issue in the US and Silicon Valley today. Books like this help us keep an open mind and question every blog post, irrespective of who is writing it.
January 29, 2025
This is a difficult book to review. The tag line to this title had me immediately interested, particularly after tech billionaires have become so ridiculously in line with this current administration. What I didn't realize was that this book was going to focus so heavily on specific writers and their turn to the right. Looking at the book's description now, I can see that this was an error on my part. The writers focused on are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi - two writers who I have honestly never heard of before. Higgins interviewed Greenwald for the book it seems, so at least it does feel like a fair take on him. Taibbi refused to comment for the book (understandably so). Higgins also used to work with Greenwald, so this felt a bit like an exploration that felt very personal to Higgins. My issue is that, because I didn't know them before, I needed more introuction. I feel like the background on Greenwald and Taibbi's left-ness was very short and the focus on their right-ness was very long. There was also not as much explanation on the "How" tech billionaires bought the writers' views, and just an explanation of what happened. Also, both writers had moments of being criticized by the left that turned them against their former audiences - things that go against the thesis that they were purely bought. My initial take after finishing this was to give it 4 stars, but after thinking about it, it much more deserves 3.
Thank you to PublicAffairs and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to PublicAffairs and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
May 30, 2025
3.8 rounded up
If you've been paying attention, you may already know a lot exposed here in this book. Still, there are guaranteed nuggets that will still floor you. I think I was most taken aback by the purely incestuous nature of the tech/social media world and the personalities involved. One point that stood out for me was when Higgins was discussing technocracy and how these guys want to run the USA similar to a tech start up. Higgins pointed out the failure rate of those ventures, which I can remember right now, but the percent was astounding. Several platforms mention in the book are long gone. At the end of the day, the technocrats are just generally shitty people whom think they are always the smartest in the room and crave power. I almost wish Higgins had waited through this year to include the rise and fall of Elon Musk in this administration. Hopefully he'll put together a follow up.
If you've been paying attention, you may already know a lot exposed here in this book. Still, there are guaranteed nuggets that will still floor you. I think I was most taken aback by the purely incestuous nature of the tech/social media world and the personalities involved. One point that stood out for me was when Higgins was discussing technocracy and how these guys want to run the USA similar to a tech start up. Higgins pointed out the failure rate of those ventures, which I can remember right now, but the percent was astounding. Several platforms mention in the book are long gone. At the end of the day, the technocrats are just generally shitty people whom think they are always the smartest in the room and crave power. I almost wish Higgins had waited through this year to include the rise and fall of Elon Musk in this administration. Hopefully he'll put together a follow up.
February 4, 2025
Owned looks at former left wing journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi while documenting their right wing shift. I think this book was written a bit too early due to certain current events (Elon Musk) as well as how surface level it felt at times. I wish more time was spent on reactionary centrism and how the journalists as well as right wing billionaires appeal to them.
April 6, 2025
While it seemed like it would be so interesting and right up my alley … I felt like we lost the plot a little too much , didn’t give what I thought it would
November 29, 2025
A welcome companion to the hard-hitting modern memoirs and manifestos of folks like Naomi Klein, Cory Doctorow, and company. Slightly scattered on its own (could really have benefited from focusing on individual players one at a time rather than loose conceptual themes that jumble them all together), and has the annoyingly ethical habit of not editorializing too much, which is ironically what both distinguishes Higgins from his heinous subjects and has likely held him back from achieving their ill-gotten fortunes.
February 24, 2025
A good survey of the left-libertarian to right wing pipeline and the Silicon Valley-inflected that creates it, focussing on Matt Taibbi and Glen Greenwald. In its later stages, it might get a little too big in scope discussing the rightward bent of Silicon Valley in general—a subject that can fill tomes on its own—but overall it’s still paced and balanced well.
February 12, 2025
Eat the rich. (Especially the ones who buy up personal echo chambers)
February 3, 2025
The focus of this book is the rightward turns of "journalists" Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Barri Weiss. Th author successfully layers evidence and the subjects' own words to show that they are in fact "owned" by the tech billionaires who are funding this 'New Right' movement. These billionaires include Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Mark Andreessen.
What can we do? At this point, it will take a large societal shift away from giving power to billionaires and that does not look promising.
What can we do? At this point, it will take a large societal shift away from giving power to billionaires and that does not look promising.
July 8, 2025
I read the book.
Eoin Higgins picks a fight with Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and writes a book about it.
Maybe, just maybe the two objects of this book actually think for themselves and no longer believe and want to buy the product your party is selling?
I definitely cannot and do not recommend this book.
Eoin Higgins picks a fight with Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi and writes a book about it.
Maybe, just maybe the two objects of this book actually think for themselves and no longer believe and want to buy the product your party is selling?
I definitely cannot and do not recommend this book.
February 2, 2026
They are hardly the first to adjust their politics and critiques to align with a new audience or benefactor. In fact, that's what the rich and powerful count on. Corporate control of media has led us down a path where their are strict parameters on what you can or can't say. Apply that idea to the narrow partisan lane of tech influence discourse and you have a good idea of where the Silicon Valley billionaires want to see debate.
This book isn't perfect; there are definitely some issues with it, with the author's opinion, with the presentation of someone like Taylor Lorenz as a positive voice in journalism. All of that said, the timeline that this book exposes is incredibly important for anyone to be aware of. Even more so, the fact that billionaires have been purchasing our news media, our social media, and many of the voices we should be able to trust in order to control the opinions of the public and hold power over the rules of this country is perhaps the most important issue of our time.
I'll admit, I'm not the most well versed in these subjects. Despite reading more and more about these aspects of life in the United States—and to a smaller degree, the rest of the world—I still do not feel confident in my knowledge and understanding of all of this. But I feel strongly that it is incumbent upon myself and imperative in numerous ways that I continue to read more on the subject in order to understand as much as I possibly can.
Unfortunately, we're not living in a time in which these happenings can be ignored.
...it raises the question of where principle ends and opportunism begins. [We] once understood the danger billionaires posed to journalism and the free flow of information. As social media became more important to understanding the world, control over it by a few rich men with dubious commitments to free speech was less than ideal. Independent media, they said, was key to the continuation of open discourse. That's the past.
At the end of the day, the biggest truth this book continues to highlight is that we must know where the money is coming from for every single piece of news that we consume. And that is true for everything from extensive and researched news stories—whatever they may be—or the content we engage with in the simple format of our social media platforms and the creators we've gotten to know because, much to my dismay, when those with money have the ability and the inclination to throw it at whomever they can so their self-indulgent message is the loudest and the most widespread in the room, the only way we will ever see positive change for the people who most need and deserve it is if we continue to fight those messages.
Because the truth is, billionaires have rarely, if ever, cared about anyone other than their bottom line or the idea that they alone should be the ones deciding how to "save" the world.
March 25, 2025
I listened to the unabridged 7-hour audio version of this title (read by Ramiz Monsef, Blackstone Audio, 2025).
Silicon Valley has become a bastion of libertarians, who are increasing showing a desire to engage in politics directly, rather than through financing political campaigns. But these aren’t run-of-the-mill libertarian who hate the government. In fact, many of them are beneficiaries, directly or through companies they work for, of fat government contracts. Elon Musk is the current poster child of this new breed of techies.
Supporting and, at times, running right-wing media outlets is part of these billionaires’ modus operandi; so is attracting former liberal and left-wing commentators who flock to this alternative media ecosystem in search of cash, influence, and massive audiences. Higgins names Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald as examples of such journalists, who benefit personally from exploiting the failings of traditional journalism and social media, while helping the new plutocrats pursue their businesses and personal vendettas entirely unimpeded.
Higgins uses controversies such as the Edward Snowden intelligence case, the Twitter Files leaks, and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X to illustrate his points and highlight the dominance of government contracts in big tech. He also includes a few foreign intervention stories in and by the US. As these stories unfold, we realize that their public tellings are tips of giant icebergs, whose submerged parts are visible only to the well-connected and well-financed.
This vastly underreported collaboration between the new wealth and the new journalism features right-wing billionaires such as Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk who fund journalists to do their dirty work under the guise of standing up for principles of liberty and free speech. Like any other book that presents one side of a multi-sided story (here, the side of a self-identified “civil libertarian leftist”), readers should thread carefully, but I found sufficient truth in Higgins’ assertions to highly recommend his book.
Silicon Valley has become a bastion of libertarians, who are increasing showing a desire to engage in politics directly, rather than through financing political campaigns. But these aren’t run-of-the-mill libertarian who hate the government. In fact, many of them are beneficiaries, directly or through companies they work for, of fat government contracts. Elon Musk is the current poster child of this new breed of techies.
Supporting and, at times, running right-wing media outlets is part of these billionaires’ modus operandi; so is attracting former liberal and left-wing commentators who flock to this alternative media ecosystem in search of cash, influence, and massive audiences. Higgins names Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald as examples of such journalists, who benefit personally from exploiting the failings of traditional journalism and social media, while helping the new plutocrats pursue their businesses and personal vendettas entirely unimpeded.
Higgins uses controversies such as the Edward Snowden intelligence case, the Twitter Files leaks, and Musk’s acquisition of Twitter/X to illustrate his points and highlight the dominance of government contracts in big tech. He also includes a few foreign intervention stories in and by the US. As these stories unfold, we realize that their public tellings are tips of giant icebergs, whose submerged parts are visible only to the well-connected and well-financed.
This vastly underreported collaboration between the new wealth and the new journalism features right-wing billionaires such as Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk who fund journalists to do their dirty work under the guise of standing up for principles of liberty and free speech. Like any other book that presents one side of a multi-sided story (here, the side of a self-identified “civil libertarian leftist”), readers should thread carefully, but I found sufficient truth in Higgins’ assertions to highly recommend his book.
August 31, 2025
“How tech bilionaires on the right bought the loudest voices on the left” the subtitle of the book basically says all you need to know about this book. I don’t recall the two journalists Mr Higgins focuses on: Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, although the later was very involved is publicizing the Snowden affair and his leaks. Both men got their notariety from their reporting on what is considered left-wing news organizations, yet through the influence of money from such folks as Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and Peter Thiel among others, they both took a hard turn to the right. Aside from Musk, the other names may not be so familiar but they are all tech billionaires based in the Silican Valley of Northern California and their screed is for government to get out of the way, except for large contracts to their tech companies, that all other government spending is wasteful. The best part of the book is its laying out how these wealthy techies are perverting the discourse not only the USA, but around the world against any kind of government spending the helps those in need, from minimum wage rises, to universal health care, unemployment and welfare payments to those down on their luck, etc. Aside from these policies, they also have in common that they are very thinned skinned and cannot take any kind of criticism from the press and so they are also buying up platforms and in some cases the journalists themselves. Take Elon’s purchase of Twitter as one example. There is a lot of repetition and perhaps the book is a bit too long, but a worthy read if you don’t know much about the machinations of these tech bros. I’ve giving it 3 1/2 stars rounded down to 3.
June 28, 2025
I wasn't ever able to really care. I wasn't familiar with Glenn Greenwood's writing either before or after his turn to the right. I read one of Matt Taibbi's left wing books, but none of his later stuff. I'd never heard of the three or four other journalists known for making right turns who are dealt with here. It's no secret that Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are toxic. It's almost a blessing that they are on the right, as I'd have to make excuses for them if they were on the left. The big problem with all of these people is that they are ranters. I can enjoy a good polemic sometimes, but really what we need in this country is reasoned constructive discourse, and none of these folks have done much in service of that whether they were coming from the left or the right. I am willing to believe that these people are sincere in their right wing turns. Why not? People of the left are sometimes frustrating, often inconsistent and often ineffective. Some of their ideas are as incoherent as the ideas of the right. It hasn't turned me, but everybody is welcome to drink their own poison. Maybe these people manage to make a few bucks off of being provocative right wingers and perhaps there is some dishonesty in their toadying to the billionaires. And perhaps the billionaires see a chance to pull more people to the right by coopting a few disenchanted formerly left leaning journalists. But it's all par for the course. So what? These people are the least of our problems.
May 14, 2025
I had a great time reading Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left by Eoin Higgins. It was a very informative and entertaining book that I highly recommend.
Thank you Netgalley and Bold Type Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Do you want to see two dead bodies? Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are here.
Higgins using writings and interviews from Greenwald and Taibbi as the evidence against their rightward shift shows two things.
The first is that they weren’t really that “left” to begin with. Both are a conflagration of positions and ideas that sometimes overlap with the left but also, just as frequently if not more, have positions that are way to the right.
Then, as they started receiving their paychecks from the billionaire employers, they became vocal defenders of the right.
This book is really bad for them. They suck.
This book was just more reinforcement to the idea that tech companies have created anything useful in nearly two decades.
The inability of tech companies to build anything positive for society over the last two decades has been pathetic. They’ve built value on garbage subscription services and inflated valuations in the stock market mostly based on the idea that “one day they’ll get there” and do something good.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
There is zero reason for billionaires to exist. Tax them out of existence. Use that money for good.
Thank you Netgalley and Bold Type Books for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
Do you want to see two dead bodies? Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are here.
Higgins using writings and interviews from Greenwald and Taibbi as the evidence against their rightward shift shows two things.
The first is that they weren’t really that “left” to begin with. Both are a conflagration of positions and ideas that sometimes overlap with the left but also, just as frequently if not more, have positions that are way to the right.
Then, as they started receiving their paychecks from the billionaire employers, they became vocal defenders of the right.
This book is really bad for them. They suck.
This book was just more reinforcement to the idea that tech companies have created anything useful in nearly two decades.
The inability of tech companies to build anything positive for society over the last two decades has been pathetic. They’ve built value on garbage subscription services and inflated valuations in the stock market mostly based on the idea that “one day they’ll get there” and do something good.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
There is zero reason for billionaires to exist. Tax them out of existence. Use that money for good.
September 30, 2024
You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.
Thank you, PublicAffairs, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Mr. Book just finished Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, by Eoin Higgins.
This book will be released on February 4, 2025.
This book examines former liberal online writers, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who have subsequently turned into right-wingers. The book discusses how they were lured by the amount of money they could make by switching sides and also how their transition was also triggered by some petty disputes.
While there was an occassional story in the book, mostly it just wasn’t that interesting. It could have been something that worked better as a set of online articles than as a full book.
I give this book a C. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a C equates to 2 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews
Mr. Book finished reading this on September 30, 2024.
Thank you, PublicAffairs, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
Mr. Book just finished Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left, by Eoin Higgins.
This book will be released on February 4, 2025.
This book examines former liberal online writers, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, who have subsequently turned into right-wingers. The book discusses how they were lured by the amount of money they could make by switching sides and also how their transition was also triggered by some petty disputes.
While there was an occassional story in the book, mostly it just wasn’t that interesting. It could have been something that worked better as a set of online articles than as a full book.
I give this book a C. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a C equates to 2 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).
This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews
Mr. Book finished reading this on September 30, 2024.
March 30, 2025
Overall an interesting book. The chapter discussing the Twitter files was quite disappointing, probably because there wasn't much there. Among certain right-wing viewpoints there is an insistence that all ideas hold the same value, for example the earth is flat is as valid a viewpoint as a round earth, reality on the other hand is quite different. Biologically race does not exist, race is a social construct, gender is a range of positions (understanding of genes, not simple black and white answers).
This book looks at people who started out as left-wing journalists and because of the better pay transitioned to supporting the right. Lots of money from a very small group of Silicon Valley Billionaires drove this. The author writes about those with the money and how they transformed the media. These billionaires have an end goal (some would say a very narrow view of free speech, for example: democracy is a failed idea). Money eventually moved some journalists politically and the author implies they sold their souls.
There seems no viable answer to all this right-wing money in the media space.
This book looks at people who started out as left-wing journalists and because of the better pay transitioned to supporting the right. Lots of money from a very small group of Silicon Valley Billionaires drove this. The author writes about those with the money and how they transformed the media. These billionaires have an end goal (some would say a very narrow view of free speech, for example: democracy is a failed idea). Money eventually moved some journalists politically and the author implies they sold their souls.
There seems no viable answer to all this right-wing money in the media space.
February 16, 2025
An excellent and terrifyingly timely book!
In "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," Eoin Higgins paints an unnerving picture of exactly how the United States sleepwalked into its current situation where an unelected, elitist cabal of tech billionaires has taken over the reins of government with little pushback from the voices we previously trusted to alert us to such dangers. This book opens a window on how easily people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and others like them were able to gain power at the highest reaches of our government, not by the conventional means of elective office or cabinet appointment, but rather by taking control of the country's latest information networks and making the nation's former contrarian truthtellers, such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, an offer too good to refuse. Read this book and shudder!
In "Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left," Eoin Higgins paints an unnerving picture of exactly how the United States sleepwalked into its current situation where an unelected, elitist cabal of tech billionaires has taken over the reins of government with little pushback from the voices we previously trusted to alert us to such dangers. This book opens a window on how easily people like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks and others like them were able to gain power at the highest reaches of our government, not by the conventional means of elective office or cabinet appointment, but rather by taking control of the country's latest information networks and making the nation's former contrarian truthtellers, such as Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, an offer too good to refuse. Read this book and shudder!
March 23, 2025
Had some issues with the audiobook. One sentence was repeated. Some words and/or phrases were weirdly emphasized by the narrator. This was in moments where I felt such emphasis was unnecessary or irrelevant. But that was just about the only heavy-hitter as far as bias goes. To the narrator's credit, his general tone was just fine & I enjoyed his accents.
I enjoyed how Higgins follows the premise of the book from before the 80s to just this past year. Happily, he brings up concerns about both the left and the right. It's a fascinating subject and I'm glad he name-dropped some other books that deal with similar stuff.
If you're anything but a casual listener, I would recommend reading this instead of listening to it like I did. The information is pretty dense and there were times where I had to rewind (but, hey, it's great that I could!). There were two points at which I gave up on fully understanding what was being said/implied, but I don't think I missed anything.
I enjoyed how Higgins follows the premise of the book from before the 80s to just this past year. Happily, he brings up concerns about both the left and the right. It's a fascinating subject and I'm glad he name-dropped some other books that deal with similar stuff.
If you're anything but a casual listener, I would recommend reading this instead of listening to it like I did. The information is pretty dense and there were times where I had to rewind (but, hey, it's great that I could!). There were two points at which I gave up on fully understanding what was being said/implied, but I don't think I missed anything.
December 15, 2025
Not a bad book by any means but really felt like a rehash of stuff I read on twitter and listened to podcasts about over the last 4-5 years, which, for people that haven't spent a lot of time listening to TrashFuture and the like, maybe you'll have more to learn than me.
My biggest critique of the book is that everything that isn't specifically about Greenwald or Tabibi is also in the much better book Palo Alto (which this book cites, and which I HIGHLY recommend). I'd say read Palo Alto first, and then if you really want some context about Glenn Greenwald and Matt Tabibi specifically, this is a good companion. I wish this book expanded on the history of dynamics between publications, journalists, and capitalists throughout history. I'm confident there's a broader context this more recent shift can be placed within, and that broader scope might give the book more of an identity than just "the story of why these two guys suck now".
My biggest critique of the book is that everything that isn't specifically about Greenwald or Tabibi is also in the much better book Palo Alto (which this book cites, and which I HIGHLY recommend). I'd say read Palo Alto first, and then if you really want some context about Glenn Greenwald and Matt Tabibi specifically, this is a good companion. I wish this book expanded on the history of dynamics between publications, journalists, and capitalists throughout history. I'm confident there's a broader context this more recent shift can be placed within, and that broader scope might give the book more of an identity than just "the story of why these two guys suck now".
March 23, 2025
When I bought this last year on preorder, I was looking forward to it and thinking that it would not be that relevant after the inevitable election victory of Kamala Harris. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and this right-wing shift among the grifter set is more relevant than others as we watch people sell out what we thought were their prior ideals to give succor to the right in power. Higgins does quality reporting on Greenwald and Taibbi as they sell out who they pretend to be to pretend to be someone else. (It's been hard for me to watch because I had an intellectual crush on Taibbi and what he was doing when he was with Rolling Stone, not knowing some of his problematic past.) If there is ant criticism it is that Higgins goes deeper on Greenwald than Taibbi but that seems to be more that Greenwald gave him more access.
December 11, 2025
Depressing, distressing and kind of disorganized. The writer can’t be blamed for the first two (and I should have expected them), but the third just makes it sooo bland and boring a read/listen. I would have read the blog/editorial version had I known in advance.
Essentially the author asks “why have a handful of high profile Left-allied journalists (namely, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi) moved to the far Right over the past 1.5 decades, now singing the praises of neo-conservative tech-oligarchy (namely, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk)?”
The answer (which you can skip to the epilogue to learn, avoiding a lot of embarrassing stories about Thiel and Musk’s annoying and nonsensical antics) is probably some combination of aging, money, and personal insecurity. Also, there is no solution for our broken news media ecosystem short of outlawing billionaires. ‘Nuff said!
Essentially the author asks “why have a handful of high profile Left-allied journalists (namely, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi) moved to the far Right over the past 1.5 decades, now singing the praises of neo-conservative tech-oligarchy (namely, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk)?”
The answer (which you can skip to the epilogue to learn, avoiding a lot of embarrassing stories about Thiel and Musk’s annoying and nonsensical antics) is probably some combination of aging, money, and personal insecurity. Also, there is no solution for our broken news media ecosystem short of outlawing billionaires. ‘Nuff said!
January 8, 2026
A quick, solid read with a narrower focus than the title may suggest: near-exclusively Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.
In my opinion neither was ever 'of' the left but the US media landscape is so overwhelmingly centrist to right they got lumped in. A libertarian who didn't bring up his rightwing beliefs for ages, instead speaking on issues that overlap with left concerns: drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, mass surveillance, etc. Taibbi's never had a firm belief beyond wanting to be a Hunter S. Thompson-style cultural figure. An impossible goal with writing as strained as his.
Higgins does a good job following the timeline of Greenwald and Taibbi going to where the money is along with background of the tech/VC personalities funding a large chunk of right to far-right slop at the expense of far less than a rounding error on their annual take.
In my opinion neither was ever 'of' the left but the US media landscape is so overwhelmingly centrist to right they got lumped in. A libertarian who didn't bring up his rightwing beliefs for ages, instead speaking on issues that overlap with left concerns: drone strikes, extraordinary rendition, mass surveillance, etc. Taibbi's never had a firm belief beyond wanting to be a Hunter S. Thompson-style cultural figure. An impossible goal with writing as strained as his.
Higgins does a good job following the timeline of Greenwald and Taibbi going to where the money is along with background of the tech/VC personalities funding a large chunk of right to far-right slop at the expense of far less than a rounding error on their annual take.
May 23, 2025
It was pretty puzzling to me that after following Greenwald and Tiabbi for years I had similar experiences with both. I see an article by one or the other, think it could be good, read said article then question whether this is the person I thought I was reading. This book lines up possible reasons. Money is quite a motivator and the big tech dudes have limitless amounts. Not satisfied with turning the youth into depressed, screen staring drones, and our seniors into slogan repeating mouth frotherers, they are buying public opinion (and the US gov’t, but that’s another book). I’d love to see Greenwald get his Snowden-mojo back and for Tiabbi to turn back from his grumpy boomer new ideology, they’ve both done some fine reporting, but whatever.
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