Silicon Valley elite preparing for apocalypse: Report
24 Jan 2017
The Silicon Valley elite might be the most prepared for doomsday according to a report in The New Yorker.
Leaders of industry from Silicon Valley to Wall Street have been joining the survivalism movement, according to The New Yorker's Evan Osnos. That list includes Steve Huffman, cofounder and CEO of Reddit, Marvin Liao, a former Yahoo executive and a partner at 500 Startups, and Robert A Johnson, a managing director of hedge fund Soros Fund Management.
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder and a notable venture capitalist, told the New Yorker he estimated that over than 50 per cent of Silicon Valley billionaires had bought some level of " apocalypse insurance," like an underground bunker.
Fortified shelters, built to withstand catastrophic events from viral epidemic to nuclear war, seemed to be in demand as a new Cold War was being ramped up.
Hoffman said that some rich people feared a backlash against Silicon Valley as artificial intelligence took away an increasing number of jobs from humans. Also the CEO of a large tech company cited Russian cyberattacks as evidence of risk that the US might fall into disorder.
