For a start
>Peter Thiel and his friends feel they no longer belong to our species.
is basically bollocks. He still thinks he's human and the author is making stuff up. I think because Thiel is right wing and the author thinks that's bad.
The species bit seems to rest on a bit in an interview:
>Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism—for transcendence of our mortal flesh—and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine. Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about?
and then in answer to those six complex questions Thiel goes kinda um, er, dunno, it's complicated.
I'm not sure that really makes the authors point.
Also I've been casually interested in transhumanism for ages as have a lot of people. It's not exclusively a billionaire thing. I think "transcendence of our mortal flesh" through tech is maybe more a sci-fi or futurist enthusiasm.
You know, democracy, the thing we're supposed to live in but seems more and more like a plutocracy in disguise as we learn about the links between politicians and billionaires.
Just because one was born at the right place doesn't give them the right to rule over us, that's what we've been fighting and dying against for generations. And we'll fight again if it comes to it, we are the 99%, they are nothing but wealth and inflated egos.
I know what the mainstream answer to this is, but fundamentally, if you are pro democracy, how can you be against the choice of the majority of the people?
Some countries do it better, like switserland, where citizen can propose and vote for laws directly.
The problem with populism is that they use emotions to trick people into voting for them, only to work actively against them and blame minorities when they inevitably fail to deliver.