The ex-wife of Google founder Sergey Brin, Nicole Shanahan, gave an inside look into the “tech wife mafia.” Appearing on a podcast recently, she exposed a world where progressive billionaire spouses are motivated by ego and prestige. In her podcast with Allie Beth Stuckey, Shanahan recounted that extremely well-educated women find their self-worth through philanthropic work, which she often describes as being manipulated to lay the groundwork for new concepts like the “Great Reset.”She argues that, despite their altruistic intent to “do good,” their efforts thrive in an echo chamber of a tiny, hyper-progressive sphere, resulting in thriving non-profits while the communities they should be helping do not. Shanahan adds that most of these women are oblivious to how their money is being conscripted into broader political agendas that usually use “social justice and climate change” as the principal motivators.
Read what Google founder Sergey Brin’s ex-wife Nicole Shanahan said about ‘tech wife mafia’
In the podcast, Shanahan said: I think at the heart of the progressive billionaire wife mafia is a genuine desire to want to be liked, to give back and to be celebrated for doing good work. And there is an ego, a belief that they were brought up in a certain way. Many are highly educated, with professional backgrounds and great degrees from great institutions. But then the wealth sets in. If you think about the trajectory these women take once the wealth comes in, it usually doesn’t come from their tech-husband being an exceptional entrepreneur. It’s because the government helped fund their husband at some point along the way. If you look at the history of Google, Facebook or Apple, not so much Amazon, but even HP or Oracle. These companies didn’t just spring up out of nowhere; they got institutional backing at some point, in the case of, you know, Facebook and Google, especially, where a lot of these tech wife mafia folks come from. There’s this Silicon Valley-Stanford network, and if you look at where some of those grants or money came from, especially early money and then accelerated money. It came from individuals who had government ties. And so these companies also serve government functions. Like Google really was involved with the government in helping identify behaviour on the internet and Facebook as well. And so it’s no surprise that the intertwining between the Democratic Party, which is so prevalent in California, and these companies has just always been there. That synergy and that relationship have always been there.The wives are not necessarily bad people, but their worlds are so small, and they actually have no idea how small those worlds are until you do, because they can’t break free of them. And they feel the need to contribute to these causes within that tiny sphere of influence. And that’s their only litmus test: ‘Am I valuable, or am I not?’Then, what happened around the pandemic is that this whole other segment, which I don’t think many of the tech mafia wives realise, is that they were used to set the groundwork for what was called the reset. What is generally called the Great Reset.So the tech wife mafias were being conscripted in many ways, and their money, mainly, was being conscripted to set the groundwork for the Great Reset, specifically through a network of non-NGO advisors, relationships with Hollywood, relationships with Davos and their own companies. So if you look at who’s on these boards, who hangs out with each other, how this culture of tech wealth works, like Silicon Valley tech wealth, in that small group of people responsible for a huge amount of money and a huge amount of my NGO activity across the US, it’s a really small group of people making these decisions.And then completely blind to everything else that’s going on and to how their groundwork is being used to enable these other policies, including the significant reset policies.Now, what this group of women doesn’t realise is that, in their haste, they’re all swamped. They have multiple properties. They have tons of staff. They have staff issues, chronic staff issues. Um, their kids are busy. Their kids often have some health issues as well. Um, a lot of them have relationship issues with their husbands. And a lot of them themselves are like medicated on SSRIs and anti-depressants and all of that because it’s just overwhelming. So it’s chaos, and these women find their meaning through their philanthropic work. They find themselves as I would find myself: my self-worth was my philanthropic work. And I really believed in it. I really believe that I was giving black communities a chance to rise out of oppression. And I was helping indigenous communities rise up out of oppression. And now that I look back and see how all those grants were performing, because my version of success is that those communities are actually uplifted.The problems of the community have gotten worse. Crime in the community has gotten worse. Mental health in the native community, the indigenous community has gotten worse. They will even say, the indigenous community will even say that their biggest supporters in Congress have been Republicans, but yet they continue to vote Democrat. Yeah. Right. I mean, that is what this is. It’s like the whole model is broken. The entire model makes everybody worse off.And now we’re contending with the freaking great reset, which we’re realising is a terrible idea. That many of our climate change issues are geoengineering issues.Which is like, at the end of the day, they always go to that. They’re like, ‘But climate change.’ And then, really, at the end, all be like you have to let us do this because of climate change: social justice and climate change. It always boils down to those two things. And it gets progressive women 100% of the time. It does. So basically, you’re saying it would work like this: you’ve got all these Silicon Valley wives who, I’m sure, are actually empathetic. They may want to help people, but they’re also tied to prestige and to other people thinking you’re a good person. They start their own foundations, but also y’all’s got a ton of people coming to you and being like, ‘Will you pay for my grant? Will you fund my organization? Will you do this?’ and you looked at the criminal justice focused things and said or social justice focused things says yes that’s how I’m going to dedicate my money. You’re telling me you’re going to uplift these communities, so these progressive entities will come to you and ask for money, and you’ll give it to them. The programs themselves would run smoothly, the offices would be bought, the people would be hired, everyone would have fancy titles, and the nonprofits would thrive. Did the communities thrive? No, the communities did not thrive around the NGO. The NGO thrived. It’s a racket. The thing about NGO’s is once they’re up and running, they’re designed to do one thing. Raise more money, hire more people. However, the fabric of their communities remains in poor condition. They need the communities to stay in poor condition to raise more money. Then they’d say: ‘But we’re so close. We just need this. We saw some progress, and the conservatives are ruining, the conservatives are the enemy.’ So it just spirals, and you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’ve created a monster.’You can see how you get stuck in that cycle. Then you can sit down with your board and be like, ‘We’re pivoting.’ This is not for our cause. We’re now going to pivot. Then the NGO’s will come to you and be like, ‘That one they pivoted. We need more of your money.’ And you’re like, ‘We’re falling apart.’ And you’re like, ‘Oh god, I put all this time and money into you getting to this thing, to this place for this community.’It’s just like it’s a racket. It doesn’t make anyone better. And then it actually requires the further sensationalising of the issue to raise more money.”
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