Claudine Gay, Silicon Valley, and Ending DEI Forever

A conversation with Mike Solana of the “Pirate Wires” podcast.

Last week, I was a guest on “Pirate Wires,” a popular podcast hosted by Mike Solana. We talked about recent wins against the entrenched DEI bureaucracy, the strategies that are working, and where we’re headed. We explained how DEI has captured our most innovative, prestigious companies and why it has become the cause of our time. Fortunately, there are vulnerabilities in the system and we have begun to fight back. Mike and I discuss how and where we can put pressure on the system’s weak points and eventually topple DEI.

The following are lightly edited highlights from our discussion.  

Dismantling DEI from the Inside

Mike Solana: With the Claudine Gay situation, you explained that you were putting out the plagiarism story directly before a hearing, in an attempt to get her fired. You said this publicly, out loud. Whereas what we see from left-wing activists is cloaking. We all know what’s happening, but it’s cloaked in bullshit and weird semantic games. But you just straightforwardly say, “My goal is to get this woman fired because I believe that she’s this DEI bureaucrat who I don’t like, and the way I’m going to do this is X, Y, and Z.”

Christopher Rufo: Their usual attack on me, which I find very amusing and actually kind of fun, is “Christopher Rufo is a James Bond villain narrating his own evil plot . . . and it works every time.” It’s like the insult is actually a latent compliment: “He does it and it works, but we’re upset about it.” Everyone does this on the Left, but they pretend that they’re not doing it. I’m doing it on the Right, and I’m explaining to people that I am doing it.

Solana: Joy Reid coined this phrase for you—again, underlying how they’re really assisting you constantly. She says, “It’s really Christopher Rufo theory.” She handed it to you, and she thought it was a victory. There are only two things you’re allowed to be in the media: you’re either a neutered sock puppet that they smack around, or you’re a supervillain. It’s like you have to pick one, and Reid made you a supervillain—and that gives you all the attention.

Rufo: Some people cling to principles as a consolation prize. They’re very happy to lose every political fight. They’re very happy to watch the schools succumb to critical race ideologies. They’re very happy to watch the state grow to the point now where the American state, as a percentage of GDP, is larger than the Chinese communist state.

Solana: It just does seem to me that you’re supposed to lose. That’s the expectation. That’s the polite thing to do: to not win. That’s been my experience with almost everything I’ve ever cared about in my entire political memory. Losing—not by being on the wrong side of history, but by being on the wrong side of power.

The Rightward Shift is Here

Rufo: Some of the most wealthy and powerful people in the world are now saying, “Hey, money is shifting rightward, influence is shifting rightward, in finance, tech, and venture capital.” Are we living in a world where a dramatic single strike that removes a university president from office can change everything? No. We live in a bureaucratic world that changes slowly and has to be penetrated more deeply. But is it a symbolic victory that has real material and political ramifications? Yes.

Solana: If the goal is to change the bureaucratic structure, America is bureaucracy—every facet of power at sufficient scale is bureaucratic. So if the goal is to alter that in some way, are you doomed to fail? Because the kind of people who are attracted to bureaucratic power and institutions are naturally left-of-center.

Rufo: There is no immutable law that requires bureaucracies to be left-wing. But people within the bureaucracies are cowardly. They can be silenced easily, pushed around easily, and recruited into the dominant ideology without too much trouble. Left-wing activists are brilliant tactically at manipulating guilt and shame, creating status hierarchies and incentives, and using issues (especially of race and sex) to bully and cudgel people into submission.

My job is first to define the problem, then to complicate the problem, then to fight back against the problem, and finally to vanquish, degrade, and humiliate the opponents of what I’m advocating. And what I’m advocating is simply American greatness, American innovation and creativity, the principle of colorblind equality—the idea of having a hierarchy of merit, talent, and virtue, rather than one of victimology.

The game is not to change the whole bureaucracy and change everyone’s opinions at once. The game is to figure out whose opinions matter most, and to start there and work outward.   When they see the high-status individuals in tech like the “All-In” podcast crowd, or Marc Andreessen, or others who are legends in the field; when they see those signals shift, they have permission to shift their own opinions. The big untold story is that the tech world has shifted quietly but dramatically to the right.