When I was a student, years ago, I heard about a secret Stanford class that wasn’t listed in the course catalogue. According to my source, the subject was an Eastern European language (Latvian, if I recall correctly), and all the students were football players.
My informant explained that the course was designed so everybody could pass. He said that a week before the final, the teacher handed out a worksheet filled with questions. Then she spent the entire session that day providing the answers, which the students dutifully wrote down on the worksheet. The final exam, a few days later, included the exact same questions as the worksheet, and students were allowed to consult their notes.
Maybe this was an urban legend, and I can’t prove any of those details. But my source vouched for them, and sounded convincing. I was horrified that something like that might happen at Stanford.
But that’s small potatoes compared to another secret class at Stanford, which is now in the news for the worst possible reason. Unlike the Latvian class, it’s not something you take to earn easy credits, but for a much more unsavory reason.
The course is called “Rule”—which the Stanford Daily explains is shorthand for “So You Think You Can Rule the World?”
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Only twelve students are allowed to take this off-the-books course—they are chosen by instructor Justin Lewis-Weber after a rigorous interview process which, in some instances, starts the previous academic year. You can’t even apply unless you have a referral from a class participant.
Membership has its privileges—but also responsibilities. According to The Stanford Daily, students are “encouraged not to disclose their involvement and even their referral to those outside of the class.”
Stanford undergraduate Theo Baker shared more details about ‘Rule’ in his recent book, appropriately entitled How to Rule the World. He failed to get accepted into the course, but managed to secure an interview with Lewis-Weber—which turned into an intense interrogation. At the end, he was allowed to ask the instructor some questions.
He had one big question: “What is the class actually about?”
“When I was at Stanford,” Justin explained, “I learned that the only people who understood the world were the literal children of billionaires.” Now he had figured out those secrets for himself….”By learning them, a huge amount of latent talent and potential in the most promising people can be unlocked.”
In at least one instance, an actual child of a billionaire was part of “Rule”—Phoebe Gates, daughter of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. She’s in the news, too, right now, in the worst kind of way (see below).
Phoebe Gates refused to grant Baker an interview, but he did manage to gather information from six people who had taken “Rule.” Here are some of the things he found out:
“Every one was very sharp. Very sharp.”
“The overriding theme of the class is to exceed the limits of your conceivable ambition.”
“One of the big things I picked up is that there are ways to influence people where it doesn’t seem inherently obvious that you’re doing so.”
Course materials included “some effective altruism, some stuff from Peter Thiel, some stuff from Paul Graham.”
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I was especially interested in the Effective Altruism angle. I’ve been a harsh critic of this philosophical system—for reasons I’ve outlined in two article (here and here). I’ve warned that “whenever you see stupid or terrible things justified by the possibility of future benefits, you should be on the lookout for consequentialist ethics” such as Effective Altruism.
Exactly one week after I wrote those words, Bloomberg reported that Phoebe Gates, nepo baby and participant in Rule, was in hot water. Her shopping app Phia gamed the system, talking credit for sales it didn’t generate—and the “founders were aware of the practice for at least seven months.”
She now faces a possible prison sentence of 20 years!
The crime itself is boring. What makes this interesting in Gates’s immense family wealth, and her obsession with doing good in the world. That’s why the linkage to the Effective Altruist orientation of her Stanford class on “how to rule the world” is no surprise—that’s an ethical code which allows the worst kind of chaos and mayhem in the short term, provided the anticipated long term social payoff is sufficiently grand.
The connection is even more relevant in this instance, because Gates, according to The Stanford Daily, “conducts internal recruiting for her company Phia through the class.”
Before these recent revelations, Gates was best known to the public via laudatory media coverage—perhaps linked to the fact that her daddy has given $319 million to media outlets.
So Phoebe Gates got written up, in glowing terms, in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, People, and elsewhere. This nepo baby was even showcased in a fashion photoshoot in Elle—and the magazine was positively gushing in its coverage:
She’s surrounded by touches of pink, her favorite color. Phia matchbooks sit on her desk. Her dark hair is pulled back, and she’s wearing gold Tiffany earrings and a cozy navy-and-white knit top. Gates has the bearing of any recent college grad, but she’s a social media powerhouse, boasting over half a million followers on Instagram….
Gates’s goal is for it to be successful enough that she can invest in things that matter to her. “It’s ridiculous how few female leaders we have,” she says. “Two percent of VC funding goes to women. That’s criminal. I want to create the world that I want to live in.
I rarely encourage readers to check out links to journalism of this sort. But Elle’s puff piece really has to be seen to appreciate the level of groveling involved. Gates is photographed as a glamor queen, bedecked with products from Prada, Chanel, Tiffany, etc.
But now she is in the news for a possible crime, and a very serious one.
When a poor person steals, I’m not surprised. In contrast, when a successful person commits a robbery, I’m puzzled. But then there’s a third, even more troubling situation—namely, when the richest people in the world get caught up in thievery.
That leaves me dumbfounded. Don’t these folks already have enough of everything?
Ivan Boesky was a legend on Wall Street and fabulously wealthy. But he made illegal payments to informants with briefcases filled with hundred dollar bills—hence the guy who once owned the Beverly Hills Hotel ended up as a long term guest at the federal prison in Lompoc, California. He is now best remembered as the inspiration for Gordon Gekko’s “greed is good” mantra in the film Wall Street.
Wealthy entrepreneur John DeLorean made an even stupider decision. He needed to raise money for his car company, but instead of selling equity or issuing debt, he agreed to peddle $24 million in cocaine. He is also remembered now via a movie—namely Back to the Future, which showcases a stylish DeLorean DMC-12 sports car.
They also made a movie about former billionaire John Kapoor. It’s called Pain Hustlers, and details how he authorized bribes to doctors to accelerate fentanyl sales for his company Insys Therapeutics. He ended up at a federal prison in Duluth, Minnesota.
I can’t judge what price Gates will pay for this alleged crime. Let me just say that I see potential for a movie treatment in her future too. And it won’t resemble that sycophantic Elle spread.
I once thought these news stories were oddities, but super-rich criminals are now an everyday thing. In recent years, I’ve watched monumental collapses from a surprising number of people with Stanford ties (Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried, etc.). You might even call it a trend.
“Influencing is for kids. Effective altruism is more or less the same thing, but for the tech oligarchy.”
If you think all this is just about money, you’re missing the point. When the goal is to “rule the world,” no amount of money is ever enough. What makes this situation so dangerous is the combination of out-of-control ambition with the narcissistic savior complex of people who believe anything they do today is permitted, provided they’re pursuing a sufficiently grandiose vision of the future.
It’s easy to understand why ego-trippers of this sort are attracted to a Bond villain moral code, such as Effective Altruism. This vague consequentialist system gratifies the ego in a way that simple kindness, compassion, and charity to the people around you can never match.
It’s no surprise that this is happening in conjunction with the growing popularity of a maniacally metastasizing social obsession called influencing. Effective Altruism is influencing on steroids—where the results may be murky but the Influencer gets to bask in all the glory.
Influencing is for kids. Effective altruism is more or less the same thing, but for the tech oligarchy.
This toxic philosophy is now widespread among young elites. As Theo Baker admits in How to Rule the World, Sam Bankman-Fried helped establish Effective Altruism as “the most popular ethical system in the Valley.” And even after all the scandals, it’s still holds its adherents in a cult-like grip.
Every time I write about this, I warn that there will be more fiascos and meltdowns in the future, possibly of massive proportions, if this worldview remains unchecked. And not long after, this baleful prediction is sadly confirmed by another scandal.
A good place to fix this mess would be Stanford University. The best way of doing that would be by teaching actual humanities from real humanists who understand the transformative power of this course of study. That would be a whole lot better than serving up shallow pop psychology from tech wannabes in secret courses for elites.
Of course, the foundation for a reform of this sort must be core values that run deeper than a narcissistic desire to “rule the world.”
I don’t see any of that happening in the current moment. But Silicon Valley will pay a huge price for this overreaching. Animosity to the technocracy is already ramping up rapidly. According to a new survey from CNBC/Generation Labs:
A majority of respondents said they distrusted the leaders of major companies investing in AI—81% said they distrusted Palantir CEO Alex Karp, 79% distrusted Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, 76% distrusted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, 74% distrusted Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, while around 70% said they distrusted Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Those approval ratings are abysmal—worse even than the failing scores given to the most disliked politicians. And all indications are that the backlash is growing, not shrinking.
Those disliked techies are the actual people who now “rule the world.” And the verdict is in: They’re failing us. So either they take steps themselves to correct course, or the people will force their hands.
One way or the other, change will happen and manipulative command-and-control agendas will get scaled back. If that’s not clear to the rule-the-world crowd right now, they will certainly get the message soon enough—most likely after the the election in November.
We will revisit the situation then, and see how this plays out.
I'm trying to figure out why Stanford is the common denominator here, versus other elite colleges. Maybe there's a phenomenon similar to "nouveaux riche" that's "nouveaux puissant" (newly powerful) or "nouveaux altruist" -- these kids (and their parents) see no limits and no downsides to exercising their power and purported "do-good-ism" as they see fit. Maybe the eastern, old-money elites lack the need to show off and or exploit their power in the way that newly minted elites do. Or maybe the combination of being on an Elysian Fields-like campus surrounded by so much money, so much tech, and so much entitlement is just toxic.
"The best way of doing that would be by teaching actual humanities from real humanists who understand the transformative power of this course of study." I certainly agree.
I've had the thought for a while that one of the missions of a "truly" elite university ought to instill humility into its students, along with scholarship and all of the other associated virtues. To that end, I fantasize that they require all non-STEM students to keep taking more and more advanced math classes until the students receive no better than a C. It might tensor calculus, or combinatorics, or group theory. Till the students learn that there's a limit to how smart they are. For STEM majors, it's a bit more of a challenge (for me) to come up with an equivalent humility-teaching topic. Perhaps it could be the choice of the student, pursue a topic outside of your major until you get a C.
The idea is more than a bit pollyanna-ish. Universities pursue endowment-enhancement rather than social or national benefit.