Armageddon is what will happen when billionaires, or even trillionaires, are given free rein. Could this be the final outcome of late-stage American capitalism and democracy?

Imagine a human-extinction event: a rogue artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, a new world war or runaway climate change. You likely already have a fair idea of where the safest places on earth and beyond are, if you have been following the ultra-wealthy individuals from Silicon Valley and Wall Street.

They are building secretive, disaster-resistant shelters and bunker compounds in a few choice locations. Elon Musk, with his launch pads, has long hoped to take himself and his many children to another planet, colonise it and rebuild human civilisation. This is not fantasy, science fiction or satire.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is building a US$270 million compound on Hawaii’s Kauai island with a 5,000 sq ft underground shelter. Venture capitalist Peter Thiel purchased a 477-acre estate in New Zealand, planning a bunker. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has three properties on Miami’s ultra-exclusive Indian Creek island, colloquially known as the “Billionaire Bunker”. Strict non-disclosure agreements obscure exact numbers, but bunker manufacturers report surging demand from ultra-wealthy clients citing geopolitical and other concerns.

But in a global catastrophe, you probably wouldn’t get anywhere near them as paramilitary units with shoot-to-kill orders would likely be stationed to protect them.

All this has been happening for some time. The reason is that the interests of those Western billionaires, sometimes derisively called the “Epstein class”, do not simply differ from those of humanity. They actively run against them. Some of the world’s richest people have not been shy about profiting from the apocalypse, or even helping to bring it about, according to a new book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. And the political institution most blatant about serving those interests is also the world’s most powerful: the current White House.

In , Klein and Taylor offer a stark thesis. They argue that some of the world’s most powerful people no longer believe in a shared future for humanity, or even with their own citizens. Instead, they are preparing to survive, and profit from, a collapse they are helping to speed up.

In an interview with The New York Times, the authors contend half of American Christians believe we are living in the end times and describe an uneasy alliance of three groups. The first is religious end-timers, such as evangelical Christian Zionists, who want to hasten the return of the Messiah. The second is technologists who believe humanity is heading inevitably towards a digital superintelligence. The third is ethnonationalists who want to fortify the nation against immigration and cultural change.

The Trump administration helps bind all three groups together. It draws heavy funding from Silicon Valley, and it appointed Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, as ambassador to Israel. The authors also point to how the elite itself has changed.

During Donald Trump’s first term, many tech billionaires criticised him for withdrawing from the Paris climate accord. By his second inauguration, they were lined up behind him. The shift is partly due to artificial intelligence and its enormous appetite for energy, which is being fed largely with liquefied natural gas and coal.

Some of the world’s richest people have not been shy about profiting from the apocalypse, or even helping to bring it about … And the political institution most blatant about serving those interests is also the world’s most powerful: the current White House The authors also cite three examples: Peter Thiel’s 2009 essay arguing that democracy and freedom are incompatible; Musk’s remark that humanity increasingly looks like a “biological bootloader” for digital superintelligence; and the federal cuts Musk made at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) to programmes that millions of Americans rely on.

Their arguments are not new or unique. Gil Duran has similarly argued in that tech billionaires such as Musk and Thiel have aligned behind Trump to dismantle democracy.

There are, according to Duran, deep connections between tech fascism and white supremacist ideology, including how billionaires have embraced hierarchical world views rooted in eugenics. He details how neo-reactionary ideas from figures like Curtis Yarvin of the so-called Dark Enlightenment movement – who advocated for purging the country of federal government bureaucracy – directly influenced Trump’s Doge initiative. He argues that confronting billionaire power constitutes the essential political struggle in America today.

Meanwhile, Klein and Taylor tie up wide-ranging evidence and present a coherent case. Klein notes that far-right ideas once waved away as fringe have moved into government. And the evidence points to those who hold the levers of power planning only for the privileged few who can afford an exit. A society that has stopped believing in a common future for humanity or even their own citizens – the tech bros have admitted as much – is already lost, and is unfit to lead the world.

By Alex Lo