Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left

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A quick rundown of this product’s key features:

A “devastating” (Nation) examination of how a cabal of tech-billionaires is colluding with once-idealistic journalists to create an entirely new media landscape

Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.

Owned examines how this shift has allowed spectacularly wealthy reactionaries to pursue their ultimate goal of censoring critics so to further their own business interests—and personal vendettas—entirely unimpeded while also advancing a toxic and antidemocratic ideology.

A rich history of the decades-long rise of this new right-wing alternative media takeover, Owned follows the money, names names, and offers a chilling portrait of a future social media and news landscape. It is a biting exposé of journalistic greed, tech-billionaire ambition, and a lament for a disappearing free press.

Our Top Reviews

Reviewer: M. B. Wright
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Highly Relevant Reading
Review: Higgins starts from asking how and why the career trajectories of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald took the turn they did in the past decade or so, and goes from there into an analysis of the ideological development of Silicon Valley Technofeudalists and their rightward turn to explain that change. As Higgins himself has admitted on Twitter, the book has taken on horrifying relevance in the early days of the second Trump administration.A particular strength of the book is the history of Silicon Valley’s political development, focusing on Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Elon Musk. These chapters are vital reading. I was surprised that he was able to have such an in-depth interview with Greenwald, as those chapters make clear, while equally unsurprised the prickly Taibbi blew him off when asked for comment.As DOGE rampages through the government, this book makes for timely reading. Higgins writes judiciously of his subjects, in a limpid, engaging style.

Reviewer: thomas haver
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The most relevant book to explain today’s political climate
Review: What are you hearing? Eoin Higgins does a superb job of explaining our current predicament in great detail. We can all see the changing narrative but Higgins helps us understand the WHY.

Reviewer: Douglas A. Greenberg
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Imperfect discussion of an important political phenomenon
Review: Political progressives sometimes change, becoming political centrists or even conservatives. Why does this happen? How this phenomenon occurred with two excellent journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, is the main subject of this book. Eoin Higgins argues these transformations were pretty much about money, specifically, the great big wallets wielded by a cabal of right-wing tech moguls, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, and Marc Andreessen. The sponsorship of online platforms like Substack by these moneyed “libertarians” has had, according to Higgins, a corrosive effect on writers who bask in the attention and riches bestowed upon them. Much if not most of the book discusses when and how this process took place with respect to Greenwald and Taibbi.The rightward tilt of some Internet personalities, including YouTubers like “political comedian” Jimmy Dore, requires explanation. This kind of turnabout has, of course, considerable historical precedent, including the spectacular about face of erstwhile “red diaper baby” David Horowitz, plus the rightward drift of some former Marxists like Irving Kristol who ultimately became the core of the neoconservative backlash against the New Left during the Viet Nam war. And of course, there is the old saying (it takes many forms): ‘If You Are Not a Liberal When You Are Young, You Have No Heart, and If You Are Not a Conservative When Old, You Have No Brain.” We are talking about a common intellectual trajectory here, so the question of “why?” is of more than passing importance.Higgins argues hat it was mostly money that “corrupted” Greenwald and Taibbi. If this is the case, then it is all the more alarming that the tech billionaire right is currently running amok not only within the new Trump administration but within society as a whole. The old saw about the Golden Rule, i.e., that “he (or she?) who has the gold makes the rules” has never been more apropos.The problem with this assertion relates to the logical truism that correlation does not imply causation Greenwald, Taibbi, and others who shift to the political right might at the same time become wealthier, or might accept funding from conservative sources. The question is, does this money self-evidently affect their political leanings, is the funding issue completely separate from what they think, or perhaps, they move to the right and *then* are showered with funding by approving conservative moguls?Higgins basically presents readers with a plethora of circumstantial evidence such as Taibbi’s cringeworthy tweet that included, “Elon, I’ve repeatedly declined to criticize you.” But to simply assert that it was Big Money that led Taibbi and Greenwald to change their political views seems simplistic. Could there be other reasons?Yes, sometimes just getting older, having a family, and having more investment in the status quo can change people’s views. What else? People are emotional creatures; in some cases, being slighted or rejected by a former mentor or colleague might trigger resentment conducive to ideological change. Glenn Greenwald was a regular on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC program in the wake of his award-winning work on national security abuses and the Edward Snowden case. In 2017, however, he stopped being invited onto her program, reportedly because of his intense criticism of Maddow’s coverage of the “Russiagate” matter. Greenwald’s shift rightward seems to have dated largely from that time. In Taibbi’s case, he admittedly was a bit of a rogue in his youth, including instances of having written clearly sexist commentary. He was accused in 2017 of having boasted of overt sexual harassment of co-workers in a 2000 co-written memoir of time spent living in Russia. He claimed the work was fiction, but he was attacked just the same. In the wake of this, he was embittered towards his accusers, and overall, his perspective seemed to shift towards the right.There is another possible reason why someone might change their political perspective, however, and this is a principled change of heart in response to evolving world events. What if Greenwald and Taibbi just determined that the progressive left is mistaken, wrong-headed, naive, confused, or whatever else? If they claim this is why their viewpoints have shifted, who is to say they are lying?In the apparent ideological shift of Taibbi, Greenwald, and some others, a key issue was “Russiagate.” Few issues have polarized the progressive community more than the allegations in 2016 that Russia actively worked to elect Trump, and that Trump was (and is?) beholden to Vladimir Putin and Russia politically. Since this issue was so significant in the evolution of Taibbi and Greenwald’s thinking, a solid treatment of this matter would have been valuable in this book. But alas, Higgins himself basically dismisses “Russian interference” as a grand diversion tactic, a classic “red herring” meant to explain away the Democrats’ having blown the 2016 election all their own.That Higgins erred in missing this opportunity for further analysis of how and why some leftists became allied with MAGA on this and then eventually other issues seems almost obvious today, as the newly elected-again Trump becomes all the more apparently a stooge of Putin who blithely recites Russian talking points and has all but adopted the Russian viewpoint on geopolitics and foreign policy generally. That this is a weird, galling phenomenon that requires real investigation and analysis, and that yes, it dates back to well *before* the 2016 election is now apparent.Certainly some Democrats overemphasized the rule of “Russian interference” in 2016. And indeed, the United States itself has interfered in overseas election, including notably the Russian presidential election in 1996, in which “we” campaigned openly for Boris Yelstin. Skepticism regarding the most extreme claims of the “Russia did it!” crowd was warranted.But one would think that sophisticated progressive thinkers could avoid their own oversimplifications and could find some nuance in the issue. It was telling that both Taibbi and Greenwald accepted Bill Barr’s highly misleading 2019 “summary” of the Mueller Report, taking at face value the fiction that the report “vindicated” Trump. These supposedly sophisticated thinkers should have known better before emarking on their respective “victory laps.” Of course, the actual Mueller Report was critical of Trump and pointed to any number of questionable actions with regard to Russia by him and his political network. And in 2020, a nearly one thousand page report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee made quite clear that Russia interfered in the election in myriad ways. Given how close the 2016 results actually were, it was (and is) reasonable to point to Russian interference as having indeed contributed to Trump’s electoral victory.One could think that Progressive thinkers capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time could accept these “shades of gray” conclusions and admit at least that yes, there was evidence of active Russian support for Trump and that the weird slavish devotion Trump showed to Putin then and since has indicated *something* strange worthy of serious, critical consideration. But Taibbi and Greenwald have remained to this day entrenched in their insistence on parroting the MAGA posture that “Russiagate was a hoax.”Why? Had Higgins embarked on a serious inquiry as to what led these two supposedly smart guys (and a bunch of other people on the left) to embrace MAGA sloganeering about Russia while totally rejecting any notion that there might have been fire somewhere beneath all of the Russiagate smoke, he could have produced a better book. One theory he might have considered is that particularly back in 2016 and in the couple of following years, lots of people on the left gravitated to Russian news sources like RT/Sputnik, finding this “critical” “alternative” perspective alluring. The truth is, the Russian geopolitical world view is not all that different, ultimately, from that of many people on the critical left, i.e., the world is largely dominated by the behemoth that is the United States-led globalist, neoliberal world order as led by the corporate-dominated Democratic Party; and that the United States is behind just about every major geopolitical event: staging coups, arming allies, and using its economic power to punish enemies. Many people on the left accepted uncritically Russian claims regarding Ukraine and Syria, including the unproven notion that the Maidan Revolution was a “CIA coup,” that the Ukrainian state “supports Nazis,” that it was US backed rebels who in a false flag operation murdered Syrians in poison gas attacks in Douma that were then blamed on the Assad government. Etc. The basic logic here is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” and once adopted, it is very hard to break out of this ideological prison house.I actually think that this line of thinking is at least partly behind the rightward drift of some former progressives, including Taibbi and Greenwald. But of course, I can’t prove it; no one can. Ultimately “what happened to these guys?” remains unresolved.In closing, I need to add a gripe about “doing careful historical research.” It’s hard to get every little thing right, but if a writer includes factual errors that are easily discerned, he/she really discredits the overall work. If *this* bit of information is wrong, what can I actually believe is true here? Higgins mistakenly refers to Richard Nixon as, along with Ronald Reagan, a former Governor of California. He was a Senator from California and he ran for Governor in 1962 and lost. Later in the book, Higgins mentions the Women’s March against Trump in January 2017, mistakenly saying that it took place on Inauguration Day. It was the day after. Nitpicking? Sure, but again, a writer really needs to get those little things correct in order to maintain reader credibility. These mistakes almost led me to reduce the number of stars for this review from four to three, but given the reality of “review gradeflation” (everyone thinks that any review bestowing less than five stars might as well be one-star), I stuck with four stars. I do think the book is worth the reader’s time if you are interested in historical trends in online political journalism.

Reviewer: Mitch Samuels
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Excellent
Review: Excellent book about some truly horrible and immoral people.I graduated and started working in the startup world at peak Musk/Thiel popularity. My first boss gave me Zero to One along with my laptop when I started. The weird “hustle & grind” culture made me start to think most of those “leaders” were just sociopaths that got lucky once. This book helped confirm that.

Reviewer: David Tenenbaum
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book and great reporting
Review: Tremendous book outlining one of the ways in which the rich influence our politics

Reviewer: M. Mynier
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This book is FICTIONAL
Review: This book is chock full of falsehoods. Anyone who’s paid attention to Greenwald and Tiabbi over the last several years will see this. Many of the stories in here lack context. The author presents no evidence of his hypotheses, just assumptions. Taylor Lorenz? That’s your source? He also makes the bizarre assertion that because a billionaire invests in a publishing platform, said billionaire owns those writers who publish on it. Wow. The book should be classified in the FICTION section. .

Reviewer: Tardigrade
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Disappointing
Review: I remember Glenn Greenwood from his role in the famous Snowden leak, so I was shocked to learn of his conservative turn. That’s why this book piqued my interest, but I found it a bit disappointing. Sure, there are some interesting facts about the connections between the media and tech moguls (yes, Elon Musk included) described here, but it’s a bit chaotic and not very engaging. And the process of radicalization itself is much better analyzed in Naomi Klein’s brilliantly insightful “Doppelgänger”.Thanks to the publisher, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Reviewer: user
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Excellent book. Gives much needed context to understand the newly formed media landscape of the last 10 years or so, and how some voices who grew out of the occupy/anonymous/wikileaks movements ended up being bought by the far right only to help usher a new fascist movement that is, in all essence, against the people. A must-read that unfortunately will be ignored by the ones who should be reading it the most.

Reviewer: Roger Larry
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: FOr those wondering how some of the leading progressive voices in American journalism became handmaidens to the Brologarchs and fascists, this is the book for you. Well argued and nicely paced it is both a pleasure and a revelation.