Feb 8, 2024 · 37m · american-optimist
Ep 77: Mike Solana on Exposing Corruption, Saving San Francisco, and Building a New Media Empire · Joe Lonsdale
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Joe Lonsdale interviews Founder Fund Chief Marketing Officer and Pirate Wires Editor-in-Chief Mike Solana to analyze the failure of legacy digital media, exposing municipal corruption and institutional bloat while advocating for free speech, reader-backed journalism, and technological accelerationism.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Joe holds 25.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Joe as informed peer 5.1 Guest teaching 2.0 Guest disagreement 1.4 Joe pushing back 1.6
speaking balance: gold is Joe, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 18:07 Solana highlights right-wing online antisemitism
Solana directly counters Lonsdale's skepticism by asserting that serious antisemitic rhetoric is equally pervasive on right-wing social media circles.
Hardest push from Joe ▶ 29:26 Lonsdale pushes back on banning nonprofit contractsLonsdale qualifies Solana's proposal to ban nonprofit funding, arguing instead from Cicero Institute data that strictly metric-tied funding provides a viable alternative.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 22:15 Reframing censorship as decentralized institutional captureSolana educates on why tech censorship succeeded without formal legal coercion, explaining how shared ideology across tech and managerial elites created a decentralized censorship apparatus.
Joe holds their own ▶ 29:26 Lonsdale demonstrates legislative policy expertiseLonsdale cites his think tank's active legislative work across 19 state legislatures to detail exact metrics and accountability mechanisms for homelessness reform.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Joe as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Joe pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Mike Solana and Relaunching Pirate Wires | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Joe Lonsdale leads the discussion on the collapse of traditional digital media business models, referencing the disruption of classified ads and clickbait mechanics. Mike Solana explains Pirate Wires' subscription-focused strategy over ad-driven engagement. | |
| Exposing Local Corruption and Taxpayer-Funded Protests | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Solana describes Pirate Wires uncovering municipal funding for disruptive protest groups in San Francisco. Lonsdale shares his perspective on how philanthropic capital and DEI frameworks inadvertently fund counterproductive initiatives. | |
| Inspiring Monuments, Culture Wars, and Media Sustainability | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | The conversation shifts to ambitious public monuments and media sustainability. Lonsdale presses Solana on whether independent publications can become profitable without perpetual billionaire patronage. | |
| Mike Solana's Origin Story and Founders Fund Career | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Solana recounts his background from publishing into anarcho-capitalism and joining Peter Thiel at Founders Fund. Lonsdale notes his own early connection to the Seasteading Institute. | |
| Saving San Francisco and Political Realignment | 5 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Lonsdale and Solana debate political realignment in San Francisco and cultural polarization. Solana pushes back when Lonsdale asks about antisemitism, noting significant extremist rhetoric emerging from the online far right as well. | |
| The Fifth Estate and Decentralized Censorship | 5 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Discussing his essay 'The Fifth Estate', Solana reframes censorship as ideological capture across corporate and tech classes rather than purely top-down state coercion, countering Lonsdale's legal framing. | |
| State Capacity Failure, Infrastructure, and Homelessness Policies | 7 | 2 | 2 | 3 | Solana critiques state capacity failure in federal infrastructure and SF homelessness funding. Lonsdale brings up Cicero Institute's policy work across 19 states, offering a counter-proposal for strictly metric-tied funding rather than total bans on contracting. | |
| Technological Accelerationism, AI, and Building Competence | 6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | The two discuss technological accelerationism and AI. Solana warns against expecting AI to effortlessly solve governance problems, stressing the grueling institutional work required to replace dysfunctional systems. | |
| Reasons for American Optimism and Episode Conclusion | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Solana outlines reasons for American optimism, emphasizing geographic advantages, pioneering heritage, and emerging tech hubs in Texas, SF, and Southern California. |
Statements from this episode (19)
Solana: Pirate Wires Reached 65,000 Subscribers Before Focusing on Growth
“Yeah, we're up to 65,000. To be honest, we haven't really focused on growth at all. We've been focusing on product until just now.”
Solana: Chasing Ad Traffic Homogenized Digital Media and Destroyed Trust
“That, that led inevitably to everybody who was writing, trying to sort of fish for that traffic to sounding totally identical in the first place. And being completely bombastic in the second, and it eroded trust. So you have now nobody trusting you, and also y…”
Solana: San Francisco Tax Dollars Fund Activists Who Shut Down Bay Bridge
“Taxpayers in San Francisco are being forced to fund organizations that, for example, are shutting down the Bay Bridge. That's just crazy, and nobody knew that until we went and Filed an information request and was like, they're getting paid by the city.”
Solana: Ackman's Thoughtless Donations Had Negative Cultural Downstream Effects
“Lots of posters on X are happy to point out where his money has gone and it's in like very stupid Places. Historically, and that's because, it's not because he's a bad person. I think it's because he's too rich, and he's not, There's no such thing as too rich.…”
Lonsdale: Majority of Young Adults Dislike Jews for Their Success
“And now in 19 to 25 year olds, majority of them don't like Jews because we're successful.”
Solana: DEI Frameworks Must Be Completely Torn Out
“The whole thing needs to be torn out, and we have to focus on what people actually are producing in the world.”
Lonsdale predicts Bari Weiss's media company The Free Press will be profitable
“I mean, Barry Weiss is doing great work. I think her thing is going to actually make money, too.”
Solana: Solo Writing Generated $150K Annually Before Pirate Wires Expansion
“It's like, we're talking before I built it into PirateWires, it was like generating like a 150,000 dollars a year.”
Solana: Scott Nolan and I distilled Thiel's Stanford class into 'Zero to One'
“Scott, Scott Nolan and I at Founders Fund, we, he had just started around that time as well, it was like, 13 years ago. We came on to build out his class at Stanford, called CS-Intyre, that would ultimately become his book, Zero to one. So all of that informat…”
Solana: Abandoning San Francisco is foolish because municipal rot will spread elsewhere
“San Francisco doesn't just belong to San Francisco. It belongs to the United States, and it's a very important asset. And also, one thing I never understand about the exit people is like, where do you think it's going next? You think that the rot is going to s…”
Solana: If Garry Tan's reform movement fails, San Francisco cannot be saved
“And I think after this, I, for me, if this thing, whatever's happening now, this nascent sort of the Gary Tan movement fails, then that's, there's nothing left there, but I think that this is, we've, I have never, and I've lived there, I, or I guess I live in …”
Solana: There is as much antisemitism on the right as the left
“Where you see, I see just as much anti-Semitism from the right as the left.”
Solana: Shared Ideology Created a Decentralized Censorship Regime in 2020-2021
“I think the bigger problem is the culture was completely captured by one ideology. So everybody who runs, who ran the social media platforms, who worked in academia, who worked in government, not just elected officials, but the people who run Washington DC, ev…”
Solana: Musk's Control of X Is the Main Check on Censorship, But Dangerous
“Really Elon is the big thing that's keeping that from persisting. But that is not enough. Like that he's not, he's one person, his opinions could change. Like it's, it is really dangerous.”
Solana: Gmail Is a Huge Long-Term Risk in the US
“Yeah, no, I think longterm Gmail is a huge risk in the country.”
Solana: Biden infrastructure bill lacks viable plans to build physical infrastructure
“I looked at it, and what I found Was almost none of it went to, not only was it not, famously at the time there was a joke of, is this infrastructure? Is this infrastructure? Is it like DEI? Is that infrastructure? Because they had tons of money earmarked for …”
Solana: About half of SF homelessness budget subsidizes housing
“Most of the money spent on homelessness half of it, about half of it goes to basically subsidizing housing for people.”
Solana: Governments should stop funding nonprofits and directly manage homelessness
“So the government should not be funding non-profits. Let's just start there. That you can't, the government, if the government's job is to solve the problem of homelessness, only someone in the government can be charged with that, can be given the budget, ther…”
Solana: Fixing political rot requires funding small local races, not shortcuts
“On the politics side, what has to be done is you have to be, there's no special, like, death star to the rot. Like, you have to replace it, and that means funding Small, annoying races that seem trivial, but aren't. You have to find the candidates. You have to…”