Do you remember the Succession episode where Kendall Roy presented a living facility he claimed would extend residents' lives to investors? Well, it turns out that particular episode arc may not have been entirely fictional. In Silicon Valley and beyond, there’s a faction of billionaire and billionaire-adjacent men on a mission to defy death, or at the very least, to significantly extend their lives. The term is called “bio-hacking” and refers to the modification of human biology to live longer.
Billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel invested in cryonics (freezing someone when they die in the hopes that one day they can be revived) and has expressed interest in receiving blood transfusions from young people; Amazon owner Jeff Bezos invested in Altos Labs, an anti-ageing startup focused on cell revitalization; and Larry Ellison, the founder of software company Oracle, has invested millions of dollars in anti-ageing research. Meanwhile, the billionaire founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, has been offering free IVF to women willing to have his baby, in an attempt to spread his genes far, wide, and for posterity. PSA: although some bio-hacking programs are backed by genuine science, death-defying technology probably won't be available any time soon.
But the face of the cheat death movement is Bryan Johnson, a hyper-visible entrepreneur who made headlines a few years ago after donating blood to his father and receiving it from his son in a kind of intergenerational life prolonging ritual, chronicled in the intimate Netflix documentary “Done Die: The Man who wants to Live Forever”. Johnson spends over a million dollars a year on various experimental treatments like penis shock therapy, takes 100 pills a day, eats all his meals before 11 am, goes to sleep early and alone (without exception), and evades alcohol. He also uses AI to optimally program his life and is currently developing a similar program titled Bluprint, which he hopes to make available to the masses.
Of course, the desire to defy death is understandable: it’s universally considered the worst thing that can happen to a person, and the attempt to push it back lies at the root of most modern medicine. What makes this Silicon Valley tech crowd’s mission so divisive is not their desire to prolong life, but the methods they go to to do it, and the money they’re spending on it over a litany of more pressing, avertible problems like climate change and poverty. Their quest is also selfish: the majority have also admitted a personal motive, despite their attempt at framing it as for the common good (Johnson promises Blueprint will be affordable and available to all). As such, their attempt to delay the reaper dovetails with their obsession with visiting space, an ego-driven desire to defy reality and to conquer yet another thing. They’re also likely hyper-aware that being the man who fought death and won would command a god-like respect.
It’s also pretty easy to predict that should their quest prove fruitful, it would exacerbate inequality: the rich would reap its benefits long before the masses, living for longer while the poor fight for health insurance and lose the battle against curable diseases. Billionaires living longer would also grant them more time on earth to damage it. And as Elon Musk—one of the few billionaires against bio-hacking— pointed out, societal change would be tougher to implement as without death to end their reigns, tyrants would stick around for longer.
By anyone’s standards, society is pretty unequal. 1% of adults are in possession of more wealth than 95% of the world's population: their lives may as well take place in a far-off galaxy (and with billionaires' penchant for visiting space, they soon may). Death is the last great equaliser, and billionaires have dedicated their lives to being anything but equal.
As the expression goes, “You can’t take it to the grave.” Billionaires hoard wealth and have enough money to last multiple lifetimes, so no wonder they’re not keen to head there anytime soon.
Images via Drake and Brian Johnson ©
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