'Chatham House Rule'
Torenberg launched Chatham House the summer of 2024,
naming it after a British think tank that formalized the insight that
trusted conversations require a degree of privacy.
Two of its conservative participants said they see the group as a way to shift centrist Trump-curious figures to the Republican side,
but its founder said he’d begun it to have “a left-right exchange where we could have real conversations because of filter bubble group chats.”
Chatham House includes high-profile figures like the economist
#Larry #Summers and the historian #Niall #Ferguson,
and more partisan figures like #Shapiro and the Democratic analyst #David #Shor.
#Andreessen lurks.
But several participants described it to me as something like a gladiatorial arena with #Cuban most often in the center,
sparring with conservatives.
(“no idea what you are talking about :)” Cuban emailed in response to an inquiry about his arguments on Chatham House.)
The Group Chat Era depended on part of the American elite feeling shut out from public spaces,
and on the formation of a new conservative consensus.
Both of those are now fading
(though Torenberg has invested in a company called #ChatBCC that wants to commercialize the heady experience of sitting in on texts among the power elite).
Since Elon Musk turned X to the right
and an alternative media ecosystem emerged on Substack,
“a tremendous amount of the verboten conversations can now shift back into public view,” Andreessen told Fridman.
“It’s much healthier to live in a society in which people are literally not scared of what they’re saying.”
And Trump’s destabilizing “Liberation Day” has taken its toll on the coalition Andreessen helped shape.
You can see it on X,
where investors joke that they’ll put pronouns back in their bios in exchange for a return to the 2024 stock prices,
and where #Srinivasan has been a leading critic of Trump’s tariffs.
“Group chats have changed on the economy in the last few weeks,”
said #Rufo.
“There’s a big split on the tech right.”
The polarity of social media has also reversed,
and while participants used to keep their conservative ideas off social media,
“now the anti-Trump sentiment is what you’re afraid to say on X,” one said.
By mid-April, #Sacks had had enough with Chatham House:
“This group has become worthless since the loudest voices have TDS,”
he wrote, shorthanding
“Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Then he addressed Torenberg:
“You should create a new one with just smart people.”
Signal soon showed that three men had left the group:
The Sequoia partner #Shaun #Maguire,
the bitcoin billionaire #Tyler #Winklevoss, and #Tucker #Carlson.
https://www.semafor.com/article/04/27/2025/the-group-chats-that-changed-america
