In early 2022, the investor Katherine Boyle looked out and saw a nation in malaise. Birthrates were declining. The military was overspending and underdelivering, in her estimation. Public trust in institutions had sunk to historic lows. And the American government, she believed, was too hamstrung by bureaucracy and special interests to fix any of it. She also spotted an unlikely silver lining: The pandemic had been a disruptive “black swan” event that she believed could finally crack open the status quo.
In an essay titled “Building American Dynamism,” she declared, “I believe the only way to reverse the course of stagnation and kick-start nationwide renewal post-Covid is through technologists building companies that support the national interest.”
The post, published on the website of Andreessen Horowitz, where Ms. Boyle is a general partner, marked the launch of that venture capital firm’s $600 million “American Dynamism” fund. Targeting early-stage companies in industries like defense, energy, education and manufacturing, the fund has already helped produce billion-dollar start-ups. It also opened a new chapter in Ms. Boyle’s bid to exert influence in both Silicon Valley and Washington.
Her impact is visible in the venture capital industry’s newfound embrace of defense tech, in its open support for Donald J. Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and in the government’s deepening ties with the tech industry, from the Department of Government Efficiency to the Department of Defense.
Since 2022, Ms. Boyle’s investing thesis has snowballed into a new language of “patriotic investing,” a crop of copycat funds across the industry and a rising class of politically conservative hard-tech founders who talk a lot about what America represents. Like Ms. Weiss, Ms. Boyle counts Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and right-wing power broker, as someone who played a key role in her career.
Some critics, however, are concerned that she is distorting the current state of affairs to her own benefit. “‘American Dynamism’ cloaks itself as a moral crusade, but it’s an idolatry of wealth, nationalism and weaponry,” said Gil Duran, a journalist and the author of a forthcoming book, “The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy.” He compared Ms. Boyle’s movement to “a Silicon Valley pitch-deck version of Christian nationalism.”
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