Exposé by college senior Theo Baker will go inside Stanford as posh recruiting pool for Silicon Valley
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Cover: Penguin Press
Theo Baker — a Stanford senior whose investigative reporting for The Stanford Daily brought down the university president two years ago — will be out next spring with an exposé of shady ways Silicon Valley uses the prestigious school as a recruiting pool, plying kids with riches and access.
Why it matters: Baker conducted 250+ interviews with students, CEOs, venture capitalists, Nobel laureates, scientific sleuths, professors, athletes, three Stanford presidents and three Stanford provosts — from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State and now director of Stanford's Hoover Institution.
"How to Rule the World" — to be published May 19, three-ish weeks before Baker graduates — is billed as an inside view of favored students "learning to rule the world, and what they're learning from those who already do," complete with slush funds, shell companies and yacht parties.
- "Teenagers in Silicon Valley are a commodity," Baker, who turns 21 next month, tells me. "I watched in real time as my peers were taught to cut corners and plied with enormous wealth by people who wanted to exploit their talent — right as I was witnessing the end result of a system that fails to catch bad behavior in reporting on the president."
Between the lines: Baker has been around top journalists since birth — his father is Peter Baker, New York Times chief White House correspondent, and his mother is Susan B. Glasser of The New Yorker. From Theo's first steps, he was the greeter at his parents' book parties.
The backstory: Baker tells me he "was inspired by books like 'This Town' [by Mark Leibovich] and 'One L' [Scott Turow's classic account of the first year of Harvard Law] to attempt to capture this weird, money-soaked subculture that has so much influence over the rest of the world."
- "I spent sophomore year reporting this book and then took off junior fall and winter to write it. I got to spend about two months at Yaddo [retreat for artists and writers in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.] and wrote a significant chunk of the book there."
