Winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford’s president, Theo Baker offers a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris Slush funds. Shell companies. Yacht parties. This is life for Silicon Valley’s favored teenagers. Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior. Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. The product? Students. Especially those special few identified as the next trillion-dollar startup founders. For them, there were secret societies, “pre-idea” funding offers, and social calls from billionaires, all with the expectation that these geniuses would soon join the ruling elite. At the helm of this business was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a superstar neuroscientist and wealthy biotech executive. But when Baker joined the student newspaper and started poking around the Stanford president’s record, he discovered never-reported allegations of research misconduct in studies published across two decades bearing Tessier-Lavigne''s name. Only one month into college and thousands of miles from home, Baker began receiving anonymous letters, going on stakeouts, and tracking down confidential sources. High-powered lawyers and public relations teams were hired to attack his reporting. By the end of the year, Tessier-Lavigne was out as president. This is the incredible story of how a reluctant teenage reporter uncovered a scandal that shook the scientific world and became front-page news across the country. It is also an unprecedented inside view of the students learning to rule the world--and what they’re learning from those who already do. <How to Rule the World< is a shocking, hilarious, and moving debut, showcasing Silicon Valley’s training ground as never before....

Autorentext

Theo Baker

Klappentext

**The instant New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year (So Far) by Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Apple Books

"A rigorous, self-assured, propulsive, at times terrifying portrait of a dweebocracy that ‘sets the agenda for the planet’ . . . in the tradition of Michael Lewis’s Wall Street chronicle Liar’s Poker.” —*The New York Times

*"If Baker’s portrait of Stanford could be its own movie (The Internship crossed with The Skulls), his gripping account of how a tip turned into a history-making investigation has the makings of All the President’s Men." —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Poignant, maddening, and genuinely hilarious, How to Rule the World is to be devoured—and fast, before Stanford buys up and sets fire to every copy. (Talk about a burn book!)” —Mark Leibovich

From Theo Baker, winner of the George Polk Award for his investigation that brought down Stanford's president, comes a revelatory and gripping account of Silicon Valley hubris.
**
Slush funds. Shell companies. Yacht parties. This is life for Silicon Valley’s favored teenagers.

Seventeen-year-old Theo Baker showed up for freshman year at Stanford University as a tech-obsessed coder. It seemed like paradise. There were Rodin sculptures next to nuclear laboratories and inventors lounging with Olympians. But Baker soon discovered a culture that embraced corner-cutting, that vested infinite excess and access in the hands of kids with few safeguards to catch bad behavior.

Stanford, he realized, was less a school than a business. Its annual budget was nearly twice that of Harvard or Yale and higher than those of 116 countries. The product? Students. Especially those special few identified as the next trillion-dollar startup founders. For them, there were secret societies, “pre-idea” funding offers, and social calls from billionaires, all with the expectation that these geniuses would soon join the ruling elite.

At the helm of this business was Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a superstar neuroscientist and wealthy biotech executive. But when Baker joined the student newspaper and started poking around the Stanford president’s record, he discovered never-reported allegations of research misconduct in studies published across two decades bearing Tessier-Lavigne's name.

Only one month into college and thousands of miles from home, Baker began receiving anonymous letters, going on stakeouts, and tracking down confidential sources. High-powered lawyers and public relations teams were hired to attack his reporting. Stanford opened an investigation into its own leader. And by the end of the year, Tessier-Lavigne was out as president.

This is the incredible journey of a reluctant teenage reporter who uncovered a story that shook the scientific world and became front-page news across the country. It is also an unprecedented inside view of the students learning to rule the world—and what they’re learning from those who already do.

How to Rule the World is a shocking, hilarious, and moving debut, showcasing Silicon Valley’s training ground as never before.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Drafted to the War on Fun

Stanford is supposed to look perfect.

From the sweeping, manicured lawns of pristine chromatic green, to the palm trees and hulking glass auditoriums that frame historic archways, to the sparkling blue-water fountains, chlorinated so students can splash around beneath the California sun, it's all curated to leave an impression of wonder. Stanford is an oasis, a place where Rodin sculptures stand next to nuclear laboratories. It is gorgeous, expansive, and, most of all, imposing.

I arrived for my first day of college on a brisk September morning in 2022 full of nervous energy. I could recite the Stanford propaganda by heart. I'd watched all the videos, read the entire course catalog, and eagerly devoured research papers from a dozen different labs. Now I took it all in, the pine-and-eucalyptus-scented air, the seagulls perched atop terra-cotta-tiled roofs. My hand trembled slightly as I opened the door of my family's rental car. For some reason, the student orientation coordinators were wearing cow costumes as they jumped up and down to greet us.

Stanford had been my dream since I was seven, much to the surprise of everyone around me on the East Coast. I'd fallen in love with the notion that all this genius had been concentrated in one institution, coming together to reshape the world. "Buzzing with ideas and innovation, approaching questions with openness and curiosity, pursuing excellence in all we do-this is Stanford," the school's website claimed. Things were happening out there.

I wanted to be part of them.

It wasn't just the tech or the innovation. Stanford combined excellence with a quirky, freewheeling attitude that set it apart from its competitors. Students constructed makeshift boats to traverse Lake Lagunita and built motorized couches to get to class. Irreverence was said to be an integral part of the experience. When students graduated, they participated in the Wacky Walk. Instead of wearing staid black robes into commencement, graduates donned satirical costumes, teaming up to construct a Stanford-themed pirate ship, wearing cardboard representations of their favorite campus street signs, or dressing as Stanford "Cardinals," pairing the school's signature Cardinal Red with a play on Catholic iconography.

I loved the idea that Stanford, despite its competitive excell…