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The Bulverist take is just the occlusion of small-d democracy-as-a-voting-thing, and large-D Democratic as a member of the Democratic Party. It's... pretty explicit in the interview:
The Tech Industry now includes any open support for The Wrong People, and that means the entire sphere is an enemy. No hidden agenda, no complex story.
The more practical take is just that it's wrong, and it's not intended to be something interacted with on a factual level. The summary of The Sovereign Individual is missing the point, the analysis of Thiel's position and logic is a parody, the Balaji 'secede' call comes from media reporting rather than the actual speech. I'm not going to speak about whether it's intentional or a mistake: I'd consider myself duty-bound to check my central claims before publishing a book or going on NPR, but that doesn't speak anything to NPR and Duran's morals or capabilities.
At the risk of borrowing from nydwracus, it's the fnords. The Bulverist take is, if any, too slow behind the power curve: the goal here is solely to produce and reinforce the belief that anyone in the Tech World not slavering at the bit over today's Everything Politics is a moral mutant, and, downstream of that, a valid target.
Why do you think "The Nerd Reich" is the title, when the book's aimed and written by people who fashion themselves as intellectuals and demonstrate themselves to be incapable of checking their own claims?
FWIW my take is pretty similar. When tech leaders are accused of opposing "democracy," it's basically the same meaning as when anti-Trump types used to use the phrase "Our Democracy."
Obviously those people weren't referring to actual democracy. After all, Trump was democratically elected. Rather, they are referring the idea that a certain group of people and set of values should run the country. That public policy on things like abortion, affirmative action, gay marriage, etc. should be determined according to these people and values. That's what they meant by "Democracy."
Someone once observed that the phrase "Our Democracy" is better interpreted as "Our Bureaucracy." In the same way, I think that the actual argument being made here is that these tech leaders are opposing Our Bureaucracy.
It's a Russell conjugation, like many things: "My preferred rights are inalienable and self-evident. Yours deserve legal protection. That guy over there only has them subject to the next referendum."
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I've heard of the politician's strategy of "If you don't like the question they asked, imagine a better one and answer that instead". I didn't think journalists were supposed to do "If you don't like the speech they gave, imagine a better one and report on that instead".
Assuming that there wasn't a different speech that he's referring to, it's just straight-up lies stacked on top of uncharitable extrapolation and deceptive framing. Who wouldn't want an alternative to that?
When the journalist likes the politician in question, this is called sanewashing. When they dislike him, it's called "dog-whistle politics".
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