How to Rule the World is Theo Baker’s account of his time at Stanford and his forays into student journalism. He had quite an impact in a very short time. His investigation into the scientific research practices of Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the Stanford president, ultimately led to the president’s resignation and a wholesale change in administration. He won a Polk Award before his first year was through, becoming the youngest person ever to win. And, it appears to me, he missed the far bigger and more important story!

The title of the book refers to a hush-hush course, run by a mysterious professor known only as “Justin”, in accumulating and exercising power. It’s the clearest example of the institution Baker refers to as “the Stanford within Stanford,” a shadowy network of organizations, silly ideologues, dinner parties, and other events designed to cultivate the crème de la crème of the Stanford student body, the individuals most likely to start the next Silicon Valley unicorn.

The venture capitalists who fund Silicon Valley enterprises do so in the hopes of grabbing a piece of a company destined to become extremely valuable - owning a stake in Instagram turns out to be quite lucrative once Meta acquires it. Crtiical to the venture capital business model is “deal flow,” the opportunity to fund the most promising ventures. Needless to say venture capitalists also must have a discerning eye and the ability to distinguish great companies from lousy ones, but it’s ok to make some mistakes, even a lot of them - if one percent of your bets yields a billion dollar haul, you’re still doing quite well.

Baker describes a world in which venture capitalists have pre-calculated that the most promising deal flow will come from Stanford students, based largely on past experience with former Stanford students. Consequently they lavish those students with all kinds of goodies: fellowships, corporate sponsorships, yacht parties, and yes, sketchy shadow classes with preposterous titles.

Baker himself encountered that world several times, most crucially as a member of the prestigious TreeHacks student hackathon group, and yet he repeatedly turns away from it to focus on student journalism. The result is something of a frenzied and sprawling investigation into years-old research papers published by the Stanford president; some fairly predictable bureaucratic stonewalling; some deeply forensic Photoshopping; and a dash of good old-fashioned high-powered legal intimidation. It’s all in good fun until someone resigns in disgrace!

The narrative is quite enjoyable and easy to read, despite a few nitpicks: Baker seems to have a slush fund for dangling modifiers, and a very unfortunate understanding of the word “exponential.” Setting that aside, and also excusing some disjunction of time that’s rather jarring in a memoir, I found the narrative quite gripping.

It does seem to me that the book hints at an exposé of the “Stanford within Stanford” that never really lands - and that’s the far bigger story I wish he had covered. Baker himself points out that Silicon Valley lacks a strong press corps, but alas he’s not out to solve that problem. There are some choice quotes, a handful of quirky characters, and some really foolish parties, but it doesn’t really add up to much. I kept waiting for someone to call out the preposterous macroeconomics that led to this kind of nonsense, to draw a through line from the Reagan tax cuts to gross anti-meritocracy. But maybe I’m just searching to be re-told a story I’ve already heard. Regressive taxation and deregulation leads to absurd misallocation, what else is new? The fact that baldly foolish ideologies have taken hold at Stanford is interesting but hardly surprising.

Still: the excesses of “Stanford within Stanford” are right there in the title, and it’s difficult to know what to make of them. On the one hand, dangling 7 figures in front of an undergrad who lacks even the spark of an idea - that makes no sense. And it’s a moral crime, in a world where there are people in need. On the other hand - what’s the harm, really? So a bunch of kids are running around Pasadena calling themselves Rulers of the World, apparently without irony. So what? Part of me thinks, let them have their fun, the real world will be waiting soon enough. It’s not totally clear that Baker, who is after all just freshly graduated a month or two ago, really sees this perspective - life is long, college can be a great start, but it’s only that.

Another part of me reads this book and finds it terrifying. It is true that ridiculous assertions can create their own kind of reality, however unmerited, and in that sense they can be very dangerous. That’s the fundamental idea that ties together sketchy Justin’s sketchy course with the research malpractice that is Baker’s real fascination. And it is so, so, terrible. That wealth tax is sounding pretty good right about now.

At the end of the day this story is quite an extraordinary one. The author earned his investigative stripes and then some. Solid journalism is in short supply these days, and a promising young reporter with an eye for a story certainly deserves a round of applause!