American Kingpin

What’s it about?: The story of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who – under the moniker “Dread Pirate Roberts” – operated the online drug bazaar Silk Road, from 2011 until his arrest in 2013.

My opinion: A masterful combination of biography, narrative nonfiction, and true crime.

If you’ve been following Donald J. Trump in the news these past few months, then you’ve probably heard about the presidential pardoning of Ulbricht as one of his executive orders upon taking office, a promise most likely made in an attempt to court the libertarian vote.

I found American Kingpin fascinating, definitely a cautionary tale. This is not the story of your stereotypical dealer on the street corner. No, this is the story of a young white tech dork who looked at the world and saw that something wasn’t quite right. A peace-loving libertarian who adhered to the non-aggression principle of “do no harm,” believing that an individual should have personal freedom as long as it didn’t hurt others. And so, he set up a libertarian marketplace where anyone could buy and sell drugs, seemingly with no thought of the potential consequences. It quickly evolved into something much greater. One user overdoses, users steal from other users, some people want to sell weapons on the site, others want to sell cyanide, and Ulbricht is faced with all manner of ethical dilemmas.

Then there’s the constant fear of law enforcement being onto him, which they were. How to hide your finances, where that money comes from. And then, one day, Ulbricht orders a hit on an associate who was threatening to tattle on him. Of course, the “hitman” he hired was a fed, and no actual murder took place, but this did prove to be the downfall of Ulbricht, and he was eventually put in a federal prison, before being pardoned this year by Trump.

And to think all of this started with a kid and his laptop.

Over the years, I feel like I’ve known my share of Ross Ulbrichts. Not criminal masterminds (that I know of), but those who you might say are cut from a similar cloth. They have money and education; they have the luxury of time and freedom from responsibility to look at the problems in the world and determine what needs to be done to solve them. This tends to involve legalising drugs (climate change, the cost of living, and LGBT+ rights can wait, apparently). They live among others of more or less the same background, tend to have the same interests, listen to the same podcasts, and so on, and start to take this social stratum for granted. They grow up with all the comforts of the modern world, go through uni/college, and either start a company or land a tech job that pays well. They’re not buying yachts on their salaries, but they earn more than enough to pay their bills and do their thing, which usually involves mountain-biking, music festivals, psychedelics, and the like. Cool. This isn’t a criticism, just an observation about one of many social bubbles of our age.

I have no doubt Ulbricht and his IRL friends were safe and responsible with their recreational drug use, and could indulge without any negative effects (or at least not any severe effects). Those types usually are. They can get high and still get things done. More power to them, but it’s also an example of some would call “spreadsheet brain” – a mindset where one lives in a world of theory and words, and either refuses or forgets to acknowledge an external world where people will do some fucked up shit if given the opportunity. And as Ulbricht would discover, to his horror, those he associated with on Silk Road were anything but safe and responsible.

American Kingpin is not rallying cry against drugs, nor is it a call for tougher law enforcement; Bilton does a beautiful job presenting Ulbricht and the Silk Road in a way that neither condemns nor celebrates them. Personally, I interpreted the text as a springboard, for a whole range of issues to consider when you’re having those utopian dreams of a “better world.” I’d be interested to hear what Ulbricht has to say about all of this now, for sure.

The story of Ross Ulbricht and Silk Road makes for one hell of a cautionary tale. Bilton’s text is very good, and well worth examining, no matter where you sit on the legalisation debate.