I don't think that the
Technocracy per se works in its original form as the "global 1%." Let me posit a scenario that gets you what you want, more or less.
The Utopian Conventions get their shit pushed in after WW2. The Void Engineers are gutted because they had to nuke a dozen Cthulhus out in Pluto and fight a forever-war against the Migo. Iteration X loses tons of its guys in frontline fights against literal cyberdemons. The Progenitors mostly self-destruct killing all the guys who went over to the Nazis.
The pragmatic people-in-power types, the Syndicate and the NWO, use this to basically leash the utopians. Unlike canon, where the VAs and a handful of guys defect (or the
@EarthScorpion/PQ version where the Virtual Adepts defected because of nationalistic sentiments being suppressed post-WW2), much of the remaining Utopian contingent goes off and backs the USSR, having already been highly sympathetic to it. Others try to work in the margins as the Third Way, with this idea of a vaguely social-libertarian post-scarcity utopia. The pragmatists find other ways to stay in power instead. They literally ally with the Camarilla, for one. They even make cynical overtures to certain aspects of the Traditions, particularly religion and the old nobility-you can be left alone as long as you accept our power structure. Perhaps there are enough Lightbringers and Templars around and they weren't purged and reorganized that they reinvent the association of religion with the Technocracy, but explicitly as a tool of control rather than of enlightenment and promotion of science and literacy. "They're just a safety valve to keep Deviancy from spreading" or whatever. And then you have the decades-long Cold War, and the USSR and the utopian Technocrats
lose. That's "The End of History."
And it all comes tumbling down, and everything is shit, and in desperation, at some point in the 21st century, the remaining utopian technocrats-the Avalonians or whatever-become the ninth Tradition. The more idealistic, somewhat anarchistic VAs and the transhumanist ItX and the transhumanist Progenitors versus cynical Big Data VAs and the military-industrial complex Iterators and the Big Pharma Progenitors, backed by Nationalism, Religion, and Wealth. And you're not sure if they're planning to kill you all or sell you out right after they win, but you need them. Because the Union (it might not even be the
Technocratic Union anymore) has all the resources. Because a fair few of your own old masters sold out and decided to accept the comfortable status quo where they're allowed to do what they want so long as they don't rock the boat.
This gets you a more 1E-like antagonist but I think that's kinda what you want?
