This sounds very hand-wavy, and I wish Gibson was more explicit in drawing the connections.

Slums and the dominance of megacorps and the ultra-rich I understand, but what do cyberspace and AI's (two of Neuromancer's more original and iconic themes) have to do with Reagan? Nothing, from what I can tell.

Based on other stuff I've read him say, I feel like he might actually indeed be implying that things like slums and the dominance of megacorps and the ultra-rich are to him more central/significant themes/aspects of Neuromancer than AI's or cyberspace! Or at least that they are more central/significant than people focused only on the cyberspace thing recognize.

Gibson had of course famously never used the internet when he wrote Neuromancer (on a typewriter).

In the year of Neuromancer's publication, 1984, very few people on earth had used the internet.

See https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1988/demo/p23-15...