America's Technocracy
January 13, 2024
America became wealthy because, in 1901, its leaders bridled its “robber barons.” This reduced skulduggery and corruption and closed the enormous gap in wealth. It created opportunities, innovation, and economic development. However, few countries have adopted this meritocratic model. Most are run by dictators, monarchs, chieftains, or oligarchs. But America has also changed and spawned Silicon Valley, reinventing the world and garnering an unprecedented concentration of economic power at home. Its seven biggest companies are the size of nations, and its owners have become the wealthiest individuals in the world and the most politically powerful. Their interests in Washington are represented by Elon Musk, who spent a quarter of a billion dollars to get Donald Trump elected. Now, he works beside him and meddles by sending out a constant flow of goofy ideas and critiques. “We’re not just going to have President-elect Trump as a billionaire rage-tweeting at 4 a.m.,” said a Senator. “We’re going to have Elon Musk also injecting instability into how we tackle very complicated and important issues.”
Elon Musk, the face of Silicon Valley, is brash, brilliant, and arrogant. He’s become a full-time fixture in the Florida White House and participates in classified phone calls and cabinet meetings. At the same time, he runs an empire, tweets around the clock, and has been given the task of slashing federal expenses.
He is also a one-man wrecking ball in foreign affairs, calling out leaders online to his 211 million X followers, making unproven allegations, lobbying for privileges for his companies, and even joining efforts to overthrow elections or governments. “Ten years ago, if someone had told us that the owner of one of the world’s biggest social media companies would support a new international reactionary movement and intervene directly in elections, including in Germany, who would have imagined that?” French President Emmanuel Macron told ambassadors last week.
Some joke, but this is a geopolitical version of “Revenge of the Nerds.” (A silly film about a bunch of nerdy “geeks” at a college who outsmart the “jocks” that have harassed them for years.) Elon’s power grab has encouraged his fellow Silicon Valley billionaires to make pilgrimages to Mar-A-Lago and to lavish Trump with praise or donations. For instance, Google, or Alphabet, has remained apolitical for years while fighting anti-trust actions in Washington but recently tripled its usual donation toward the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump.
Facebook’s (Meta’s) Mark Zuckerberg has also trekked to Florida and announced he would end content moderation on Meta. (A few years ago, his site cracked down on hate, libel, and unfactual postings after it was sued and criticized around the world for stoking violence.) But he will now let anything go, as do Musk and Trump on their respective sites, “X” and “Truth Social.” At a recent press conference, Trump was asked whether he thought Zuckerberg’s moderation climb-down was due to his complaints, and he replied, “Probably.”
Another new Trump convert is Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post. During the election, he pleased the Trump camp by forbidding his liberal-leaning newspaper from endorsing either candidate. Another billionaire, not in the tech world but originally from China, owns the LA Times and did the same.
Why have tycoons, who mainly were Democrats in the past, suddenly swung to the MAGA side? First and foremost, they are businessmen whose job is to optimize profitability, so they oppose regulations, higher taxes, research restrictions, and government interference. But unlike other enterprises, their sector is colossal and wields more clout than others. The tech ecosystem comprises millions of people and hundreds of thousands of enterprises. At the top are the “Magnificent Seven” or Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Meta, and Tesla. Their combined market capitalization is equivalent to half of America’s GDP. In 2024, their combined value increased more than Japan’s GDP.
Wealth creation is beneficial, but the heft of tech in America can be hazardous if unsupervised. Silicon Valley employs armies of lobbyists to fend off attempts to impose antitrust or other restrictions on its operations. Thus, it will continue to grow financially, as will its political influence. This worries some in their industry. A headline in a tech trade publication in 2023, when Microsoft reached $3 trillion in value, noted, “They are already richer than many countries, and the rise of AI looks set to increase their influence.” By comparison, the value of the seven most significant European tech stocks collectively adds up to less than $1 trillion.
America’s tech world is also becoming more significant than the U.S. federal government. It spends more on research and development and infrastructure than Washington. Besides wielding such economic power, the hyper-masculine tech culture is a concern. The “bros” rule, and bosses are almost always guys. For those who think this is an exaggeration, peruse the names of the most prominent players in Silicon Valley. For those who believe this is not a problem, look at the lawsuits waged against these companies by many females claiming discrimination or worse.
The government must have oversight, as is the case with other industries. They play tax games, operate everywhere, and invent potentially dangerous technologies – artificial intelligence, humanoids, autonomous weaponry, genetic modifications, and quantum computing. They sell, license, or participate in technological initiatives in areas or places that are troublesome. For instance, scientists in China breached an internally recognized protocol a few years ago that forbids the engineering of human embryos. The situation came to light, and promises were made that this would not happen again anywhere, but there is no supervision globally for this, nor is there adequate supervision over biological weapons of mass destruction or artificial intelligence.
Any attempts to impose controls are fought because many of these tycoons are libertarians or members of the “New Right,” espoused by Peter Thiel (founder of PayPal and Palantir and backer of J.D. Vance). He and others follow software engineer blogger Curtis Yarvin, who believes that democracy is a “destructive” form of government and that a techno-monarchy should run the world.
Thanks to Musk, America will experience a test run involving heavy-handed technocratic management. Trump announced that Musk and another tech “bro,” Vivek Ramaswamy, would lead DOGE, or the “Department of Government Efficiency.” He said it will be “the Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with significant cuts and new efficiencies in bloated federal bureaucracy agencies by July 4, 2026. (Ramaswamy sought the Republican nomination against Trump. During his campaign, he promised to eliminate the Education Department, the F.B.I., and the Internal Revenue Service. He proposed to axe 75% of all federal jobs and slash foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.)
Such cuts may never happen, but the two will cause chaos and don’t get along. Ramaswamy has taken repeated shots online against Musk. In May 2023, he wrote about Musk’s unsuitability to be part of the Trump regime due to his conflicts of interest in China and elsewhere. “I have no reason to think Elon won’t jump like a circus monkey when Xi Jinping calls in the hour of need,” a reference to China’s leader. In a separate X post, he added, “The U.S. needs leaders who aren’t in China’s pocket.”
He’s right, but the U.S. also needs leaders not in Silicon Valley’s pocket. As arrogance fills the airwaves, the time will come when America may have to once again bridle its “robber barons.”
Talk about feeling helpless - this is unbelievable- like a horror movie that won't stop & just gets worse. WHAT the HELL were Americans thinking when they voted for a maniac - a corrupt minded swindler - to lead them!!!
Sadly every dollar they ( large corporations) give to politicians is a vote thus they are more powerful than the actual voters, who are only valued on Election Day. The implications of the new direction we are now heading in is that if there are elections in the future they will only be for show not effect.