Welcome to Broligarchy

If you ever thought the people in charge of today’s most powerful companies still had values, think again. Any previously-professed good GAFAM intentions went out the window January 20, when Donald Trump became president of the USA, with Big Tech’s leaders – the new Broligarchy – at his side. What? How? And above all, why? Let’s find out…

“I like these guys, but I have to”

“I like these guys, but I have to”, Trump told The Spectator not long ago (as reported by The Wrap). “The first time, these guys were [my] bitter enemies. I never even understood it. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know Zuckerberg. I didn’t know Jeff, I didn’t. When you look at the inauguration, it was a ‘who’s-who’ of every single one of them. Every single guy was there” (except Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, but who’s counting, eh Donald?).

In other words, between his first and second terms, the orange manbaby understood that he couldn’t do without big tech. Why? Look no further than the First Bro, Elon Musk. Who convinced Trump, for example, that the war in Ukraine needed to be stopped not for peace’s sake, but for the rare earth minerals hidden in the country’s soil? Have a guess.

Naturally, on his way out, Joe Biden “warned that the US was becoming an oligarchy of tech billionaires wielding dangerous levels of power and influence on the nation,” according to the AP. This must only have strengthened Trump’s resolve to do exactly that.

So when the political leader of the free world says “jump” to the economic leaders of the free world, how high do they go? And just how bad is this for democracy?

Google

Although “don’t be evil” bit the dust a good few years ago, Google used to be one of the most respectable big tech firms, for example when it comes to the environment. Not any more…

• February 5: Google lifts its own ban on using AI in weapons (BBC)
• February 6: Google bins its diverse hiring objectives (AP)
• February 11: Google accepts to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America in Google Maps… for US users (BBC)
• March 9: “Diversity” and “Equity” are removed from the webpage of Google’s Responsible AI team (TechCrunch).

Amazon/Washington Post

We’re not sure Amazon itself could be any more evil (deliverers defecating in their vans, anyone?) But we had yet to see much interference by its founder, Jeff Bezos, in his other crown jewel, the Washington Post. Like Musk’s ownership of X/Twitter, billionaires meddling in the outputs of the media they own is deeply concerning for (true) freedom of expression. So…

• October 28: As the WaPo has traditionally spoken out for the Democratic presidential candidate, Bezos steps in to stop this happening. 200,000 subscribers leave (NPR)
• January 4: A Pulitzer prize-winning WaPo cartoonist quits after her sketch, depicting Bezos and the other broligarchs bowing down to Trump and giving him money, is pulled from the paper (NPR). Shortly afterwards, Bezos and the other broligarchs bow down to Trump and give him money ($1 million each)
• February 26: “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Bezos intervenes directly in the WaPo’s editorial line, aligning it with Trumpian priorities. The Opinion editor resigns.

Meta

Which company has bent the knee more often than in all eight seasons of Game of Thrones? That’s right, the one formerly known as Facebook. Hardly surprising given the previous flexibility of its moral compass. But still…

• December 12: Meta says it’s going to build its biggest data centre ever, in Louisiana. Built for AI, costing $10bn, and powered by… gas. As if they waited for Trump to be elected before announcing this planet-killing monster (AP)
• January 7: Meta stops fact-checking in favour of the X/Twitter-style Community Notes system, and promotes the notoriously Republican Joel Kaplan as Head of Global Affairs (Meta)
• January 10: Mark Zuckerberg tells the Joe Rogan Show “masculine energy I think is good… Society has plenty of that. But corporate culture was really trying to get away from it.” Whenceforth, “masculine energy” pretty much becomes a meme
• January 25: Meta pays $25 million to settle Trump’s 2021 lawsuit protesting against his being banned from Facebook because of the Capitol insurrection of that same year (The Atlantic)
• Reverse ferret bonus: In 2017, the first time Trump became president, Zuckerberg signed an open letter stating his disagreement with Donald’s policies, which targeted those with foreign origins, like the Meta boss’ (Chinese/Australian) wife and her family (The Atlantic). Incredibly, his post about that letter is still on Facebook. For how much longer?
• Streisand effect bonus: last week, Meta sued to stop the release of “Careless People”, the company’s latest whilstleblower book. The extra attention propelled the tell-all into Amazon’s top 10 (Inc). As the Guardian put it, so much for Zuckerberg’s new-found love of ‘free speech’…

Microsoft/OpenAI

Whilst Microsoft has been one of the more discreet GAFAMs (like Apple, so much so they don’t merit a full paragraph here), it clearly donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund like everyone else (The Verge). But what about OpenAI, the ‘wunderkind’ startup that wouldn’t exist without M$’s billions and compute power?

• January 21: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joins Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Softbank’s Masayoshi Son to announce $500bn AI project Stargate (CNN). Musk quickly calls BS on the amount (he’s right, for once). We also note that Trump specifies this project will be 100% privately-funded, i.e. it won’t cost him a dollar. Win win!
• Reverse ferret bonus: In 2016, Altman Godwin point-ed Trump by comparing him with Hitler. “To anyone familiar with the history of Germany in the 1930s, it’s chilling to watch Trump in action”, wrote Altman in a blogpost that is also, surprisingly, still online. “His Big Lie is that he’s going to Make America Great by keeping us safe from outsiders.”

Why?

Why are all these massive companies bending the knee so emphatically? In one word: regulation.

• Google is currently begging the Department of Justice not to break it up (Vanity Fair)… indeed, the DoJ has just insisted it sell off Chrome (Ars Technica)
• Meta was already facing an antitrust case from the FTC, which was looking to break it up before Trump was elected (USA Today). Republican senator Marsha Blackburn, however, wasn’t fooled by Zuck’s knee-bending: “This is a ploy to avoid being regulated. We will not be fooled,” she wrote on Twitter/X.
• Amazon, whilst under no apparent threat of investigation, is still scared of one: “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation,” Jeff Bezos said of Trump at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “If I can help do that, I’m going to help him.” (USA Today).

But what if there’s more to it than that, though? What if this is what the tech elite have wanted all along? Without falling into conspiracy theory-land, Californian journalist Gil Duran argues quite convincingly that Palantir founder Peter Thiel has been planning this for years. Silicon Valley’s own Sauron, who co-founded PayPal with Musk back in the day, is a mentor to JD Vance, who notably worked for Thiel’s Mithril Capital. So it’s hardly surprising Thiel pushed him into the VP role (more on the extent of Thiel’s general skullduggery here).

It’s also highly possible that this new form of “tech authoritarianism” sees Trump as little more than a vessel for getting what they’ve always wanted. This would at least partially explain why Trump has managed to change so much in just over a month: it was planned.

As is what eminent French politician and diplomat Dominique de Villepin called “digital colonisation;” something that’s been underway for years with the US’ rapid domination of key tech sectors (the cloud, for example, is a global monopoly split between three US companies) but which is now rapidly accelerating.

This is what will ultimately allow for “a complete vassalisation of the European continent”, as de Villepin told French national radio recently. A vassalisation which will serve big tech long after Trump has left office (if he does indeed leave office…)

Tectonic vibe shift

The “planning this for years” theory is accompanied by parallel trends not many of us could have seen coming, but which further cement Silicon Valley’s tectonic vibe shift away from its “peace and love” 70s roots. One of the most chilling: Stanford graduates now seem to be more excited about working for military/space tech firms like Palantir, SpaceX or Anduril (the latter is led by prime nutjob Palmer Luckey, of Oculus Rift fame) than for ‘traditional’ GAFAMs. Here’s an extract from The San Francisco Standard’s recent blood-curdling paper (my bolds):

When Divya Ganesan, a senior studying political science, started at Stanford in 2021, she didn’t dream of one day working in national security. Back then, defense intelligence companies that contract with the government, like Palantir, were “super looked down upon” on campus, she said. “They were seen as the evil guys.”

Now, the vibes have shifted. 

After taking the popular class “Spies, Lies, and Algorithms” in 2022, Ganesan became hooked on defense tech. She cofounded the student group Stanford Women in National Security, or WINS, which now has more than 150 members, and completed summer internships at the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

“My most effective and moral friends are now working for Palantir,” Ganesan says. The company, cofounded by Peter Thiel, a supporter of President Donald Trump, contracts with the military on surveillance and targeting systems. Its stock has surged to an all-time high since Trump took office. 

The sort of trend that is confirmed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s founding White Stork, a company that makes AI-powered killer drones. And no doubt many more similar stories that we’ll stop researching now, to avoid fuelling our nightmares…

What can we do about it?

Apart from the standard contacting your local politician, or joining related ONGs, the best way to protest is to simply not use GAFAM or related services… as far as possible.

“Go European“, for example, is a handy list of EU alternatives to US services and products. You don’t have to be totally religious about it, though – albeit American, BlueSky is a great alternative to X/Twitter as it’s open source and relatively free of toxicity – but every little helps. So Mistral’s Le Chat or Hugging Face’s HuggingChat instead of ChatGPT (they’re also a lot better for the planet and data sovereignty btw); Renault or Peugeot instead of Tesla; Fairphone instead of Apple, etc etc etc.

Beyond that: spread the word! Protest! Vote for democratic candidates!

Soon, this too shall pass…