Today I want to share with you a few more thoughts on this vast topic of the tech lords and predators, conquistadors and pirates among us. It is perhaps the most visible part of the present moment, but because of this, paradoxically, the most difficult to see clearly. It has been more than a century since men at the highest levels of the American economy intervened so visibly and directly in the country’s politics. One element is the highly personalistic nature of large technology monopolies. Mark Zuckerberg is not just a CEO or majority owner. He East Facebook. He is the founder, the animating spirit from the beginning. I believe the voting rights are structured in such a way at Meta that in terms of control, as opposed to equity stakes, it has total control. Meta cannot be taken away from him. Whether the voting rights are exactly the same or not, a similar story prevails at Amazon, Google, certainly X, and all of Musk’s companies. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Gilded Age and the Robber Barons, when big names like Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and Rockefeller owned, ran, and personified the great corporate giants and monopolies of the day in equal measure.
For many decades, especially since World War II, even the most political and ideological companies have kept their political spending and efforts in the background. Maybe they gave most of their money to Republicans, but they would also give it to Democrats, just to keep them largely on their side.
What we’ve started to see under the Biden administration, and then to an almost mind-boggling degree through 2025, is not just the big tech titans cozying up to Trump and doing so visibly, but making themselves what we might call main characters in the American political cinematic universe. There is really nothing like this in our history. I know a lot of friends who do MMA and UFC. My sons are in it. It’s not my thing. But great if it’s yours. But if you’re Mark Zuckerberg and you’re ringside at a UFC match with Trump’s friend and UFC CEO Dana White, you’re sending a very clear and specific message and you’re sending it well outside of the channels where most mainstream political messaging takes place. Even more so if you put White on your tray. And the same goes for going on Joe Rogan’s show and talking about a “high testosterone men’s” rights movement. Yes, Zuckerberg got into MMA before the so-called “change of atmosphere.” But not in this political way. We’ve seen countless examples of this in many different contexts, starting with this unforgettable inauguration image where the most prestigious seats were reserved for the hundred-billion-dollar titans of technology. Government of, by and for them.
