They increasingly own everything from access to space to how we get news on Earth and now outgoing President Joe Biden warns America’s new breed of Donald Trump-allied oligarchs could gobble up US democracy itself.
Biden used his farewell speech to the nation to deliver a shockingly dark message: that a nation which has always revered its entrepreneurs may now be at their mercy.
“An oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms,” Biden said.
Photo: Reuters
He named no names, but his targets were clear: men like Elon Musk — the world’s richest person — who surround incoming Republican president Trump.
That “dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” will have “dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked,” he said.
And echoing president Dwight Eisenhower’s own farewell warning in 1961 about the dangers of an out-of-control military industrial complex, Biden flagged the “potential rise of a tech industrial complex” — referring to the Silicon Valley titans behind transformational advances in AI and robots.
Biden’s pulling of the alarm cord as he goes out the door can be chalked up to politics. But there’s no disputing the fact that America’s uber-wealthy and fantastically ambitious tycoons are swarming around Trump.
A PLACE ON THE DAIS
On Inauguration Day on Monday, several of the biggest will sit feet away from Trump on the presidential dais.
Chief among them is Musk, whose wealth is estimated by Forbes to be US$435 billion, and who has been named to a high-profile position in charge of cutting government spending.
After helping to bankroll the campaign against Kamala Harris, Musk has become a fixture in the inner circle, appearing at more public dinners and other events with Trump than the president-elect’s wife Melania.
As owner of SpaceX, Musk is already one of the biggest US government contractors, and as owner of Tesla, he’s at the forefront of the US push to win the e-vehicle race. As owner of social media site X, he has turned the platform into a bullhorn for voices that favor Trump.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — second and third on Forbes’ global rich list — will also be on the dais.
Bezos, vying to rival Musk in the space contracting business, loudly signaled his decision to cozy up to Trump just before the election when he killed an endorsement by his newspaper, The Washington Post, of Harris.
Zuckerberg, who once banned Trump from Facebook because of his role in attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, recently dined with Trump and is reportedly hosting a reception for Republican billionaires at the inauguration — which he has also helped fund to the tune of US$1 million.
More consequentially: Zuckerberg last week announced that Facebook and Instagram will get rid of an army of fact checkers in the US — long demonized as liberal censorship by Trump and his allies.
According to US media, Shou Zi Chew (周受資), the head of another controversial and massively influential platform — Chinese-owned TikTok — has also been invited to the inauguration.
OLIGARCHY US-STYLE
The presence of the super-rich in politics is neither new nor confined to the US.
In Russia, oligarchs in the wild 1990s first bought up the economy, then the government, before being forced into a more regulated partnership with the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin.
Business figures have also entered deep into politics in countries as varied as India and communist China.
But Lorenzo Castellania, a history professor at Rome’s Luiss University, says the US has distinct oligarchical traditions.
“I don’t think it is fair to compare Musk to the oligarchs of authoritarian regimes. I think instead he fits into a very American historical typology such as the robber barons who appeared on the political scene in the late 19th and early 20th century,” Castellania said.
Although the likes of Andrew Carnegie and JP Morgan wielded enormous influence over US democracy, they also created untold wealth for the economy, leaving legacies ranging from soaring public buildings to entire industries.
But the Gilded Age was almost a century and a half ago. How will it work this time?
Castellania says the seemingly ironbound Trump-Musk partnership may contain two fatal flaws.
First, “both have a huge ego” and “the chances of friction being generated in the long run are high.”
Secondly, something deeper: Trump’s electoral base wants less immigration and more isolationism, while Musk and the “tech industrial complex” have global — even inter-planetary — visions.
“One of the most interesting questions of this new administration,” Castellania said, “will be to see whether or not this coexistence will endure.”
One of the biggest sore spots in Taiwan’s historical friendship with the US came in 1979 when US president Jimmy Carter broke off formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan’s Republic of China (ROC) government so that the US could establish relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Taiwan’s derecognition came purely at China’s insistence, and the US took the deal. Retired American diplomat John Tkacik, who for almost decade surrounding that schism, from 1974 to 1982, worked in embassies in Taipei and Beijing and at the Taiwan Desk in Washington DC, recently argued in the Taipei Times that “President Carter’s derecognition
This year will go down in the history books. Taiwan faces enormous turmoil and uncertainty in the coming months. Which political parties are in a good position to handle big changes? All of the main parties are beset with challenges. Taking stock, this column examined the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) (“Huang Kuo-chang’s choking the life out of the TPP,” May 28, page 12), the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) (“Challenges amid choppy waters for the DPP,” June 14, page 12) and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) (“KMT struggles to seize opportunities as ‘interesting times’ loom,” June 20, page 11). Times like these can
Dr. Y. Tony Yang, Associate Dean of Health Policy and Population Science at George Washington University, argued last week in a piece for the Taipei Times about former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) leading a student delegation to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that, “The real question is not whether Ma’s visit helps or hurts Taiwan — it is why Taiwan lacks a sophisticated, multi-track approach to one of the most complex geopolitical relationships in the world” (“Ma’s Visit, DPP’s Blind Spot,” June 18, page 8). Yang contends that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has a blind spot: “By treating any
You can tell a lot about a generation from the contents of their cool box: nowadays the barbecue ice bucket is likely to be filled with hard seltzers, non-alcoholic beers and fluorescent BuzzBallz — a particular favorite among Gen Z. Two decades ago, it was WKD, Bacardi Breezers and the odd Smirnoff Ice bobbing in a puddle of melted ice. And while nostalgia may have brought back some alcopops, the new wave of ready-to-drink (RTD) options look and taste noticeably different. It is not just the drinks that have changed, but drinking habits too, driven in part by more health-conscious consumers and
RSS