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.”
Feb. 17 to Feb. 23 “Japanese city is bombed,” screamed the banner in bold capital letters spanning the front page of the US daily New Castle News on Feb. 24, 1938. This was big news across the globe, as Japan had not been bombarded since Western forces attacked Shimonoseki in 1864. “Numerous Japanese citizens were killed and injured today when eight Chinese planes bombed Taihoku, capital of Formosa, and other nearby cities in the first Chinese air raid anywhere in the Japanese empire,” the subhead clarified. The target was the Matsuyama Airfield (today’s Songshan Airport in Taipei), which
China has begun recruiting for a planetary defense force after risk assessments determined that an asteroid could conceivably hit Earth in 2032. Job ads posted online by China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence (SASTIND) this week, sought young loyal graduates focused on aerospace engineering, international cooperation and asteroid detection. The recruitment drive comes amid increasing focus on an asteroid with a low — but growing — likelihood of hitting earth in seven years. The 2024 YR4 asteroid is at the top of the European and US space agencies’ risk lists, and last week analysts increased their probability
For decades, Taiwan Railway trains were built and serviced at the Taipei Railway Workshop, originally built on a flat piece of land far from the city center. As the city grew up around it, however, space became limited, flooding became more commonplace and the noise and air pollution from the workshop started to affect more and more people. Between 2011 and 2013, the workshop was moved to Taoyuan and the Taipei location was retired. Work on preserving this cultural asset began immediately and we now have a unique opportunity to see the birth of a museum. The Preparatory Office of National
On Jan. 17, Beijing announced that it would allow residents of Shanghai and Fujian Province to visit Taiwan. The two sides are still working out the details. President William Lai (賴清德) has been promoting cross-strait tourism, perhaps to soften the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attitudes, perhaps as a sop to international and local opinion leaders. Likely the latter, since many observers understand that the twin drivers of cross-strait tourism — the belief that Chinese tourists will bring money into Taiwan, and the belief that tourism will create better relations — are both false. CHINESE TOURISM PIPE DREAM Back in July
RSS