For years, romantics and politicians alike have warned against the power we vest in technology. Though painted in broad strokes, Blake and Shelley’s nostalgia for the pre-Enlightenment pastoral and criticism of the modern Prometheus still resonate today, inviting us to consider their scepticism. Even more recently, presidents from Eisenhower to Biden have echoed these sentiments in concerns about an impending technocracy.
In his 1961 farewell address, former US president, Dwight Eisenhower, famously concedes “in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, …we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
In his final message, Biden similarly urged citizens, albeit in a McCarthy-esque nihilism, to remain “keepers of the flame,” in the face of a (potential) unravelling of democracy.
Seeing Big Tech billionaires front and center at Trump’s inauguration, literally seated ahead of any political figures, compels us to revisit these seemingly “Luddite” ideas and raise a critical lens to the relationship between immense wealth and power.
Have we arrived at the dreaded technocracy? Can we trust that citizens’ best interests are in mind? It ultimately begs the question: is sweeping technological expansion in the interest of progress, power, or both? And if so, for whom?
Speaking broadly, Silicon Valley has been synonymous with left-leaning ideology, and even further, decidedly anti-Trump politics. The recent counterelite’s swing right has changed this. Backtracking to 2016, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos publicly shared his concern for our democracy in Trump’s hands while Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, aired his contempt for Trump’s proposed immigration policy of “building walls and distancing people they label as others.” Musk similarly called for Trump to “hang up hat & sail into the sunset” in a tweet just three years ago. Following suit, Marc Andreessen, the co-creator of Mosaic (one of the first widely used web browsers) and a top venture capitalist, notes his unabashed support for democratic candidates since 1996, only until Trump’s third Presidential campaign.
The California counter-elite, once far removed from Trump and his antics, have quickly become Palm Beach locals, bending over backwards to get in the President’s good graces (some of which now sauntering the White House as if they were elected themselves).
Many question what journalist Pierre Haski calls this “marriage of convenience.” On the surface, it makes perfect sense. President Trump has a rich campaign funded by wealthy donors in return for loose regulation and extensive expansion. They agree on the fundamental premise that some men are simply above the law. But is this symbiosis so simple?
Andreesen proposes this swing rests on far more altruistic grounds, claiming that the 2024 Trump presidency marks “the morning in America,” a period of meritocracy, innovation, and creativity after a stifling “hyper-woke” repressive period under the Biden administration. He maintains that the Biden administration had a “seething contempt for tech” as they cracked down on cryptocurrency, a main stream of income for such tech giants and a warning sign for many about what the liberal agenda might mean for AI. To an extent, this argument sounds promising. As China quickly catches up to America in the tech race for information and development, global security, economic growth, and democracy are at stake in the shadow of the CCP’s growing influence. In this way, prioritising the technological sector in current politics is fundamental global order. Thus, keeping tech giants such as Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, and Bezos in Washington’s back pocket may be nothing short of a political strategy to reestablish America’s technological and democratic dominance.
In his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” Andreesen champions constant growth and knowledge, market openness, the subsequent upward spiral of innovation, and the pursuit of “no upper bound.” To many, this idea of unfettered development is deeply problematic, especially when the power rests in the hands of few. Consider former President Biden’s restrictions on cryptocurrency: projects like these, aimed at weakening government control of global finance, can have destabilising effects. In the book, Zero to One, entrepreneur Peter Thiel draws attention to Musk’s desire to “create a new internet currency to replace the US dollar,” in creating PayPal. Such endeavors, seeking to rival the dollar (the world reserve currency), serve as a poignant reminder of the potential for significant economic damage when such power is wielded irresponsibly.
Government regulation, therefore, is not only necessary but also historically grounded. Since the early 20th century, the US government has collaborated with, funded, and overseen Silicon Valley’s development of critical technologies, from the Manhattan Project to radar, advanced communication systems, and aeronautics.
As Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, points out, “it’s dangerous to view companies as unilaterally shaping the world, and dangerous to view practical technological goals in essentially religious terms.” Such figures seem to see their companies as the end all be all, acting as if their success in their respective field entitles them to power on the global scale. Representative Ro Khanna of California corroborates this point in saying that tech ideology becomes problematic in rejecting the role of the state, in believing that creators are “born with greater willingness to flout the norms, flout society, and are doing the great civilizational advances.”
When wielded correctly, innovation is a necessary fuel for societal progression. As Amodei suggests, innovations like AI could be “a guarantor of liberty, individual rights, and equality under the law” when in the right hands. Yet, echoing Shelley’s warnings, this promise could remain unfulfilled when perverted by human hubris and superhuman pursuits. Like anything it requires immense sensitivity and supervision, something that feels increasingly precarious under Trump’s rule.
