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President Donald Trump is sworn in today, and we’re about to find out what happens when the government is actually as corrupt as our most rotten conspiracy theorists imagine.
“Trump’s inauguration, flush with cash, runs out of benefits for big donors” Up-to-date York Times given, somewhat imprecisely. Sure, Trump ran out of VIP tickets, but that’s not what donors were buying. This is pure, obvious corruption – the kind that made us feel ashamed when we were a society that could still experience such emotions.
So what are these men buying?
All our tech overlords have problems and want to buy solutions. I think it was easier than making products that people actually like.
“First buddy”Elon Musk spent at least a quarter of a billion dollars electing Donald Trump. Corporations and wealthy donors they sent another half a billion since he was elected. Amazon, Google, Uber, Microsoft and Meta donated $1 million each for Trump’s inauguration, as did Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman. (Joe Biden’s inauguration was not met with such generosity.) ‘Everyone was fighting with me in my first term.’ Trump said in December. “Everyone wants to be my friend this term.”
Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are the three richest people on Earth reportedly attending the inauguration; were to sit with elected officials and cabinet candidates, before the ceremony was moved indoors. (The cook too apparently participates.) Musk will have office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building According to them, next to the White House New York Times.
So what are these men buying?
True market opportunities are rarer than they used to be. Technology executives and investors have openly expressed resentment about their products social effects AND unjustified lack of adulation from citizens. Zuckerberg in particular seems bored with Facebook, his main source of money, and is looking for a new toy. He spent at least $46 billion plus the cost of rebranding the company into the Metaverse, only to discover that his Big New Thing has no legs. Its latest big thing is AR glasses, which rely heavily on artificial intelligence policies (and likely tariffs) imposed by Trump.
Perhaps no one has spent more to buy a break from public scrutiny than the cryptocurrency industry
Nearly every major tech company has at least one lawsuit pending. Apple is facing an ongoing antitrust investigation. Google just lost one. There is also a Federal Trade Commission lawsuit that could tear Instagram and WhatsApp away from Meta. Trump cares little about the actual goal of antitrust enforcement: making companies compete for customers with good products. All the ongoing legal proceedings are just leverage for Trump to punish anyone who does not comply. And Silicon Valley is more disinterested in consumers than ever. After all, “get out of jail free” is a pretty famous card in Monopoly.
Perhaps no one has spent more to buy a break from public scrutiny than the cryptocurrency industry. “Crypto guys are just blowing it away” – an said an anonymous Trump adviser Axles. “It used to be that a million dollars was a big number. Now we’re looking at some people giving about $10 [million] or $20 million. They want a friendly Securities and Exchange Commission. David Sacks, venture capitalist and PayPal mobster, has already been dubbed the “crypto czar.” There is also a pending executive order designating cryptocurrency a “national imperative or priority – strategic language intended to help government agencies work with the industry.” according to Bloomberg. We might even witness our very the first presidential meme involving the pumping and dumping of coins.
Crypto is not good for anything except crime and gambling, and less regulation means a greater risk of people being scammed by the next FTX. (Speaking of gambling, Robinhood donated $2 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.) Moreover, the executive order means there’s a greater likelihood that cryptocurrencies will be pushed into new government projects – whether it’s useful or not. Cryptocurrency interception may even involve light enforcement of the various criminal industries that rely on it.
Plus taxes, of course. Billionaires don’t want to pay them and Trump does prone to this. Scott Bessant, nominated as Secretary of the Treasuryhe stated that the “most crucial economic issue of the time” was ensuring that tax cuts for the ultra-rich were maintained. Bessent is accused of evading taxes himself.
Mass privatization could make the tech industry even more profitable
But this is all petite potatoes. The real money is in the military. Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen – also a member of Meta’s board and a major investor in X – is recruiting Trump administration employees and even influencing the hiring of the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, Washington Post. reports. As usual, it is he gave away the game while bragging about it on the podcast.
Silicon Valley investors generally do bullish on defense technologies like the industry poster children of Anduril and Palantir. (a16z is a major sponsor of Anduril, and both companies were founded and are among the early MAGA faithful in the Valley.) They want to shift Pentagon spending away from legacy contractors like Lockheed Martin, which seems so terrified that when the account ” Substantial Tech Alert” X noted that it had unfollowed Musk, Lockheed DM’d account say it was “unintentional.”
Musk’s SpaceX has it number of contracts With US military AND intelligence agenciesincluding so-called Starshield satellites. He used his influence to interfere in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and he did so he even reportedly answered phone calls from Vladimir Putin. The military’s interest in artificial intelligence has also inspired a new race in everything from building data centers to providing cloud computing. Musk’s XAI, something like a solution next to OpenAI, Meta and Google, could be legitimized by DoD contracts.
Andreessen has already expressed his dissatisfaction with Joe Biden executive order on AIwhich will probably be repealed.
This is not the cordial clown car that all these men have packed into
Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon, as well as a number of startups, are also likely interested in the gold rush. Back in 2017, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman wrote to Elon Musk that the company should pursue a “government project (when: ??).” (I heard rumors that OpenAI then asked for government funding; Microsoft also rallegedly crashed DALL-E to the army in 2023) Microsoft has the most to lose in these negotiations – Senators Ron Wyden and Eric Schmitt expressed concerns that the Department of Defense is too dependent on it as a supplier. CEO Satya Nadella does he has already made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago grovel before Trump and Musk.
Mass privatization could make the tech industry even more profitable. Data/research it’s an obvious advantage, but Musk’s criticism of the F-35 program suggest much broader targeting. For example, greater military investment in drones would likely benefit Anduril. Musk is already producing rockets, which means SpaceX has little time to produce rockets. And whether the Trump administration should do so threats of mass deportationsthere will undoubtedly be a need for more databases, mass tracking, and detention centers.
But this is not the cordial clown car that all these men have packed into. Their interests are simply not aligned. Zuckerberg is the biggest beneficiary of the TikTok ban and practically begged Trump to punish Apple for him. Trump may have changed his mind however, about the TikTok ban, maybe that’s why a major conservative donor owns 15% of the shares. Apple depends on Chinese production and needs exemptions from Tariffs promised by the Trump administration. Andreessen demanded a division of Google, which is currently appealing the monopoly verdict. Everyone wants to steal contracts from Microsoft. Jeff Bezos and Musk compete in space contacts.
If we know anything from Trump’s first term, it’s that he loves people fighting for his favor. Sure, that means mess, but it also means fun bedfellows. For example, everyone hates the EU regulatory system. It’s easy to imagine Zuckerberg, Musk and Cook teaming up to get Trump to insult the EU’s Digital Services Act, and then immediately turning on each other. Being in Trump’s good graces is a zero-sum game, and the reward is that the clown car eventually drives off a cliff.
Selective enforcement puts every company under the sword of Damocles
Keeping Trump happy may be expensive, but it’s cheaper than legal battles. Selective enforcement puts any company under the Sword of Damocles – if you make the wrong move, you can be cut to pieces by lackeys in Congress or the FCC. Just look at TikTok’s flattering appeals to Dear Leader. The Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban, but if Trump only punishes people he doesn’t like, nothing will happen to TikTok. (Most importantly, the law is still in place to keep other Chinese competitors in check.) Did I mention TikTok CEO Shou Chew was invited to the front row at Trump’s inauguration from the man himself?
I guess I need to explain why this makes the US a worse place to live, given the “prudent” cynicism I’ve seen about how rotten everything is already here. Technology companies have worsened their experience by underestimating their financial results, a phenomenon so common and well-recognized that it is now slang for it. Whether the scandals are fraud, child predation, employee exploitation or user privacy violations – pick your poison – Trump has offered a technological way to redeem himself from the consequences. This makes life noticeably worse for anyone who is not a billionaire.
There are those who will say that this is good – that corruption happens openly, not in the shadows. But public, overt corruption allows even more rot to fester in secret. Consider all the reigns of strongmen; apart from progress on bribery, what did they innovate? Silicon Valley leaders portray themselves as industry titans, but in fact they are building a golden age of fraud.
