Thursday, 30 January 2025

The Flattery Towards Trump Reveals Fear



Tech billionaires aren't crawling to Trump because they're powerful, argues Johan Norberg in this guest post. It's because they're weak...

The Flattery Towards Trump Reveals Fear

by Johan Norberg

TECH MOGULS AREN'T FLATTERING TRUMP because they're drunk on power, but because they're afraid. The political arbitrariness that began with Biden risks becoming even worse with Trump.


Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk were among the guests at Donald Trump’s inauguration. 

At Trump's inauguration, the new president was surrounded by a grinning, applauding Forbes list. Among them were the world’s three richest men, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, as well as relatively less wealthy figures like the CEOs of Apple and Google. Sitting in more prominent seats than the incoming cabinet members, it certainly looked like the happy plutocrats had bought themselves a president.

They all donated to the inauguration fund and have, in other ways, signalled an approach. Bezos blocked the Washington Post’s official endorsement of Kamala Harris, and Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook became too woke and now needs to be more Texas.

Is the U.S. on its way to becoming a tech oligarchy? Biden’s speechwriters are among those warning of a tech-industrial complex with so much power that they threaten to disable democracy.

As a liberal, I’m conflicted. The only thing worse than a Trump administration run by big corporations is a Trump administration not run by big corporations. Since their position isn’t built on charming inflamed MAGA fans, but on solving technical and business problems in a global economy, they will exert a moderating influence. When Trump wants to imprison opponents, stop global trade, deport all migrants, or invade Greenland, they will try to get him to count to ten (though I no longer dare rule out anything regarding Musk).

Tesla’s 15% stock increase after Trump’s victory shows that someone's proximity to power is disturbingly valuable.

On the other hand, it’s impossible not to feel deep concern when the most powerful state and the largest capital are in the same boat. Tesla’s 15% stock increase after Trump’s victory shows that someone's proximity to power is disturbingly valuable. When I recently interviewed Musk, he said the state should act as a referee but not interfere in the game, which was wise. But it doesn't get better when a player wants to play referee.

Money doesn't buy elections—after all, Harris had more than the eventual victor—but it can buy influence with its recipients. Especially with someone as notoriously "transactional" (we used to say unprincipled) as Donald Trump. Just a year ago, Trump wanted electric car supporters to "rot in hell." Today, he is pro-electric cars, “I have to be because Elon endorsed me very strongly.”

But unsuitability is not the same as oligarchy. In fact, tech companies haven't assumed this role because they're so strong, but because they're so weak.

THIS IS MISSED IF YOU simply follow stock prices, but the big change in recent years is that Big Tech has gone from being everyone’s hero to everyone’s villain. After Trump’s 2016 victory, previously friendly Democrats started seeing social media as sewers of disinformation and demanded strict content control. The Biden administration also launched potentially devastating antitrust proceedings.

And no matter what they do, someone takes a swipe at them. When platforms became cosily progressive and moderated more content (even stories that turned out to be true), the right started seeing them as leftist censorship machines. Republicans like J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley demanded regulation and breakups. Trump threatened fines and monopoly laws to crush Amazon and Google. With few watertight principles for such power exercises, there are real risks of political arbitrariness. During the election campaign, Trump threatened to imprison Zuckerberg for life.

Tech giants suddenly realised they had lost all political allies.

This is especially dire as they simultaneously face existential risks in key foreign markets. Regulation-happy EU threatens their business models. Many were also shocked last year when Brazil's Supreme Court responded to Musk's refusal to block a series of X accounts by shutting down the entire platform and freezing Starlink’s assets—a completely different company with other stakeholders.

If Big Tech wants a chance in international battles over antitrust, censorship, and taxation, they need the U.S. on their side. Zuckerberg explicitly stated this in his recent repentance speech. The world wants to censor us, and “the only way we can counteract this global trend is with support from the American government.”

This isn't about people who love Trump. Except for Musk, none of the major players supported him before his victory. On the contrary, they’ve long fought against him but lost and are now pleading for mercy—and protection. Musk’s new role made it even more important to be there as a counterbalance to him since he's a tenacious critic who, among other things, has said that Amazon is a monopoly that needs to be broken up. Contrary to the notion of a homogeneous flock of bros, these men are jealous rivals vying for each other’s market shares. And suddenly a new Chinese AI model comes along that threatens all their inflated valuations.

So, the tech moguls aren't flattering Trump because they’re power-drunk, but because they’re scared. Bezos doesn’t humiliate himself with an ingratiating Amazon Prime documentary about Melania Trump because he can do whatever he wants, but because he can't.

The sad spectacle of the past few weeks has many calling for a mightier state to put the plutocrats in their place. On the contrary, I feel an urgent need for a few more independent billionaires who aren’t subject to such political arbitrariness that they constantly anxiously follow political trends.

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Johan Norberg is a Swedish author and historian of ideas, devoted to promoting human progress, economic globalisation and classical liberal ideas.

This post is translated from Blacksmith, where it first appeared.

1 comment:

MarkT said...

Having these high achievers close to Trump could work out well (in moderating some sanity), or it could work out really badly (in closing the separation between business and state). Unfortunately Trump is so unpredictable we have no idea which way it will go.