In his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 15, outgoing President Joe Biden warned the country about the threat of an oligarchy forming in the United States. Biden admitted that both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, have relied on wealthy and powerful elites to fund their political ambitions for far too long — and said the payback could be coming.
His message became clearer just five days later when President Donald Trump returned to power and, in the most visible way possible, appeared to hand the tech billionaire class unprecedented access and influence to shape his political agenda.
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos — the CEOs of the world’s most powerful technology companies, and among the richest men alive — attended the inauguration and were seen socializing with Trump’s cabinet picks and closest advisors, not to mention fraternizing with the justices of the United States Supreme Court, creating a stark new image of the power money holds over politics.
One of Trump’s first executive orders on Jan. 20 was to rebrand the United States Digital Service (USDS), creating in its place the new so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he appointed Musk to lead the effort slashing government spending — starting with firing tens of thousands of people across the federal workforce in the first month alone.
The singular act of handing over the reins of Washington decision-making to the Earth’s wealthiest man — who weeks later went on stage waving a literal “chainsaw” against the government — made it clear the ultra-rich were no longer just political donors: they were now directly managing America’s legislative and fiscal priorities.
Trump had cozied up to Musk well before his November election victory. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, acquired X (formerly Twitter) in October 2022 and over months transformed the platform into a breeding ground for political propaganda and misinformation. BBC News reported that X users have been able to make money by spreading election misinformation — making lies a genuine source of income for many.
Musk has defended his actions, claiming that any form of content moderation goes against free speech. He reinstated Trump on his platform prior to showering the presidential campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars. And he wasn’t the only tech oligarch climbing aboard the Trump train.
In a press release two weeks before the inauguration, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would also be lifting its restrictions on speech, moving to a “Community Notes” model rather than the third-party fact-checking system the company had employed since 2021.
Meta announced it would also take a tailored, “more personalized approach to [each user’s] political content,” creating what could amount to a vastly louder echo chamber for the social media giant with its billions of global users. National Public Radio reported that Meta’s algorithms already made it easier for users to get stuck in an “ideological bubble.”
Very little is in the dark here. Tech oligarchs like Musk and Zuckerberg are forthright about their intent to weaken restrictions and the ability to fact-check disinformation, opening the door for false narratives to spread across their immensely powerful platforms without any accountability.
By making their moves out to be wins for free speech, while effectively consolidating control over the flow of information, they are demonstrating how blatantly money now shapes policy and is visibly undermining democracy in service, it seems, to the tech oligarchs who have taken over.
At the same time, Bezos, the CEO of the world’s biggest online retailer Amazon, and owner of the Washington Post instructed the editors of the heralded newspaper to withhold a presidential endorsement for Vice President Kamala Harris in October 2024, signaling an early show of elite interference in politics.
It seems that Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Musk all went from, at some point, expressing concerns over Trump to throwing their support behind him, after Trump promised to reduce regulations and taxes on corporations like their own. With Amazon’s donation of $1 million to Trumnp’s inauguration fund, Bezos showed he is willing to back the new anti-federal agenda in return for policies that benefit Amazon.
Along with tax cuts, weakening labor protections are high on both Amazon and Tesla’s priorities for Trump’s second term. Both companies have been aggressively fighting unionization efforts, and weeks into the new administration there has already been union suppression with Utah banning collective bargaining for public employees such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.
To show added loyalty to Trump, Google and Apple instantly renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America,” per his executive order, across their widely viewed devices and apps. Cook and Pichai, the CEOs of Apple and Google, respectively, have shown willingness like the rest of the tech oligarchs to work with Trump if it influences his future policies.
The oligarchy Biden warned about during his final week in office seems to have already formed and is solidifying with ease, around the new administration. As Trump begins to stir talks of privatizing public government services the Post Office and National Parks, he is beginning to sell off America itself — and with it, many might argue, the American Dream.
Musk, pictured on the cover of Time magazine, standing behind the resolute desk on the week the Trump presidency began, is no longer just playing the role of CEO, but chief U.S. policymaker. Biden’s prophecy is no longer a distant idea. The nation, it appears, is already in the hands of the oligarchs. oligarchy.