When I first saw those photos of tech giants lined up behind Donald Trump on inauguration day, something felt off. At first, I couldn’t pin it down, but then it hit me: they didn’t just seem like powerful figures; they looked more like shareholders in the government—unelected ones at that. We see this play out in real time. For instance, the recent cuts to tech tariffs from China highlight just how much influence these folks wield over U.S. policy.
Take Apple as an example. With 90% of iPhones made in China, Apple was facing potential price hikes of up to $3,500 per phone if tariffs climbed to 145%. In 2024, the U.S. imported $41.7 billion worth of smartphones from China, with laptops adding another $33.1 billion to the mix. Not slapping tariffs on these items saves around $60 billion a year for those categories alone. Sure, Apple won’t pocket all of that, but it’s a hefty return on Tim Cook’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee. This was Cook’s first time at a presidential inauguration, even if his views often clash with Trump’s policies.
But the tech influence goes beyond tariffs. Think about their impact on geopolitics. Ideas like making Canada the 51st state or annexing Greenland didn’t just pop up out of thin air. They’ve got roots, especially in the Technocracy movement, which started in the 1930s. Elon Musk is a figure tied to this philosophy, which proposed merging North America into a single nation led by engineers rather than politicians.
Does this sound familiar? The argument was that engineers and scientists are better equipped to organize society and resources than politicians. In 2019, Musk tweeted about accelerating Starship development to establish a Martian Technocracy. But it looks like he’s trying to establish something similar here.
The notion that nation-states are outdated is echoed in “The Sovereign Individual,” published in 1997. The authors, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, predicted that the representative democracy we know would fade away, replaced by a system where digital choices take precedence. They foresaw a world where technology replaces jobs and emphasizes personal skills over traditional employment.
This book carries weight in Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and Trump advisor, once told Forbes it influenced him more than any other work. He even provided a new foreword for its recent editions. Thiel believes cryptocurrency will disrupt our traditional financial systems, and he’s invested in that future.
Expect a push toward universal basic income (UBI) from these tech leaders. They recognize the threat of job loss and the growing numbers of displaced workers. What will people do when traditional jobs vanish? They might find themselves lost in social media or fantasy worlds, funded by UBI. Jonathan Taplin addresses this fear in his book “The End of Reality,” warning that while we chase the technological dream, we risk losing our democracy to a right-wing uprising.
Imagine if Mark Zuckerberg decided to run for office. He has a treasure trove of data that could serve his political interests. What would happen to opponents who stood in his path? According to Sarah Wynn-Williams in “Careless People,” Zuckerberg has been laying groundwork for a political career since 2017. He even got Facebook’s board to approve a new stock structure allowing him to step away from the company for a government position without losing control.
These players aren’t just startup founders pushing boundaries; they’re shaping a narrative that threatens democracy. Politicians seem mesmerized by the power these tech leaders wield. We might already be living under a new form of technocracy. They dictate how we engage with their technologies, stripping away our choices—take the recent Meta AI integration into WhatsApp, which you can’t disable.
Ronald Reagan once said the scariest words are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” If we start hearing, “I’m from the technocracy and I’m here to help,” we might as well brace ourselves for a new kind of governance altogether.