It's Been a Minute
Tech billionaires want to get richer. Trump is already helping them.
Fri, 24 Jan 2025
President Trump is no stranger to buddying up with the ultra rich, and that was on full display at his inauguration. Tech CEOs billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos were lined up at the proceeding. But beyond the optics, what policies are these CEOs and the new president working on together?Brittany is joined by NPR's tech correspondent Bobby Allyn and The Atlantic's Ashley Parker to answer the question: is America a "tech oligarchy?" And what examples from Trump's first week in office point to that?For more, read Ashley Parker's piece "The Tech Oligarchy Arrives" in The Atlantic.Support public media and receive ad-free listening & bonus. Join NPR+ today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What connects Trump and the ultra-wealthy?
Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Okay, y'all. This week, we are connecting the dots between President Trump, the richest 0.0001%, and saying the quiet part out loud. I know, I know. How are all these things connected?
Well, NPR's tech correspondent, Bobby Allen, and The Atlantic's Ashley Parker are here to explain it as loudly as they can. Welcome to It's Been a Minute, y'all. Thank you so much for coming. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. Okay, really quick. When I say the top 0.0001% richest people... Can you all even picture how much money that is?
No, I can't. I mean, I, until very recently, I used to work at the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos. And sometimes people would do the calculation of Jeff Bezos buying the Post as the equivalent of me buying not even an overpriced latte.
Oh my gosh.
And that I can't really conceive. So I certainly can't conceive this.
Ashley, you gag me right now. That's wild. That is wild. Okay, okay, let me set the scene for this conversation. Leading up to, during, and following President Trump's inauguration, one word kept coming up. Oligarchy. Take, for example, former President Biden. He had this to say in his farewell address last week.
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, and freedoms.
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Chapter 2: What is the definition of an oligarchy?
An oligarchy, put very simply, is a form of government where a few people have all of the power. And usually, when people say it, they mean really wealthy people being the ones in control. Now, it's no secret that Trump is a fan of the ultra wealthy. It's kind of his thing.
His previous administration was the record holder for the richest presidential cabinet in history with a combined wealth of $3.2 billion. But this time around, he's outdone himself. His top advisors now hold an estimated mind-boggling $460 billion. Wow. 16 of President Trump's cabinet nominees are in the top 0001% of the richest people.
Honestly, when I step back and think about that, it's not that surprising. Like there has been documented reporting about the outsized influence the rich have on our government and policies. And that's whether the presidency or Senate is controlled by Republicans or Democrats.
So I'm here to ask what's new about the latest president's relationship to the rich and what that means for the evolution of our federal government for the next four years. Ashley, Bobby, a lot of this oligarchy chatter started happening when three of the richest men in the world attended Trump's inauguration, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos.
Specifically, people started talking about a tech oligarchy. In theory. If there were to be a tech oligarchy in this country, or any country perhaps, what would that look like? Sure.
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Chapter 3: How rich is Trump's current cabinet?
I mean, first of all, I'm trying to make technoligarchy happen. Technoligarchy. There's potential. It hasn't quite caught on. I think my editors maybe even cut that from my story. But that would be one difference from you're asking an oligarchy versus this one feels very, very tech-based. It would look a lot like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the top people from...
Google and TikTok and Apple sitting directly behind Trump at his invitation in front of even his own cabinet, mixed in with his family members as if they're honorary sons of his.
So it's the president, his family, a row of tech billionaires, essentially, the cabinet, and then Republican governors and lawmakers who are the people in theory he will actually need to, for instance, pass his legislation. Most of them were in the overflow room.
The symbolism is a little too on the nose almost, isn't it? It's just a little too on the nose.
Yeah.
I mean, no longer is there going to be this kind of confrontational antagonistic relationship between Silicon Valley and the federal government, but they're sort of working in lockstep to pursue innovation, to be builders, like they like to say, to go toe to toe with China when it comes to who's going to win the sort of AI race.
It's going to look like the government is using all of its powers to sort of power the most far-reaching and the richest industry in the world, which is the tech industry.
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Chapter 4: What does a tech oligarchy look like?
So taking that, what's an example of something happening between the Trump administration and these tech CEOs right now that people can point to that feels like evidence of a tech oligarchy taking shape?
Yeah. I mean, I think when Elon Musk attached himself to the MAGA movement, I think that created something of a permission structure for other prominent people in Silicon Valley to do the same. I mean, Marc Andreessen, he's a very prominent and influential.
Andreessen Horowitz. Yeah. Like. Big venture capitalist.
Huge, yeah. Many, many people in the industry look to him, and he's, you know, someone who sort of predicts what the future holds for the whole industry, described the election of Trump as sort of the bootlifting off the throat of the tech industry. And I think with Adresin, with Elon...
there's just more and more people, you know, sort of in the tech industry saying, you know what, I'm not sure that we got much out of playing nice with Democrats. They just beat us up, tried to regulate us, tried to stop our mergers and acquisitions, dragged us in front of Congress, and it became more difficult to do what we wanted to do.
And they see in the MAGA movement and Donald Trump an opportunity to loosen regulations, to double down on profits, to pursue with... as much speed as they can, the gold rush that is AI. And we're seeing that happen.
Yeah, literally on his second day in office, President Trump threw his support behind a $500 billion investment to build artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. It's called Stargate, and it's a venture involving Trump's friend, Larry Ellison, who also happens to be the CEO of Oracle.
Yeah, I mean, he has in the past held fundraisers for Trump. He's a Republican mega donor. If you remember, back when Trump wanted to shut down TikTok, there was a plan that was proposed that ultimately sank to have Oracle, the company he chairs and founded, partner with Walmart to take over TikTok. Remember that deal that never happened? And now I think Trump said very recently that
Yeah, when it comes to a TikTok bidder, I'd be interested maybe in Elon or Larry Ellison. So you're going to be hearing a lot more of Larry Ellison, I think. And yeah, I think, what is he, like the fourth wealthiest person in the world? Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How is the Trump administration influencing tech CEOs?
I mean, I was struck by when Donald Trump in his inauguration speech mentioned planting the stars and the stripes on Mars, the cameras all immediately panicked. hand to Elon, who did two big thumbs up and kind of mouthed, yeah. And then Elon, when he was speaking later at the rally at the Capital One Arena, he sort of mimed planting, again, American flags on Mars.
And he's on the stage and he's going... I mean...
Can you imagine how awesome it will be to have American astronauts plant the flag on another planet for the first time? Bam!
Bam! Bam! Yeah! Bam! As if he's planting these flags into the rock dust of Mars.
Yeah.
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Chapter 6: What role does Elon Musk play in the MAGA movement?
SpaceX and Bezos' Blue Origin, they want to race into the galaxies and they're in a position to make it easier for themselves to do so.
So you're seeing prominent industry people who are going to be the ones sort of calling the shots on what federal policy will look like from the White House over the tech industry. And you see that before in past administrations, but just the sheer number of prominent VCs and tech people who are in the White House or have direct lines in the White House is really sort of staggering.
What I've also been struck by is the influence a lot of these people will have on issues where they have no expertise whatsoever. I mean, Elon essentially moved down to Mar-a-Lago after Trump was elected. And, you know, we reported he was in meetings where they were determining whether
cabinet choices and not just ones that had to do with technology, but anything from Department of Justice to Department of Education. And that has frustrated some people in Trump's world. But I'm also struck by something when I was covering Trump's first term, someone said to me, which was what people really like about him in sort of ways, his populist approach to information. They said, look,
Chapter 7: What are the implications of Trump's AI investments?
If Lara Trump is in the Oval Office with her sorority sisters and to be clear, I don't actually even know if she was or was not in a sorority. But they said she's in there, you know, with her sorority sisters. The president is just as likely to turn to them and say, what do you think we should do about Ukraine as he is to his generals? So when you have people like Bezos and Zuckerberg and.
Elon just talking to Trump in the same way he is as likely to ask his caddy as his Defense Department secretary for advice. He is also going to be turning to them with all sorts of questions where they may stand to benefit and or they may have absolutely no expertise or right weighing in.
Well, OK, so from where I'm sitting, it's pretty clear why, you know, butting up to Trump is good for these CEOs. But like, what about President Trump? Like, what? How is an alleged oligarchy good for him? I mean, from what we know about Trump, he doesn't seem like a guy that's just going to bend to what someone else wants. He very frequently tries to do the opposite.
What is he getting out of these relationships?
Oh, to me, I think it's quite simple and obvious. On the one hand, I don't think he is going to bend to them. He's made no indication that he's going to do what they want if he disagrees with it. But what he gets is... a bunch of uber wealthy influential people bending themselves to his will.
So he didn't like fact-checking on Meta's platform and Meta's no longer doing that sort of fact-checking, right? You know, I think another example is Elon wrote a huge check during the election, which was valuable. And there's a world in which Elon... strokes another check to an outside group that helps him push a priority.
When you have rich people trying to please you at every beck and turn, that feels pretty beneficial to me. And if they cross him or if they dismay him, he can cast them out. And we may see that.
Yeah, one of the things I've been thinking about is with this oligarchy, tech oligarchy, technoligarchy, as you've called it, a broligarchy, as others have called it. It just makes me think about over the years 2016 to 2020, seeing kind of how sometimes the Trump administration felt like a revolving door of different characters. I mean, who could forget?
Scaramucci that name became synonymous with a very brief amount of time. It'll be interesting to see how these relationships continue once the actual tensions and the daily grind of the presidency takes place.
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Chapter 8: How are tech billionaires shaping federal policy?
So you might not always think of AOC and Bannon as aligned, but I put that out there for you.
After a quick break. To bring this back to oligarchy, we started this conversation with Biden saying, quote, an oligarchy is taking shape. And I feel like that kind of implies that Biden didn't think we weren't already in one, but people like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went off on TikTok saying, you know, we've already been in an oligarchy.
Oh, I don't think we're witnessing the start of an oligarchy. I think we are fully here. It kind of makes me wonder, like Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn't help but wonder, is this moment really that different from how things have been run in the past, or at least the more recent past? I mean, have we already been living in this system? And is this business as usual?
Or are we at a moment where there's a real change taking place in terms of how an oligarchy can shape American politics? Yeah.
Not to quote Bannon again, but he is imminently quotable. But right. As I mentioned earlier, he's one of the people who is sort of fighting against what he views as this tech oligarchy. But in talking about Biden's comments, he said to me, look, dude, you created it. The Democrats created this because you thought big tech was on your side and now they've turned.
And so the way he described it was you guys created it. And now it's a problem for me in the war room to handle. So you might not always think of AOC and Bannon as aligned. Rarely ever. I put that out there for you. I mean, I will say one difference is I've always believed having covered Trump that one of his powers is his shamelessness.
And whatever you believed of what was happening in the Biden era, Biden would not have had those people, that group of people. sitting up there with his children, his grandchildren in front of his cabinet, while Democratic lawmakers and governors were shunted to a further away space. So yeah, the public shameless embrace is a difference.
I would say, yeah, that's what feels different to me here. You know, Trump, like he has done in so many other instances, he's kind of saying the quiet part loud, like oligarchy is not new for this country. There are plenty of wealthy people who hold a lot of influence and power. among our politicians and our government leaders.
But what is new is this image of Musk and Zuckerberg and Bezos at the inauguration.
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