Technological oligarchy and democracy.

In its geopolitics lecture of January 25, 2025, the well-known educational program revisited the inauguration ceremony of Donald Trump as President of the United States, held on January 20, 2025, at the White House. The presence in the front row of major figures from the American tech industry — Elon Musk (X), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Tim Cook (Apple), Sundar Pichai (Google), and Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), along with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew — was seen as evidence of a sudden alignment between these executives and the Republican president in recent weeks. How can such shifts be explained, asks the program’s host? And above all, what consequences might they have for public debate, democratic institutions, and social media platforms?

Olivier Alexandre, deputy director of the Internet and Society Center and author of La Tech. Quand la Silicon Valley refait le monde (2023), recalls that over the past forty years Silicon Valley has been driven — through the mass deployment of the internet and the web — by a democratic ideal grounded in the sharing of knowledge, an ideal that now appears to be unraveling before our eyes. Under the guise of presenting themselves as the vanguard of free speech and technological progress against what they portray as the regulatory bureaucracy of the European Union, American tech companies may in fact be exercising greater forms of domination than ever before.

During his farewell address to the nation, broadcast on January 15, former President Joe Biden issued a grave warning about “the potential rise of a techno-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country.” According to him, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America, made up of extreme wealth, power, and influence, which threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, our freedoms, and the possibility for everyone to have a fair chance.” The oligarchy he refers to directly evokes the tech billionaires surrounding President Trump, foremost among them Elon Musk, as well as Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

Biden added that Americans were being “buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation,” enabling abuses of power. “The free press is collapsing, editors are disappearing. Social networks are abandoning fact-checking. Truth is being smothered by lies, told for power and profit.” He called for social platforms to be held accountable “to protect our children, our families, and our democracy from abuses of power,” and urged the establishment of safeguards for artificial intelligence.

For these reasons, Biden speaks of oligarchy — referring to a small group of extremely wealthy individuals and corporations, largely from the technology sector, lacking direct political legitimacy yet capable of influencing government decisions and shaping, if not manipulating, public opinion. Although oligarchy is not a new concept — Aristotle already theorized it in the 5th century BCE in Politics — it now takes on a novel form as a consequence of the growing grip of digital technologies on domestic, economic, social, political, and geopolitical life. One may therefore speak today of a “technological oligarchy,” for two main reasons: first, power is concentrated in the hands of a small number of very wealthy individuals; second, this power derives from their control over key elements of modern state power — chips, computing capacity, infrastructures, algorithmic models, application platforms, and data.

The Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024, published annually by Stanford University, highlighted that in 2023, 61 notable AI models were developed by U.S. institutions, compared with 21 in the European Union and 15 in China. American actors dominate nearly every stage of the generative AI value chain, from chip design and infrastructure to foundation models and applications. The only notable exception remains raw-material extraction, where China still holds a significant advantage.

Hence the dual opposition — central to Biden’s remarks — between oligarchic rule (already emphasized by Aristotle), democratic rule (power of the many), and aristocratic rule (power of a few exercised in the general interest). Unlike the aristocrat, who shares similar economic attributes but is supposed to govern for the common good, the oligarch primarily defends private interests and seeks to preserve personal privilege.

It is in this context that Mark Zuckerberg reportedly expressed his intention to advise Trump on artificial intelligence and technology policy. Elon Musk is said to have spent nearly $200 million supporting Trump’s campaign, effectively transforming economic power into political influence. This raises concerns about conflicts of interest, given that Musk’s companies — such as SpaceX — rely heavily on contracts with the U.S. federal government, including NASA and the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software is under investigation by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) following several serious accidents, including one fatal collision involving a pedestrian.

Finally, Musk is not merely a tech entrepreneur but also, since 2022, the owner of Twitter — now renamed X. His capacity to influence and shape public opinion, especially during presidential campaigns, is amplified not only by his more than 200 million followers but also by his ability to adjust the platform’s algorithms, potentially turning it into an echo chamber for political narratives aligned with his own interests. He also controls the Starlink satellite network, which he has made available to Ukraine during its war with Russia. Prior to Trump’s official election, U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance reportedly warned Europe that the United States might withdraw from NATO if the European Union continued to tighten regulation over Musk’s platforms.