#tech oligarchy

[guavagyal]

Why bother staging a coup in the Global South when you have US conservative politicians paving the way for that in the US?

[goodhairbadmanners]

[firstoccupier]

Elon Musk: How Public Funds, Legal Loopholes, and Far-Right Alliances Built a Tech Empire at America’s Expense

By Victor Laslow, WPS.News Introduction Elon Musk’s name is synonymous with technological innovation, space exploration, and electric vehicles. Yet behind the celebrated entrepreneur’s public persona lies a more complicated story — one marked by a lifetime of benefiting from systemic privileges, navigating legal gray zones in immigration and business, and increasingly embracing political…

[monetizeme]

"Fighting the climate crisis now means taking back the information ecosystem. Opposing the tech oligarchy taking root in Washington. Putting out all the fires whose spread only serves the interests of the men who own the infrastructure that undergirds our lives, and who consider themselves safe from their flames."

[web-three-point-ohhh]

Because it was never about security. Banning TikTok was about restoring the digital wall around American minds.

Our government granted Meta a monopoly. In exchange, Meta must ensure that the content reaching American eyeballs align with the United Fortune 500 of America.

The US held its end of the deal when it passed the bill to ban TikTok. Meta then suppressed “political” content on all its platforms. When people started opting out of the suppression, Meta simply reset everyone's settings back to suppressing political content, then said it was a mistake.

The global war for resources is not limited to oil. Computational power, internet infrastructure, and the flow of information, are increasing becoming the most important arms race of our time.

It's not the US Government vs the Chinese Government. It's American Tech Cartel vs the rest of the world. And the cartel is winning.

I guess I’m just really confused about why we were concerned about a Chinese app having all of our data but we’re not concerned about a South African immigrant having all of our data…and all of our Social Security numbers…and access to all of our money…

[fankidrachel]

Listen. I get that he was in the wrong for “turning those cows inside out” and “eating the entire solar system” but John Gaius was so real for having apocalyptic levels of rage towards trillionaires. He’s really just like us. Rip John Gaius you would have loved killing the entire human race to make Elon Musk face consequences of his actions 💕

[mostlysignssomeportents]

More Everything Forever

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me at NEW ZEALAND'S UNITY BOOKS in AUCKLAND on May 2, and in WELLINGTON on May 3. More tour dates (Pittsburgh, PDX, London, Manchester) here.

Astrophysicist Adam Becker knows a few things about science and technology – enough to show, in a new book called More Everything Forever that the claims that tech bros make about near-future space colonies, brain uploading, and other skiffy subjects are all nonsense dressed up as prediction:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adam-becker/more-everything-forever/9781541619593/

Becker investigates the personalities, the ideologies, the coalitions, the histories, and crucially, the grifts behind such science fictional pursuits as infinite life-extension, space colonization, automation panic, AI doomerism, longtermism, effective altruism, rationalism, and conciousness uploading.

This is, loosely speaking, the bundle of ideologies that Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres dubbed TESCREAL (transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, (modern) cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

While these are largely associated with modern Silicon Valley esoteric techbros (and the odd Oxfordian like Nick Bostrom), they have very deep roots, which Becker excavates – like Nikolai Fyodorov's 18th century "cosmism," a project to "scientifically" resurrect everyone who ever lived inside of a simulation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Fyodorov_(philosopher)

In their modern incarnation, these ideas largely originate in science fiction novels. That is to say, they were made up and popularized by people like me, the vast majority of whom made no pretense of being able to predict the future or even realistically describe a path from the present to the future they were presenting. Science fiction is something between a card trick and a consensual con game, where the writer shows you just enough detail to make you think that the rest of it must be lurking somewhere in the wings. No one in sf has ever explained how consciousness uploading could possibly work, and neither have any of the advocates for consciousness uploading – the difference is that (most of) the sf writers know they're just making stuff up.

Becker's central question is how many "smart" people (some of them very smart and accomplished, others merely very certain that they are smart despite all evidence to the contrary) can mistake futuristic allegories made up by pulp writers for prophesy?

In answering this question, he uncovers a corollary of Upton Sinclair's famous maxim that "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it," namely, that "it is easy to get a person to believe something when doing so will make them feel good about themselves."

The beliefs that Becker explores in this book sometimes make the believers rich (like the AI grifters who run around shouting about AI taking over the world and turning us all into paperclips). Sometimes, they make their believers feel good about being selfish assholes (like longtermism, which holds that all the misery in the world today is worth it if you can make 24 heptillion hypothetical simulated people just a little happy in 10,000 years). Sometimes, they make their believers feel good about life after death, or eternal life – the same pitch that religions have been roping in followers with since the stone age.

What differentiates these beliefs from other faith-based claims is that their followers claim that they aren't operating on faith, but on science, reason and rationality. This is where the fact that Becker is a bona fide astrophysicist comes in. Not only is he personally qualified to debunk claims about space colonization, but he's also familiar with the rigorous process of scientific inquiry, and capable of consulting experts and listening to them. That's how he concludes, for example, that having your head cut off and frozen when you die is just a form of corpse mutilation, with a zero point zero zero zero zero percent chance of someone recovering your mind from your freezerburned brain.

Like his subjects, Becker has a complicated relationship with science fiction. He, too, enjoys the imaginative flights of the genre, its delightful thought-experiments, its gnarly moral conundra. I love these too. They make for a fascinating and often useful lens for understanding and challenging our own relationship with technology and our very humanity. Ultimately, Becker is exploring the difference between reading sf because it makes you think in new ways, and reading sf as a kind of prophetic text, and – crucially – he's asserting that it's perfectly possible to enjoy this stuff without organizing your moral life around hypothetical heptillions of virtual people living in the year 25,000; or, indeed, having your head cut off and frozen.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/22/vinges-bastards/#cyberpunk-is-a-warning-not-a-suggestion

[mayapapaya33]

As an American, here's a preemptive (and retroactive) apology for the next 4 (hopefully only 4) years of random bullshit.

Dear citizen of _______________________________ (fill in the blank),

(Fill in the blank) ____________________________________________ _________________________________ was a/an (circle all that apply) Ridiculous, Possibly Illegal, Definitely Illegal, Isn't Technically Illegal but should be sorry, Monstrous, Moronic, Traitorous, Authoritarian, Unintelligible, Unacceptable, Corrupt, Evil, Threatening, Insulting, Demeaning, Insane, Greed / Ego Driven, Devastating, Distressing, Repugnant, Alarming, Horrifying statement/action and I am deeply embarrassed and ashamed by the implications of (Fill in the blank) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________. Please know we are going through a rough period and we are working on fixing it. Thank you for your understanding during this difficult time.

PS. Sorry he called your country a shithole, it seems lovely.

[goodhairbadmanners]

[nando161mando]

Won't anyone think of the oligarchs....

[justinspoliticalcorner]

CHRIS MEGERIAN, ZEKE MILLER and COLLEEN LONG at AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden used his farewell address to the nation Wednesday to deliver stark warnings about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the country and a “tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on Americans’ rights and the future of democracy. Speaking from the Oval Office as he prepares to hand over power Monday to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden seized what is likely to be his final opportunity to address the country before he departs the White House to spotlight the accumulation of power and wealth in the U.S. among just a small few. “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, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” Invoking President Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the rise of a military-industrial complex when he left office in 1961, Biden added, “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country as well.” [...] Biden sounded the alarm about oligarchy as some of the world’s richest individuals and titans of its technology industry have flocked to Trump’s side in recent months, particularly after his November victory. Billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $100 million helping Trump get elected, and executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have donated to Trump’s inaugural committee and made pilgrimages to Trump’s private club in Florida for audiences with the president-elect as they seek to ingratiate themselves with his administration and shape its policies.

President Joe Biden gave a heartening farewell address about the dangers of an oligarchy taking over the US that could imperil what remains of our democracy.

[diamonddaze01]

watching the sun set on the great american democratic experiment definitely was on my 2025 bingo card. unfortunately.

to all my fellow americans: community is our biggest asset. find yours. organize. rage for as long and as loud as you can.

[coffeeandoranges1]

now i'm on one of their own websites about it and...

they really do just say, "we want to end the Westphalian nation-state"

it's so weird to have the most reliable source i've found in ages be a glorified github but like, whatever

[bitchesgetriches]

6 Lessons YOU Can Learn from the Silicon Valley Bank Crash

Did we just help you out? Say thanks by donating to our Patreon!

[tomorrowusa]

Trump is a hood ornament for multi-billionaires; that's where we should keep our focus. The use of words like oligarch, oligarchy, and billionaires should be liberally sprinkled into political discourse.

BTW, the limo he's an ornament on is definitely not an electric vehicle.