This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to play part of what President Biden said last week in his farewell address when warning about the dangers of what he called the tech-industrial complex.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We see the same dangers of the concentration of technology, power and wealth. You know, in his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about — and I quote — “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,” end of quote. Six days — six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: For more on the growing alignment between Trump and Silicon Valley, we’re joined from San Francisco by Becca Lewis. She’s a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. Her research focuses on right-wing influence in Silicon Valley.
Becca, welcome to Democracy Now! You just finished your Ph.D. on this very subject. I think decades ago, people were associating Silicon Valley and Big Tech with certainly not the right and the far right. Can you talk about the change?
BECCA LEWIS: Yeah, that’s right. Thank you so much for having me. What I found in my research is that even though it hasn’t been part of our public understanding of Silicon Valley, there actually has been a really important right-wing strain in Silicon Valley for decades at this point. And a lot of what we’re seeing right now is that coming to fruition, really reaching an apex, rather than emerging out of nowhere.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about those forces in the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s.
BECCA LEWIS: Yeah. So, at that time, there was a lot of right-wing backlash against the gains of particularly feminism and fear around the breakdown of the nuclear family, or at least the perceived breakdown of the nuclear family. And there was a loose network of right-wing thinkers, writers, public intellectuals, who came to see Silicon Valley as a space to restore the role of masculinity in the American economy through this ideal of entrepreneurship. And they really promoted entrepreneurs as preternaturally gifted men who should not be held to, you know, society’s other standards, rules or regulations. And this was at a time when women and people of color were entering universities and institutions of higher learning at higher rates than ever before. And these groups of social reactionary men were promoting the idea that entrepreneurship could do away with all of that. You wouldn’t need education anymore, because the entrepreneurs would be the ones to save us.
AMY GOODMAN: [inaudible] is a leader in this movement.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Becca, also, this whole issue of — the Silicon Valley folks, for the most part, were not as involved in national politics until recent years. Does this shift, to some degree, reflect the fact that the Biden administration began to become more assertive in anti-monopoly and antitrust efforts against Silicon Valley?
BECCA LEWIS: Yes, absolutely. There certainly have been these reactionary strains within Silicon Valley, but you also have seen that, you know, the Obama administration, for example, was very, very welcoming to Silicon Valley and fostering it, and so you saw a lot of folks within Silicon Valley working really happily with the Obama administration. And I think that’s partly where we started to get this public perception that Silicon Valley was actually left-wing, when in fact a lot of what was happening was just a symbiosis and Silicon Valley being able to do what they wanted. Once they started facing pushback, there was a reaction against these more progressive forces and — or regulatory forces, at the very least. And now you see a wholehearted embrace of Trump with the hopes of deregulation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Also, President Trump announced yesterday a $500 billion joint venture known as Stargate, between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, in order to invest in an artificial intelligence power infrastructure. Could you talk about that and Trump’s efforts to rescind Biden’s executive order on AI?
BECCA LEWIS: Yes. This was a really big statement that the Trump administration would be friendly, would be deregulatory, would do everything to help out the tech titans who are promoting AI above all else. This is where we could see really the coziness emerging, even more than all of the tech titans in the front row at the inauguration. And it’s really telling that one of the tech titans who is working with Trump in this effort is Larry Ellison, who’s been one of the biggest right-wing forces in Silicon Valley since the 1980s and also who has been a longtime Trump loyalist.
AMY GOODMAN: Becca Lewis, Google, Meta, Apple all face antitrust lawsuits. Musk’s companies are under a number of investigations, reviews by federal agencies. As Trump’s second term begins, does he have leverage over these influential tech leaders, or are they completely running the show? And the significance of not only, you know, the head of Meta, Zuckerberg, and, of course, Elon Musk — right? — they’re all ahead of the Cabinet members, or the proposed Cabinet members, at the inauguration. But the CEO of TikTok was there, as well.
BECCA LEWIS: Yes, absolutely. Trump has leverage over them, and they have leverage over him. I think you’re seeing a symbiotic relationship, but one in which they realize that there’s power that each can gain from the other. For Trump, he really benefits from getting to attach his name to what seems like the forward-thinking, next-wave, innovative elements of Silicon Valley, whereas the tech titans themselves know that he actually holds the power around regulation and government intervention. And so, you are really seeing them cozy up to each other in a way that is driven both by aligned interests but also by mutual fear.
AMY GOODMAN: Becca Lewis, I want to thank you for being with us, postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, just finished her Ph.D., her current research focusing on right-wing influence in Silicon Valley. Thanks also to Robert Weissman of Public Citizen and Brendan Fischer of Documented. Brendan, we’ll also link to your new article in Rolling Stone, “Blame the Supreme Court for Elon Musk’s Power in Trump’s Administration.”
Coming up, Ravi Ragbir is back. In the last days of President Biden’s tenure as president, he pardoned the immigrant rights leader. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “No Es Mi Presidente,” “Not My President,” by Taina Asili, a remix version of the same song from 2017 that was released Monday.
