FLASH
Shkruar nga Edward Luce
They get what they want...
The days of censoring Americans online are over, said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “ The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies for garbage ,” wrote Vice President JD Vance of X. Europe is pursuing “civilizational suicide” through regulation and censorship, added Christopher Landau, Rubio’s deputy. And so on. All because the EU last week imposed a modest $140 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for violations unrelated to free speech. But forget the details. Musk is the EU’s sworn enemy. As is Donald Trump, who this week described Europe as “rotting” with its “weak” leaders.
Despite their bitter feud earlier this year, Musk and Trump are destined to be close. As America’s leading broligarch (brother-oligarch), Musk is too important for Trump to ignore for long. Musk can flirt with a third party, denounce Trump’s fiscal recklessness, and even claim that Trump has personal reasons for suppressing the Epstein files, but the prodigal son can always find a way back. They have many common enemies. The same goes for Trump and the rest of the broligarchy. When historians evaluate this era of American populism, Silicon Valley plutocrats will surely be judged its winners.
Trump’s worker base seems to be accepting this. Although he now says he plans to revive them, the US president has practically stopped holding anti-MAGA rallies. Yet he hardly goes a day without closing in on one of his Silicon Valley allies. Besides Musk, David Sacks, the White House AI czar, and Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, are rarely far from the Oval Office. They get what they want. Trump plans to issue an executive order banning America’s 50 states from regulating AI. There should be a national rule and nothing more, he says. With no prospect of serious federal regulation, AI companies will continue to have leeway.
The AI gold rush has fueled U.S. growth, nearly half of which this year has come from the rise of LLMs. But it’s not going down well with the average voter. Deep suspicion of AI is one of the few issues that unites Republican and Democratic voters. Some Americans rightly blame rising electricity bills on the impact of energy-guzzling AI data centers. Many fear that AI will steal their jobs and incomes. The more AI permeates people’s lives, the harder it will be to blame immigrants for their problems. Distant Europe offers an even weaker culprit. The cost of Trump’s capture by Silicon Valley is evident in his declining approval ratings.
If Trump were to follow the market, he would focus on the cost of living. That’s what drove Democratic victories in last month’s election and could be key to next November’s midterm elections. Yet Trump continues to dismiss the affordability crisis as fake news. As he approaches his 80th birthday, his ability to read the public appears to be waning. A growing number of Republicans now feel able to challenge him. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s retirement from Congress is one way to avoid the electoral freight train she sees coming. Her move was also a bid for the future of MAGA, which will increasingly pit the base against the broligarchs.
The base has more people, but it would still be smart to bet on the broligarchs. With brief Rooseveltian exceptions, America’s capitalist odyssey has been about capital owners finding ways to exploit workers in need. The dividing lines are racial and cultural. Given the power of tech platforms to weaponize social divisions, the odds are high that they will continue to succeed. The MAGA base believed Trump when he promised to lower prices and usher in a new golden age. Who’s to say they won’t continue to fall for the same trick? The effects of Trump’s tariff wars have hit their profits but left big tech companies largely unscathed.
Yet America’s 21st-century robber barons offer an irresistible political target. Having been Silicon Valley supporters since Bill Clinton’s time, Democrats are experiencing secret regret. Rather than a spark in the pan, Zohran Mamdani, the newly elected mayor of New York, looks more like a potential trailblazer. Even centrists, like James Carville, Clinton’s “it’s the economy, stupid” campaign manager, are looking radical.
“ It’s time for Democrats to embrace a comprehensive, aggressive, unvarnished, insensitive and utterly unmistakable platform of pure economic outrage. That’s the only way out of the abyss ,” Carville wrote in the New York Times.
Meanwhile, Europe has been given all the warnings. In America, Trump has given the broligarchs an open field. Across the Atlantic, they see only obstacles to overcome. / Adapted from "Pamphlet" from "Financial Times"
Ky zorraxhiu i kazinove qe gjithe jeten qe i deshtuar i sherben vetem surratit e sorrollopit te vet pa le te digjet gjithe bota. Populli Amerikan trim por naiv do e kuptoje kur te jete vone.