Technology

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s promise to tax imported goods could spell trouble for US auto industry

      by

      Few vehicles are as emblematic of the American auto industry’s might as the Ford F-150 pickup truck, the nation’s best-selling vehicle for over 40 years. But the F-150 is much less American than its image suggests. A fact that could present unique challenges for the company as Donald Trump moves to “make America great again”.Only about 32% of its components are made in the US or Canada, federal data shows, and that could spell trouble if Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods are implemented. Even less of the F-150 Lightning electric truck is made in the US – about 24%, a Cars.com analysis of federal data showed.The F-150’s price would almost certainly soar without some mitigation, industry observers say. Moreover, it would be virtually impossible to completely onshore its supply chain in short order – a process that could take many years.The uncertainty around the truck is representative of the auto industry as a whole as it waits to see if Trump follows through on his promised blanket taxes on imported goods. Top-selling vehicles in the US are similarly sourced from around the globe, and the auto industry’s supply chain is “a complicated universe”, said Ivan Drury, director of insights with industry analyst Edmunds.“The auto manufacturer is more like a parts collector – it’s not like Ford makes every component like everyone thinks,” Drury added. Because of that, tariffs would likely deliver supply chain shocks similar to the pandemic disruptions: “It could have the effect of you not getting the truck that you want.”Trump has proposed tariffs of between 60% and 100% on Chinese goods, and a tax of between 10% and 20% on every product imported from all other US trading partners, though very few details are available. During an October rally, he promised as much as a 500% tax on cars made in Mexico.“I’ll put a number where they can’t sell one car,” Trump boasted to the crowd.The goal is to force Ford and other automakers to onshore production and create manufacturing jobs here, but the idea is generating fears of shortages and inflation across the economy – the tariffs would cost the average US household about $2,600 per year, by some estimates.A more expensive F-150 could factor into that figure, but the impact of new tariffs will be felt widely across the industry.The industry analyst’s American Made Index (AMI) ranks how “American” 100 of the top vehicles sold in the US are, based on where parts are made as reported under the American Automobile Labeling Act, the location of vehicle assembly, US factory employment relative to vehicle production, and engine and transmission sourcing.The F-150 and F-150 Lightning ranked 58th and 56th, respectively, in 2024.The law does not require automakers to make granular data about where components such as steering wheels or airbags are made, so it is impossible to calculate how much a theoretical 20% import tax would increase the F-150’s cost. But Cars.com reported that the F-150’s 3.5-liter engines – including the Powerboost hybrid and the Raptor – are made in Mexico.All of its transmissions are made in the US, and final assembly takes place at plants near Kansas City or Detroit. For the F-150 Lightning, all motors and drive units are made in the US, and final assembly is near Detroit.“We’re at a point now in automotive history where the supply chain is not as simple as it once was and the badge on the hood is not indicative of where a vehicle was made,” said Patrick Masterson, chief copy editor at Cars.com.Ford didn’t respond to requests for comment, but when previously asked about the AMI rankings, it said: “Every single Ford F-Series truck is made in America. We build F-150s at Dearborn Truck Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and Kansas City Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Missouri.”View image in fullscreenBy comparison, the highest ranking truck in the AMI was the Toyota Ridgeline, slotted at sixth, with 70% of its parts produced in the US or Canada, and final assembly in Alabama.No vehicles from Detroit automakers are represented in the top 20 – the highest ranking is the Chevrolet Colorado at 23. Meanwhile, three Teslas are in the top 10 with about 70% of their parts produced in the US, and final assembly in Austin or Fremont, California. The Cybertruck is also among the most American-made trucks. Given that figure, tariffs could be a boon to Trump ally Elon Musk.An automaker’s calculus on where it sources parts includes variables like cost and efficiency of the components’ production, and many even have joint production agreements with other automakers.Fully onshoring would be a long, difficult process because factories would have to be built or expanded, and a workforce would have to be hired and trained. Parts suppliers are often at capacity or do not keep stock on hand to meet sudden shifts in demand, Drury noted.If Ford suddenly asked a US supplier for millions of a hypothetical part for the F-150, there would be a “snowballing effect” as the automaker waited for it to be produced, he added.“We don’t have interchangeable cogs, and these aren’t widgets for which you can swap out one for the next – these are highly specialized components,” Drury said. “Things always sound good on paper at first but the reality of the situation is no factories can be made overnight; a lot of suppliers are stretched thin.”Some automakers who have invested in US factories may be in a better position to weather tariffs, Masterson said, especially with EVs. Ford and GM are readying several new plants that will produce EVs or batteries across the south and in Michigan.On the other hand, tariffs could be especially problematic for EVs because automakers import critical minerals or electronics, like semiconductors. The semiconductor industry began onshoring under Biden, who implemented significant tariffs on Chinese semiconductors, but it remains far from being able to fully supply US automakers.The hit on an F-150 buyer would in part depend on what form tariffs take, Masterson said. Trump has proposed blanket tariffs on imported goods, which would, in theory, include all components produced elsewhere, but observers suspect that may change as he receives input from automakers.Trump’s most dramatic claim – the 500% tax on imported cars – seemed aimed at those undergoing final assembly in Mexico, though a hypothetical vehicle assembled there could have a significant number of parts sourced from the US.While tariffs could ignite turmoil, the cost increases could also benefit automakers by presenting an opportunity to raise prices, and create a sellers’ inflation similar to that which padded major corporations’ profits, including some automakers, as inflation soared several years ago, said Isabella Weber, an economist with the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Implementing policies that cause the nation’s most popular vehicle to suddenly be unaffordable would be deeply unpopular. Trump saw Democrats lose power over inflation, Weber added, and he might come up with measures to avoid hitting US consumers with the cost, like forcing foreign companies to pay part of the tariff.“Power will be their first goal,” Weber said. “Inflation undermines this.”Even with the potential cost shock, the tariffs seem to have some public appeal as a measure to protect the US auto industry. The message is especially potent when it comes to vehicles like the F-150, which holds cultural and emotional value. If Trump can implement policies to make the truck more American without hitting consumers with costs, it could be a huge win.“These are American companies and people have memories of them going back decades, so there’s a lot there for people to grab on to financially and emotionally,” Drury said. “That’s why autos are always going to be top of mind when asking ‘What are we are going to do to protect American industry?’” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Mark Zuckerberg seeks ‘active role’ in Trump tech policy

      by

      Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump, who have previously engaged in bitter public feuds, are now warming to each other as Zuckerberg seeks to influence tech policy in the incoming administration.The Meta CEO dined at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last week, talking technology and demonstrating the company’s camera-equipped sunglasses, Fox News reported.“Mark Zuckerberg has been very clear about his desire to be a supporter of and a participant in this change that we’re seeing all around America,” Stephen Miller, a top Trump deputy, told Fox.Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, agreed with Miller. Clegg said in a recent press call that Zuckerberg wanted to play an “active role” in the administration’s tech policy decisions and wanted to participate in “the debate that any administration needs to have about maintaining America’s leadership in the technological sphere,” particularly on artificial intelligence. Meta declined to provide further comment.The weeks since the election have seen something of a give-and-take developing between Trump and Zuckerberg, who previously banned the president-elect from Instagram and Facebook for using the platforms to incite political violence on 6 January 2021. In a move that appears in deference to Trump – who has long accused Meta of censoring conservative views – the company now says its content moderation has at times been too heavy-handed.Clegg said hindsight showed that Meta “overdid it a bit” in removing content during the Covid-19 pandemic, which Zuckerberg recently blamed on pressure from the Biden administration.“We know that when enforcing our policies, our error rates are still too high, which gets in the way of the free expression that we set out to enable,” Clegg said during the press call. “Too often, harmless content gets taken down, or restricted, and too many people get penalized unfairly.”Meta and Zuckerberg personally have shown other signs of softening towards Trump. The company lifted its ban on Trump ahead of the election, and Zuckerberg called the president-elect a “badass” for defiantly pumping a fist after being shot in July.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionZuckerberg was also among the tech leaders quick to publicly congratulate Trump following the November election – and seemed to anticipate years of collaboration ahead.“We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country,” he said in a 6 November post on Threads. “Looking forward to working with you and your administration.” More

    • 213 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      AI expert Marietje Schaake: ‘The way we think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves’

      by

      Marietje Schaake is a former Dutch member of the European parliament. She is now the international policy director at Stanford University Cyber Policy Center and international policy fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence. Her new book is entitled The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley.In terms of power and political influence, what are the main differences between big tech and previous incarnations of big business?The difference is the role that these tech companies play in so many aspects of people’s lives: in the state, the economy, geopolitics. So while previous monopolists amassed a lot of capital and significant positions, they were usually in one sector, like oil or car production. These tech companies are like octopuses with tentacles in so many different directions. They have so much data, location data, search, communications, critical infrastructure, and now AI can be built on top of all that assembled power, which makes these companies very different animals to what we’ve seen in the past.Peter Kyle, the UK’s technology secretary, recently suggested that governments need to show a “sense of humility” with big tech companies and treat them more like nation states. What are your thoughts on that? I think it’s a baffling misunderstanding of the role of a democratically elected and accountable leader. Yes, these companies have become incredibly powerful, and as such I understand the comparison to the role of states, because increasingly these companies take decisions that used to be the exclusive domain of the state. But the answer, particularly from a government that is progressively leaning, should be to strengthen the primacy of democratic governance and oversight, and not to show humility. What is needed is self-confidence on the part of democratic government to make sure that these companies, these services, are taking their proper role within a rule of law-based system, and are not overtaking it.What do you think the impact will be of Donald Trump’s presidency? The election of Donald Trump changes everything because he has brought specific tech interests closer than any political leader ever has, especially in the United States, which is this powerful geopolitical and technological hub. There’s a lot of crypto money supporting Trump. There’s a lot of VCs [venture capitalists] supporting him, and of course he has elevated Elon Musk and has announced a deregulatory agenda. Every step taken by his administration will be informed by these factors, whether it’s the personal interests of Elon Musk and his companies, or the personal preferences of the president and his supporters. On the other hand, Musk is actually critical of some dynamics around AI, namely existential risk. We’ll have to see how long the honeymoon between him and Trump lasts, and also how other big tech companies are going to respond. Because they’re not going to be happy that Musk decides on tech policy over his competitors. I’m thinking rocky times ahead.Why have politicians been so light touch in the face of the digital technological revolution? The most powerful companies we see now were all rooted in this sort of progressive, libertarian streak of counterculture in California, that romantic narrative of a couple of guys in their shorts in a basement or garage, coding away and challenging the big powers that be: the publishers of the media companies, the hotel branches, the taxi companies, the financial services, all of which had pretty bad reputations to begin with. And surely there was room for disruption, but this kind of underdog mentality was incredibly powerful. The companies have done a really smart job of framing what they are doing as decentralising, like the internet itself. Companies like Google and Facebook have consistently argued that any regulatory step would hurt the internet. So it’s a combination of wanting to believe the promise and not appreciating how very narrow corporate interests won out at the expense of the public interest.Do you see any major politicians who are prepared to stand up to big tech interests? Well someone like [US senator] Elizabeth Warren has the most clear vision about the excessive power and abuse of power by corporations, including the tech sector. She’s been consistent in trying to address this. But broadly I’m afraid that political leaders are not really taking this on the way they should. In the European Commission, I’m not really seeing a vision. I’ve seen elections, including in my own country, where tech didn’t feature as a topic at all. And we see those comments by the UK government, although one would assume that democratic guardrails around excessively powerful corporates are a no-brainer.Have politicians been held back by their technological ignorance? Yes, I think they are intimidated. But I also think that the framing against the agency of governments is a deliberate one by tech companies. It’s important to understand the way in which we are taught to think about technology is shaped by the tech companies themselves. And so we get the whole narrative that governments are basically disqualified to deal with tech because they’re too stupid, too outdated, too poor in service delivery. The message is that if they can’t even process the taxes on time, what do you think they’re going to do with AI? It’s a caricature of government, and government should not embrace that caricature.Do you think the UK has been weakened in its position with big tech as a result of leaving the EU? Yes and no. Australia and Canada have developed tech policies, and they’re smaller in numbers than the UK population. I don’t know if it’s that. I think it’s actually much more of a deliberate choice to want to attract investment. So maybe it’s just self-interest that transcends Conservative and Labour governments, because I don’t see much change in the tech policy, whereas I had anticipated change. I was obviously overly optimistic there.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYou talk about regaining sovereignty. Do you think most people even recognise that any sovereignty has been lost? One of the reasons why I wrote this book is to reach average news readers, not tech experts. Explaining that this is a problem that concerns people is a huge undertaking. I’m curious to see how the impact of the Trump government will invite responses from European leaders, but also from others around the world who are simply going to think we cannot afford this dependence on US tech companies. It’s undesirable. Because, essentially, we’re shipping our euros or pounds over to Silicon Valley, and what do we get in return? More dependency. It’s going to be incredibly challenging, but not doing anything is certainly not going to make it better.

      The Tech Coup by Marietje Schaake is published by Princeton University Press (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Will the Democrats finally realize that Big Tech is not an ally? | Zephyr Teachout

      by

      As Democrats think about how to counter the Trump administration, they need to accept a very simple lesson from the last eight years. Big tech and big business are part of the political opposition working on behalf of Donald Trump, not the Democrats’ allies working against Trump and Trumpism.It shouldn’t seem necessary to point out what seems to be an obvious fact. Nonetheless, there are some Democrats trying to stay close to big tech, or downplaying the importance of anti-monopoly policy when it comes to authoritarian risks. For example, a few days ago, Priorities USA, the largest Democratic party Super Pac, held a big resistance strategy session hosted by “our friends at Google”.As another example, Adam Jentleson, a political writer and a former chief of staff for US senator John Fetterman, wrote a recent piece for the New York Times that among other things criticized fighting monopolies as a “niche issue”. He argued that there’s a dichotomy between kitchen table issues and challenging corporate power, and we should focus on the former.The belief that big tech, and more broadly big business, is helpful to Democrats has already been tried – and found to be untrue.When Trump was elected in 2016, one central pillar of the Democratic resistance involved using big tech platforms as a counterweight. If you remember, the CEO of Google even joined anti-Trump protests. Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and pre-Elon Musk Twitter were scolded for using technologies that enabled extremism, but instead of aggressively moving to regulate the algorithmic design, change liability rules or break them up, Democrats focused on nudging platforms on editorial policy.The assumption was they could be corralled into the “right” set of editorial practices, ones that would help defeat Trump and Maga-ism, and limit the reach of his rhetoric in the short term. This was the context in which the “misinformation and disinformation” framework was born.We use the phrases all the time now, but it is worth reflecting on how strange they are. Sometimes misinformation refers to inadvertent lies, and disinformation describes purposeful lies, but sometimes the terms encompass factually correct but misleading information, or as Barack Obama argued in 2022, the “suppression of true information” if such suppression was done for, among other things, “political gain” or “targeting those you don’t like”.Not only did these new categories infuriate those who were caught in the broad, fuzzy definitions, but they focused Democratic attention away from questions of power. The mis/disinformation framework fit part and parcel with joining with big tech as an anti-fascist alliance. “We”, the science-grounded Democrats, would successfully work hand in hand with the biggest tech companies in the world to protect America.Eight years later, the Democrats have lost the White House, House of Representatives and Senate. The big tech platforms are awash in extremist content. Big tech should not look like the ally anymore. Not only is Musk fully ensconced at the head of the power table, right next to Trump, but the CEOs of Meta, Alphabet, Apple and Amazon all reached out to Trump before the election, perhaps taking seriously his threat to put Mark Zuckerberg in jail if he opposed him, perhaps just realizing that Trump is a deregulatory juggernaut.Musk reportedly joined a recent phone call between Trump and the CEO of Google. We can anticipate dozens of such meetings at the highest levels, and strong relationships being born. And instead of repeatedly insisting that tech titans have too much power, we have spent eight years arming them with language that can be used to suppress dissent.Repeated polling has shown that voters actually hate corporate monopolies, and antitrust politics are extremely popular. I don’t want to overclaim the point – antitrust politics disappeared in America for the 30 years between 1980 and 2020, and it is fair to argue that anti-monopoly policy, especially against big tech, can use more experimentation in how we talk about it. On the substance, however, we should be very concerned.Facebook, Google and Amazon have destroyed the actual bulwark against autocratic leaders – local journalism – while cozying up to actual autocracy. They now control the digital ad industry. According to one recent research report, if they paid news organizations what they make off them by standing as a middleman between readers and writers, they would be handing over between $12bn and $14bn a year. The very journalists and news organizations we rely on for fact-finding and fact-checking are scared of being shadowbanned – Jeff Bezos’s fear of Trump being exhibit A of how that can impact editorial content.Google, thankfully, has officially been called an illegal monopolist by a court, thanks to the work of the Department of Justice under assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter, and other antitrust cases regarding Facebook and Amazon are winding their way through the court system. But even if Google is forced to divest Chrome, which seems possible, the failure of Democrats in power to put serious tech-busting legislation to a vote now seems grotesque. It looks like we didn’t even try to stop the incoming power couple of Trump and tech.While pundits are trying to sort through the messaging lesson of how Kamala Harris lost what seemed like a winnable election, we would do well to look further back, and remember the real lessons from 2016: joining hands with big tech oligarchs is joining hands with the destruction of the Democratic party and democracy.

      Zephyr Teachout is a professor at Fordham Law School and the author of Break ’Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom from Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money More

    • 213 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform

      by

      Was that the week that marked the death of X? The platform formerly regarded as a utopian market square for exchanging information has suffered its largest exodus to date.Bluesky, emerging as X’s newest rival, has amassed 16 million users, including 1 million in the course of 24 hours last week. Hundreds of thousands of people have quit the former Twitter since Donald Trump’s election victory on 6 November.The catalyst is X’s owner, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who transformed the social media site and used it as a megaphone to blast Trump into the White House.The US president-elect said Musk would head the new Department of Government Efficiency, the acronym for which, Doge, is a pun on the dog internet meme and the Dogecoin cryptocurrency, started as a joke by its creators, which jumped in value after Musk dubbed it “the people’s cypto” in 2021.Musk now sits at the heart of the US government, yet requires no Senate approval for his actions and can continue to work in the private sector. He’s allowed to keep X and his 204 million followers, as well as head his electric car company Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. For the first time in history, a big tech billionaire is now shaping democracy not just indirectly, via his media, but directly.“I’m not aware of any precedent for this approach,” said Rob Enderle, president of the technology analyst firm Enderle, who has worked with companies including Microsoft, Sony and Dell.View image in fullscreenAs recently as 2022, Musk tweeted that “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” He tweeted that “Trump would be 82 at end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.”Months later, when Musk bought Twitter for $44bn, he fired content moderators and charged for account verification, which meant people could buy influence. Twitter was rebranded to X, shed millions of users and reinstated Trumps’s account, suspended after the White House insurrection in January 2021.The proliferation on X of alt-right diatribe, hate speech and bots, as well as Musk’s own clash with the UK government during the riots in August, have led to mounting disquiet among X users. The Guardian and Observer announced last week that their presence on the site was now untenable and they would no longer post. Stephen King, the author, left, saying it had become “too toxic”. Oscar-winners Barbra Streisand and Jamie Lee Curtis have departed the platform.“X has become effectively Truth Social premium,” said Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics, referring to Trump’s hard-right social media platform. And the talk in technology circles is that Trump’s Truth Social could be folded into X.If that happens, whose interests take priority? Would Musk suppress criticism of the authoritarian governments he does business with, or promote it? In the Donald and Elon media show, who is the puppet or paymaster?“If that happens, it will be the ultimate amplification machine for Trump’s ideas – a political super-app masquerading as social media,” said James Kirkham of Iconic, which advises brands including Uber and EA Sports on digital strategies. “Forget Facebook or Fox News; the true heart of the GOP’s digital strategy could be X.”“I’m expecting X and Truth Social to merge,” said Enderle. “But this could be one of the efforts that will come between Musk and Trump, given how overvalued Truth Social now is.”The bromance between the world’s two biggest egos is mutually beneficial only as long as the two transactional, power-hungry and impulsive men play nice. Trump is hawkish on China, one of Tesla’s most lucrative markets. Trump essentially campaigned against electric car manufacturing. Trump is protectionist; Musk opposes tariffs. On climate change, they are opposed.Jonathan Monten, a political science professor at UCL, is sceptical over the durability of their relationship.“Musk’s use to Trump was both private money and providing a platform, or using a platform, to a more favourable pro-Trump line,” he said.“It’s unclear what continued purpose or use Musk actually has to him. Yes, it’s sort of this celebrity story, but that’s Trump’s brand. He has one celebrity story today and tomorrow we’ll have another.”The early 2010s were the halcyon days of Twitter when activists, artists, lawyers, academics, policymakers, journalists and specialists of every flavour could connect, share information, exchange ideas and follow events in real time.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenIt would be easy to portray Musk as the bogeyman, but some argue that it was TikTok and the advent of the algorithmic timeline that fundamentally destroyed Twitter. As social media began optimising for scale and for profit at the expense of user experience, algorithms prioritised the “best” content – the content that shouted loudest or was most specifically tailored to users. Curated accounts to follow, and “most recent” content, fell by the wayside.“As much as I think Musk has acted in harmful ways, I think part of this is about the logic of social media platforms as they evolve,” said Carrigan. “The consequences of an advertising-based model incentivise certain ways of organising the platform that create negative effects.”Bluesky, which became the most popular app on the app store on Friday, is the choice for X refugees, although its 16 million users pale in insignificance compared to Meta’s Threads, which reported reaching 275 million monthly active users, and X with about 317 million..View image in fullscreenFor some tech nerds, the X-odus is not something to mourn, but could herald the era of decentralised social networks they have been dreaming of known as the “Fediverse”.Advocates of the “Fediverse” argue that there should be one account for any social media network in the same way that Gmail accounts can email any email addresses, or mobile numbers call users on any other network.In walling off social networks so users can’t leave, the platform has the power. Instead, newer social networks including Bluesky are being built on “ecosystems” that enable them to interconnect.No one knows what will happen to X, with predictions ranging from collapse, to flipping to an anti-Trump platform if Musk and the president lock horns, to becoming a training ground for Musk’s xAI venture. AI could gobble up social media, and xAI is valued at $40bn – almost the price Musk paid for Twitter. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world | Carole Cadwalladr

      by

      1 When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Last week Donald Trump appointed a director of intelligence who spouts Russian propaganda, a Christian nationalist crusader as secretary of defence, and a secretary of health who is a vaccine sceptic. If Trump was seeking to destroy American democracy, the American state and American values, this is how he’d do it.2 Journalists are first, but everyone else is next. Trump has announced multibillion-dollar lawsuits against “the enemy camp”: newspapers and publishers. His proposed FBI director is on record as wanting to prosecute certain journalists. Journalists, publishers, writers, academics are always in the first wave. Doctors, teachers, accountants will be next. Authoritarianism is as predictable as a Swiss train. It’s already later than you think.3 To name is to understand. This is McMuskism: it’s McCarthyism on steroids, political persecution + Trump + Musk + Silicon Valley surveillance tools. It’s the dawn of a new age of political witch-hunts, where burning at the stake meets data harvesting and online mobs.4 If that sounds scary, it’s because that’s the plan.  Trump’s administration will be incompetent and reckless but individuals will be targeted, institutions will cower, organisations will crumble. Fast. The chilling will be real and immediate.5 You have more power than you think. We’re supposed to feel powerless. That’s the strategy. But we’re not. If you’re a US institution or organisation, form an emergency committee. Bring in experts. Learn from people who have lived under authoritarianism. Ask advice.6 Do not kiss the ring. Do not bend to power. Power will come to you, anyway. Don’t make it easy. Not everyone can stand and fight. But nobody needs to bend the knee until there’s an actual memo to that effect. WAIT FOR THE MEMO.7 Know who you are. This list is a homage to Yale historian, Timothy Snyder. His On Tyranny, published in 2017, is the essential guide to the age of authoritarianism. His first command, “Do not obey in advance”, is what has been ringing, like tinnitus, in my ears ever since the Washington Post refused to endorse Kamala Harris. In some weird celestial stroke of luck, he calls me as I’m writing this and I ask for his updated advice: “Know what you stand for and what you think is good.”8 Protect your private life. The broligarchy doesn’t want you to have one. Read Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: they need to know exactly who you are to sell you more shit. We’re now beyond that. Surveillance Authoritarianism is next. Watch The Lives of Others, the beautifully told film about surveillance in 80s east Berlin. Act as if you are now living in East Germany and Meta/Facebook/Instagram/WhatsApp is the Stasi. It is.9 Throw up the Kool-Aid. You drank it. That’s OK. We all did. But now is the time to stick your fingers down your throat and get that sick tech bro poison out of your system. Phones were – still are – a magic portal into a psychedelic fun house of possibility. They’re also tracking and surveilling you even as you sleep while a Silicon Valley edgelord plots ways to tear up the federal government.10 Listen to women of colour. Everything bad that happened on the internet happened to them first. The history of technology is that it is only when it affects white men that it’s considered a problem. Look at how technology is already being used to profile and target immigrants. Know that you’re next.11 Think of your personal data as nude selfies. A veteran technology journalist told me this in 2017 and it’s never left me. My experience of “discovery” – handing over 40,000 emails, messages, documents to the legal team of the Brexit donor I’d investigated – left me paralysed and terrified. Think what a hostile legal team would make of your message history. This can and will happen.12 Don’t buy the bullshit. A Securities and Exchange judgment found Facebook had lied to two journalists – one of them was me – and Facebook agreed to pay a $100m penalty. If you are a journalist, refuse off the record briefings. Don’t chat on the phone; email. Refuse access interviews. Bullshit exclusives from Goebbels 2.0 will be a stain on your publication for ever.13 Even dickheads love their dogs. Find a way to connect to those you disagree with. “The obvious mistakes of those who find themselves in opposition are to break off relations with those who disagree with you,” texts Vera Krichevskaya, the co-founder of TV Rain, Russia’s last independent TV station. “You cannot allow anger and narrow your circle.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion14 Pay in cash. Ask yourself what an international drug trafficker would do, and do that. They’re not going to the dead drop by Uber or putting 20kg of crack cocaine on a credit card. In the broligarchy, every data point is a weapon. Download Signal, the encrypted messaging app. Turn on disappearing messages.15 Remember. Writer Rebecca Solnit, an essential US liberal voice, emails: “If they try to normalize, let us try to denormalize. Let us hold on to facts, truths, values, norms, arrangements that are going to be under siege. Let us not forget what happened and why.”16 Find allies in unlikely places. One of my most surprising sources of support during my trial(s) was hard-right Brexiter David Davis. Find threads of connection and work from there.17 There is such a thing as truth. There are facts and we can know them. From Tamsin Shaw, professor in philosophy at New York University: “‘Can the sceptic resist the tyrant?’ is one of the oldest questions in political philosophy. We can’t even fully recognise what tyranny is if we let the ruling powers get away with lying to us all.”18 Plan. Silicon Valley doesn’t think in four-year election cycles. Elon Musk isn’t worrying about the midterms. He’s thinking about flying a SpaceX rocket to Mars and raping and pillaging its rare earth minerals before anyone else can get there. We need a 30-year road map out of this.19 Take the piss. Humour is a weapon. Any man who feels the need to build a rocket is not overconfident about his masculinity. Work with that. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump selects Elon Musk to lead government efficiency department

      by

      Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Donald Trump said on Tuesday.Despite the name, the department will not be a government agency. Trump said in a statement that Musk and Ramaswamy will work from outside government to offer the White House “advice and guidance” and will partner with the Office of Management and Budget to “drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” He added that the move would shock government systems.Trump said the duo “will pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies”.Posting on X, the social media platform he owns, Musk pledged to document all actions of the department online for “maximum transparency”.“Anytime the public thinks we are cutting something important or not cutting something wasteful, just let us know!” he said, while also promise to keep “a leaderboard for most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars”.Ramaswamy also responded to the announcement of his appointment on X. “We will not go gently, @elonmusk”, he said, adding an American flag emoji.It is not clear how the organization will operate. It could come under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which dictates how external groups that advise the government must operate and be accountable to the public.Federal employees are generally required to disclose their assets and entanglements to ward off any potential conflicts of interest, and to divest significant holdings relating to their work. Because Musk and Ramaswamy would not be formal federal workers, they would not face those requirements or ethical limitations.Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu and the name of the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk promotes. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.The value of dogecoin has more than doubled since election day, tracking a surge in cryptocurrency markets on expectations of a softer regulatory ride under a Trump administration. Shares in Tesla are up about 30% since the election.Trump said their work would conclude by 4 July 2026, adding that a smaller and more efficient government would be a “gift” to the country on the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.Ramaswamy is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican party nomination last year. After dropping out of the race, he threw his support behind Trump. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet.He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm Buzzfeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.Musk, speaking to reporters last month, stated a goal of reducing government spending by $2tn. Practically speaking, experts say those cost cuts could result in deregulation and policy changes that would directly impact Musk’s universe of companies, particularly Tesla, SpaceX, X and Neuralink.Adding a government portfolio to Musk’s plate could benefit the market value of his companies and favored businesses such as artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.Equities analyst Daniel Ives of Wedbush Securities said in a research note: “It’s clear that Musk will have a massive role in the Trump White House with his increasing reach clearly across many federal agencies.”But Musk’s appointment was criticized by Public Citizen, a progressive consumer rights NGO that challenged several of Trump’s first-term policies. “Musk not only knows nothing about government efficiency and regulation, his own businesses have regularly run afoul of the very rules he will be in position to attack,” co-president Lisa Gilbert said in a statement.Trump had made clear that Musk would likely not hold any kind of full-time position, given his other commitments.“I don’t think I can get him full-time because he’s a little bit busy sending rockets up and all the things he does,” Trump said at a rally in Michigan in September. “He said the waste in this country is crazy. And we’re going to get Elon Musk to be our cost-cutter.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Elon Musk handpicked by Trump to carry out slash-and-burn cuts plan

      by

      Donald Trump, president-elect of the US, announced on Tuesday that he has selected Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, with plans to reduce bureaucracy in the federal government by roughly a third.Musk had pushed for a government efficiency department and has since relentlessly promoted it, emphasizing the acronym for the agency: Doge, a reference to a meme of an expressive Shiba Inu. Trump said the agency will be conducting a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms”.In a video posted on X two days after the election, Trump said he would “immediately re-issue my 2020 executive order, restoring the president’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats”. He wants to “clean out the deep state”. His promises echo his slogan on The Apprentice: “You’re fired!” And Project 2025, an influential and controversial blueprint for Trump’s second term, lays out ways to make bureaucrats fireable.Musk has extensive experience slashing corporate spending, and he has promised to cull federal payrolls in much the same way. He cut staff at X, formerly Twitter, by 80% after buying it in 2022, a move he said prevented a $3bn shortfall, but which has not otherwise paid off. Revenue is in steep decline and advertisers have absconded, making a comeback seem unlikely. As the CEO of SpaceX, however, he has garnered a reputation for launching rockets more cheaply than competitors by negotiating with suppliers and keeping operations lean.The billionaire does not seem to be under any illusions of what will happen after his proposed cuts, admitting that reducing spending “necessarily involves some temporary hardship”. Americans do want to spend less – of their own money. Do they want austerity and less financial assistance from the federal government? Do they want the world’s richest person admonishing them to cut their expenses?Ramaswamy, meanwhile, is a wealthy biotech entrepreneur whose first time running for office was for the Republican nomination last year. He told ABC earlier this week that he was having “high-impact discussions” about possible roles in Trump’s cabinet. He also has no government experience, but has pushed for cost-cutting in the corporate sector. After building a stake in the struggling online media firm BuzzFeed, he urged the company in May to cut staff and hire conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson.Musk has already asked Trump to appoint SpaceX employees to top government positions, the New York Times has reported. The president-elect promised to ban bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they regulate. Such a rule would seem to bar SpaceX’s lieutenants from the Pentagon’s door. But Trump has never shied away from cronyism. The two are not trying to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest: Musk’s role in the government will be structured so that he can maintain control of his companies, the Financial Times reports.In his first term, Trump and his team struggled to fill the thousands of government appointments needed to run the federal government. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said the administration never fully recovered from its failure to find those appointees. Perhaps adding Musk to the equation is meant to prevent a repeat of such laggardness.In an extreme version of the new administration, Trump and Musk simply eliminate any position for which they cannot find a friendly appointee. In John Kennedy Toole’s Pulitzer-winning 1980 novel A Confederacy of Dunces, the idiot hero, tasked with organizing an intractable pile of files at his new job, eradicates the company’s mess. Ignatius J Reilly is no genius of organization, though; he is just throwing cabinets full of records away. It is easy to imagine Trump and Musk following his example.What will stand in Musk’s way, however, is one of his sworn enemies: labor law. Tesla is the only major US carmaker that does not employ a unionized workforce. The billionaire CEO wants to keep it that way. Federal government employees, by contrast, enjoy strong employment protections that would hinder Musk’s slash-and-burn approach to cost-cutting and possibly render it impossible.For all the different companies he runs, Musk has little experience managing public sector employees. He may find them less pliable lions than he is used to taming.Kira Lerner contributed to this report More