In the US Oligarchy, Tech Billionaires and Other War Profiteers, Flanked by Neocon Ideologues, Have the Last Word, Not the President, Whoever He or She May Be
Elon Musk, the self-proclaimed champion of free speech (who simultaneously practices censorship and suppresses views he doesn’t like on his ‘X’ platform), has stepped up his support for Trump’s campaign in the final weeks before the crucial US election day on 5 November. The oligarch who supported the Democrats in the last presidential elections, wants to win over the so-called swing states for Trump with millions. He is financing Republican senators and distributing money to registered voters and door-to-door helpers. This campaign is crowned by a daily prize draw of one million dollars to a registered voter in the arguably decisive swing state of Pennsylvania.
A lot is at stake for Elon Musk. He has received contracts worth billions from US federal agencies for Tesla and SpaceX and has become an important part of the military-industrial complex. According to research by the New York Times, he has so far secured contracts worth over 15 billion dollars, funded by American taxpayers.
Musk’s Starlink satellite system, for example, is the backbone of Ukraine’s military network in NATO’s proxy war against Russia, according to the Washington Post. He also sees himself restricted by regulations relating to occupational health and safety or environmental protection. Because of these contracts, he sought the future position as head of a ‘Commission on Government Efficiency’ to be appointed by President Trump in order to remove all obstacles for him and his companies. Presidential candidate Trump returned the favour to Musk by promising him to be appointed. Among the regulations Musk opposes, for example, is SpaceX’s obligation to obtain a permit to discharge large quantities of contaminated water from its launch pad in Texas. On his X platform, Musk explained that relaxing such requirements would help SpaceX reach Mars faster — ‘as long as the project isn’t stifled by red tape’.
Together with like-minded billionaire and Israel lobbyist Miriam Adelson (wife of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson) and Richard Uihlein, Musk is financing the Trump campaign with over 200 million dollars as well as Republican senators in swing states.
Trump’s supporters also include members of a billion-dollar network of venture capitalists from Silicon Valley. According to the Washington Post on 28 July 2024, they were able to convince Trump of the candidacy of one of them, James David Vance, for the office of Vice President.
J.D. Vance was promoted in the investment sector and also politically by tech mogul Peter Thiel, one of America’s biggest war profiteers. He helped turn Ukraine into an AI war lab and Israel commit a genocide against Palestinians. The promotion was a decisive step towards using Trump’s presidency to influence the future government in the interests of the tech libertarians and war profiteers.
The two billionaires Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are active in the venture capital and crypto business, have also sided with Trump. They are libertarian political activists who are annoyed by the U.S. government’s first AI regulation. As the Associated Press reported at the end of July 2024, Trump promised after the corresponding AI executive order came into force on 30 October 2023 that he would immediately repeal it if he became president.
Trump is their willing promoter — according to the Washington Post, he has already turned from a sceptic to a fan of cryptocurrencies and founded a crypto company with his children, according to CNN.
The Biden administration’s rather loose executive order is already too restrictive for some tech billionaires in Silicon Valley, although as a directive it cannot have the same legal effect as, for example, the EU’s AI Act. Although it is obvious that self-regulation by the tech giants will not work in their competition and that state regulation will be necessary, these tech oligarchs are fighting back and want to use Trump to give them maximum room for manoeuvre.
Yet, the dynamic development of AI undoubtedly calls for certain regulations. The potential for the economy is huge. But there are also grave dangers and risks. This is less about fake news and fake videos accelerated by AI, and more about the threat of military applications; and also — as various AI experts such as Geoffrey Hinton, who has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, have warned — that generative AI could get out of control and become truly dangerous for humanity.
The string-pullers of the Uniparty: 82 billionaires support Kamala Harris, 52 billionaires support Donald Trump
On the other side of the unified or Uniparty with a Republican and a Democratic wing, the more ‘traditional’ oligarchs such as Bill Gates, who donated 50 million dollars to Harris’ campaign, and Michael Bloomberg are supporting the Democratic presidential candidate. According to a breakdown by Forbes, 82 billionaires have so far supported Kamala Harris and 52 Donald Trump. Protagonists of the military-industrial complex and war profiteers include Eric Schmidt from Google. The owners of all major technology companies such as Google, Meta/Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft receive contracts worth billions of dollars from the Pentagon, the US Department of Defence or, more precisely, the War Department. They will do business with anyone sitting in the Oval Office, regardless of the (rather insignificant) different political nuances.
Another supporter of Harris, for example, is Vinod Khosla, whose venture capital firm Khosla Ventures invests in several defence companies. Rocket Lab, for example, founded its own subsidiary for national security in 2022. It builds military satellites for the Space Development Agency under a USD 515 million contract. Khosla Ventures is also investing in Varda, which is working with the Air Force on hypersonic velocity testing. Finally, the company is investing in Hermeus, which is working with the Air Force on an unmanned hypersonic aircraft.
The warmongering neocons with ties to war-profiteering oligarchs were an integral part of the Biden-Harris administration, and they would continue to have a dominant influence in a Trump presidency.
Aaron Levie, CEO of cloud computing company Box, which works with several federal government agencies including the Pentagon, said in an interview with CNN that Harris will do what the military-industrial complex and tech oligarchs want a US president to do: “I am pretty optimistic. I believe she has some appreciation for the different dynamics that we deal with in the tech industry, and how important of a role tech is going to play in the future of the economy and the country.”
And finally, there are overlaps in that parts of the war industry, America’s largest industry and employer by far, are financially supporting both candidates at the same time.
To Professor Roberto J. González, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, the defense contractors are poised to win regardless of who wins the election.
“In the end,” explains Roberto J. González, “there’s lots of money to be made, no matter who leads the country. Neither of the two parties, and none of the candidates, are talking about scaling back the Pentagon’s budget.”
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Supplement: America’s “Democracy” Explained
Members of Congress (America’s parliament) are corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats, “corporate” because they are politicians bought up by large corporations, apart from very few exceptions such as Senator Bernie Sanders or Congress woman Ilhan Omar.
Firms supply members of Congress with cash in their campaign war chests to curry favor later. One industry, for example, that has a direct impact on Americans — and gives a lot of money to elected officials — is big pharma.
Prices for prescription drugs have skyrocketed, it largely stems from the actions of lawmakers sponsored by the industry. Americans therefore spend more on prescription drugs — average costs are about $1,200 per person per year, and more than anyone else in the world!
Several dozens members of Congress and their spouses own millions $ worth of stocks in leading weapons manufacturers. Several of these stockholders sit on committees that determine major sources of funding for these companies that rely heavily on defense spending approved by Congress as they sell their products almost exclusively to the U.S. government.
These influential members of Congress serve their stock portfolios and not the American people who are unable to stop America’s government and allied military-industrial complex from waging war.
Senators and House representatives sit on Senate and House committees with the potential to advance a firm’s interests and, at the same time, their own pocketbooks, despite earning a salary of $174,000, which is well over twice the national average household income and despite the fact that the federal government subsidizes approximately 72% of their health insurance, in addition to free or low-cost care through the Office of the Attending Physician and military treatment facilities in the Washington D.C. area.
Systemic corruption replacing democracy
Companies have different ways of bribing congressmen, for example, by offering them discounted stock in their firms. A large number of companies have close to 100 members holding stock, and many firms have 50 or more in a given year. Owning stock aligns the interests of the firms with those of their stock-holding lawmakers.
The “corporate” members of Congress have a variety of tools at their disposal — from pushing or stalling legislation and regulation to awarding contracts, subsidies, and tax abatements.
Elected officials pay back their sponsors. President Trump, for example, appointed one of his largest sponsors as head of America’s postal services a few months before the presidential elections in 2020. Robert Duncan, an expert at voter suppression, instantly started overhauling the organization, slowing down mail delivery and causing limited access for Americans in an attempt to get Trump re-elected.
In addition to large companies, some foreign states also use lobby groups to influence US policy, even if this is legally controversial. The largest and most aggressive is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which exerts enormous influence on US policy.
Not only does AIPAC lobby directly by meeting with lawmakers and their staff to advocate and pressure for pro-Israel policies, but it also spends large sums of money to ensure that candidates who agree with its pro-Israel stance are elected, and those who do not, are not elected. In fact, AIPAC is “firmly in control of Congress on the crucial issues of funding Israeli militarism and enabling the ongoing dispossession, repression, and slaughter of Palestinians.”
Since America is used to taking the moral high ground and to lecturing other countries about freedom and democracy, I need to mention another peculiarity of the self-styled “Greatest Country” on earth and its “great democracy”: When the majority of Americans choose a president out of only two candidates, the chosen one does not necessarily become president. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote with 65,853,514 votes (48.5%), while Trump received 62,984,828 votes (46.4%). However, Trump won the presidency by securing more electoral votes, with 304 to Clinton’s 227. Why? This is because the democratic principle 1 man 1 vote does not apply in this so-called democracy.
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This is another piece written for the Asian Internet Magazine Eastern Angle.