“Biden’s Warning: A New Digital Oligarchy?”, an article by Dr. Leonel Fernández

In his farewell address to the nation, President Joe Biden warned the United States of the dangers that a concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-rich individuals would represent, and of the dire consequences that would result from an unbridled abuse of power.

These were the outgoing President’s words: “Today, an oligarchy of extreme wealth is taking shape in the United States, with a power and influence that literally threatens our democracy, our fundamental rights and freedoms, and the fair opportunity for everyone to advance. We see its consequences throughout the United States.”

He recalled that more than a century ago, the American people had faced the so-called “Robber Barons”, businessmen who represented the industrial and financial sectors. Included in this group were, among others, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

This confrontation eliminated the trust (or monopoly) in the American business world, as well as the application of fair and equitable rules, which allowed the expansion of the American middle class.

President Biden also referred to President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell speech, in 1961, where he warned of the pernicious effects of what he called the military-industrial complex.

By virtue of this mechanism, the United States Armed Forces entered into a kind of outsourcing of weapons production, by signing contracts with industrial sectors, the scientific community, universities and research centers, and other areas related to weapons production.

It was this conception of the military-industrial complex in the United States that served as the foundation for Professor Juan Bosch’s well-known book, “Pentagonism: A Substitute for Imperialism,” and for the publication of other important texts such as “Pentagon Capitalism” and “The Permanent War Economy,” by Seymour Melman, a professor at Columbia University. Also, “Roots of War,” by Richard J. Barnet, of the Institute for Policy Studies.

From the Anti-Establishment to the New Oligarchy

It seems a contradiction that a figure like Donald Trump, who belongs to the country’s wealthiest sectors, appears on the political scene as the standard-bearer of the fight against the establishment or power groups in the United States.

President-elect Donald Trump and Melania Trump are received by President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden, upon their arrival at the White House on Monday, January 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

However, what occurs is that within the economically dominant sectors of the United States there are different ideas on how the great power of the North should function.

After nearly four decades of a liberal version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, which involved greater State intervention in the affairs of the nation, a new paradigm began to emerge in the 1970s, which was more inclined to the market forces as the main engine of economic growth.

This was what became known as neoliberalism, which produced a deregulation of the financial system, a liberalization of monetary flows, an opening of markets for trade purposes, and the transition from an industrialized system to a service economy.

With this industrial change, which impacted the automobile, steel, textile, and pharmaceutical industries, the white American working class was thrown into the abyss, amidst confusion and uncertainty.

Since the early 1990s, various leaders – both Democrats and Republicans – have criticized the signing of free-trade agreements by the United States and the overseas relocation of their industries. Other issues on the agenda were illegal migration, abortion and gay marriage.

It was under these circumstances that Donald Trump appeared who, after several attempts to present himself as a presidential candidate, finally did so in 2016, accusing the conservative leaders of his party and the liberal Democrats of being responsible for the decline of the United States.

This is how the MAGA movement (Make America Great Again) was born; and only this explains the incongruity that a high-ranking member of the wealthy American society emerged, leading a fight against the establishment or his country’s elite.

The Danger of Siliconization

The emergence of a post-industrial society, as Daniel Bell called it, or a fourth industrial revolution, to use the language of the Davos Forum, gave rise to a new social sector which President Biden describes as “dangerous, due to the concentration of technology, power and wealth.”

Only three names in that sector – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg – have accumulated a fortune of over a trillion dollars which, in comparative terms, would make them the third largest economy in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico.

What has happened with the high-tech industry, which in its beginnings fascinated the world, wanting to imitate the Californian model of development known as Silicon Valley, is that it has increased social inequality to alarming levels never seen before.

Today, in the United States, the richest 1% of the population – representing three million individuals – accumulate levels which represent 35% of the country’s wealth, while the poorest 50%, equivalent to 150 million people, only represent 1.5% of said wealth.

This high-tech sector is also highly powerful because, due to its dominance in the transmission of information in a digital format, it has taken advantage of the explosion in global communication.

Since there are no regulations or filters regarding what is transmitted through its social networks, what has emerged is a new form of disinformation, fake news, alternative reality and post-truths.

Now, with this power of information being transferred to the political sphere, as the owners of X, Meta, Apple and Google have recently done, not only in favor of Donald Trump but also of the radical right in Europe and other countries, democracy faces dangers at a global level.

Does all this mean that we will be at the mercy of the silicon colonization of the world, under the command of a new digital oligarchy, which governs without rules, without scruples or principles?

Only the nations of the world will have the last word.