Joe Biden's swan-song speech to the people of the USA warned about the threat to the people of the USA from what he called the tech-industrial complex, otherwise known as Musk and his tech billionaire friends. Was he right to do so? But was he also too late?
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This is transcript:
President Joe Biden, in his farewell speech from the Oval Office in the White House, warned the USA about what he called the Tech-Industrial Complex.
He wasn't the first president to issue such a warning. Sixty four years ago, and I don't remember the speech in question, President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office as president of the USA and also issued a warning to the people of that country about the threats to it from commercial power.
Eisenhower, who was the general who led the invasion of Europe during the Second World War which ultimately led to the fall of the Nazis, said this. when he left office in January 1961.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists only and will persist.
Eisenhower was clearly right. The rise of misplaced power was a threat to the USA. In 1961, and as Joe Biden had to say in 2025, it is still a threat. All that Joe Biden did was rename the military-industrial complex and call it the tech-industrial complex.
His words were:
Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation. and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.
And that power he called the tech-industrial complex. He did, of course, have some very specific people in mind. There is no doubt that these comments were aimed at the likes of Elon Musk and the other so-called ‘tech bros' in Silicon Valley who are supporting the rise of Donald Trump.
But what he was talking about was something that was remarkably similar to what Eisenhower described in 1961. What he was suggesting was that the power of the private corporation to shift the values within American society in its favor - to enrich a few at cost to the many, by spreading fear, by spreading misinformation, by spreading abuse - that threat remains as real now as it was 64 years ago. And I believe Biden is right.
I wish he'd done it earlier in his career. I wish he had talked about this a long time before his farewell speech. I wish we'd seen the Democratic Party in the USA do something about this. Because frankly, it seems to be as in hock to corporate power in the USA as the Republican Party does. Well, perhaps slightly less, but so little less as to make almost no difference. But at least he's used those words now.
He's said that this tech-industrial power threatens us all. And it does.
It threatens the ordinary person who's abused online, and there will be nothing to stop that happening.
It threatens the person who is abused in a libellous way.
It threatens the young person who's bullied at school.
It threatens the small business who these large tech powers literally try to bring down through their own ability to force others out of the market.
All of this is an exercise in extracting profit, just as the military complex tried to do in the early 60s.
I remember the 1960s all too well. There was a US Air Force base not far from where I was brought up, so the reality of US military power was something that was quite familiar to me at the time. USAF Bentwaters it was, for those who are geeks about these things. And what happened then? There was this massive expansion of military spending, partly, of course, because of Vietnam, but partly because that was a proxy war in the whole Cold War between the USA and Russia.
A total pack of lies was said about the threat to us from Russia; that Russia was going to be marching troops across the plains of Germany and threatening the UK, when, frankly, there was not a hope that Russia could have done such a thing at the time. Any more, by the way, than it could now.
And, things were said about China which were so unrealistic at that point in time that it was absurd. And slightly more credible if they were said now. But again, really not credible.
And now we have the tech bros coupling with that military power to actually, in a sense, produce something that is very similar.
Remember that Trump is demanding that the countries of Europe increase their military spending to 5 per cent of their gross domestic product - their national income.
It's the same force on the march. “You gotta spend on the military, or you're gonna die.” No, you're not. Almost certainly, you won't. Spend money on diplomacy, solve the conflicts, understand the causes, resolve them, talk about how we can actually live peacefully together on this planet rather than threatening each other, stop spreading the lies and the misinformation, and then you might achieve an outcome. But that's not the style of the neo-fascist. And I do happen to think, and I'm allowed to have this opinion, that Trump is one of them.
So, where are we? We are, as Joe Biden said, at threat, real threat, from the tech-industrial complex. And things have changed since 1961. The change is that these people have more power over the media, over the network of ideas, and the information that we get all the time, every day, day and night, if we want it. And that really does change the potential outcomes for the way in which the world sees itself and each other. Those tech companies literally influence our worldviews in ways that it's very hard to understand. But they threaten us if they believe that aggression at a macro and a micro level is the way to leverage profit for themselves. And I fear they do. And I fear the consequences of that.
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The power over the media, the replacement of genuine journalism with opinions that are believed en-masse – that for me is the absolute key to their power.
I recall a James Bond film (maybe one with Pierce Brosnan?) where the big baddie was a media magnate. Prescient film indeed.
That was Tomorrow Never Dies and the media mogul, Carver, was played by Jonathan Pryce.
It’s reminiscent of Robert Maxwell, fraud, of the Mirror Group. Inspiration for the film apparently also came from Ted Turner who founded CNN and that other media mogul, Mr Magoo.
Maxwell died, having fallen off his yacht into the sea off the Canary Islands in 1991. Tomorrow Never Dies came out in 1997.
Maxwell had ripped off Mirror Group’s pension funds to the tune of hundreds of millions. The pensioners got about half the pension they would have expected.
From Marcus Huchins on Mastodon.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more perfect reading of Biden’s statement where he waited until the last day of his presidency to tell everyone that they live in an oligarchy.
Joe is the best at walking into a room on fire going “Someone should put out that fire” and then wandering off with the fire extinguisher.
Thanks
Or even providing the fuel as in the Gaza genocide. I trust history will not be kind to Biden.
Car dealers now, I am told, make their money from selling the finance to buy the cars, rather than cars themselves.
I think we face the financial-industrial complex where international finance tries to determine the economic policies of nation states. Former Goldman Sachs people have headed Central banks in a number of countries,
George Soros is famous for making a billion or so from the troubles of the pound in the early 1990s. By 1997 he was pointing out the threat to our values from free market ideology. It has been a theme -as neo- liberalism, here for the last few weeks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/02/the-capitalist-threat/376773/
The military-industrial complex was already well established in the USA by the early 60s, which was why Eisenhower took the opportunity to warn about it. In a sense the warning was already too late, as is Biden’s. Nowadays the military-industrial complex is so deeply embedded that it virtually runs the place.
Indeed. When Truman became President he has greatly influenced by the military-industrial complex to adopt an expansionist foreign policy which still frames US policy today.
Truman, of course, was the President who authorised the use of the atomic bomb. He was also the first world leader to recognise Israel.
there is another related threat. Some alternative news sources such as the Intercept which publish things we might not otherwise see, are trying to raise money to protect themselves.
They tell us the Huff Post and Vox Media are laying off staff.
The intercept says
“in addition, we’re now confronting an incoming administration and Congress that have made no secret about their desire to silence and punish journalists who don’t fall in line.
Trump’s pick for FBI director has pledged to “come after the people in the media,” and the House passed legislation last fall that would give the Trump administration the power to strip The Intercept’s nonprofit status with the stroke of a pen as a result of our coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Meanwhile, billionaires like Erik Prince have weaponized libel law, driving up our legal costs and chilling reporting on the wealthy and powerful. ”
We are right to be worried.
It is indeed a shame – a tragedy – that Biden didn’t stand up to the ‘Tech Bros’ earlier (and indeed try harder to force Israel to end its genocidal war on Gaza – the evidence now being that this was a big factor in Harris’ defeat). But do you have to look far to see why? The democrats are funded by wealthy corporations and individuals – indeed in the past by various ‘Tech Bros’ – how could they attack their own funding base?
And of course, having distanced themselves fro the wider labour movement and, post-Corbyn, the idea of a mass-membership party, Starmer is now in exactly the same position.
He didn’t stand up to them at all: he is just trying to gild his legacy with final words which are contradicted by his actions in office. These words will now be spun by those who supported these actions and still support them in an effort to hide the truth.
Isn’t the Tik Tok ban really because of thr anti-Israel content on it? So there is some irony in this as that was bipartisan.
The trouble with being relaxed about military threats is that it gives all the power to the bullies. It was that ‘well it’s not a real threat’ attitude that allowed Putin to walk into Crimea almost unopposed. It was that attitude that left Russia almost uncriticised and unsanctioned after the invasion of Crimea. When you have bullies like Putin and Trump, you have to respond, however wasteful that effort is. And the earlier and more unambiguously you respond, the cheaper and more effective it is. When Trump first offered to buy Greenland, we all laughed. Now American hegemony there is a completely credible possibility. If the world had taken action to throw Russia out of the Crimean peninsula just think how much suffering and damage to Ukraine might have been saved. Similarly, if the world had censured Israel for its vicious treatment of the West Bank and its illegal settlements there, maybe the current suffering in Gaza might have been prevented. It is high time politicians prioritised doing what’s right over what’s convenient.
Agreed.
After Cuban crisis the Cold War cooled. The 60s looked more hopeful -though Czechoslovakia in 1968 caused a re-set for a while.
I have revisited the history and I don’t think a full Soviet invasion of Europe was ever likely ( as Richard said )but we can’t be sure how far the existence of NATO prevented it. But the Cold War wasn’t just made up by the military-industrial complex. A Europe ‘bullied’ to use your term by the USSR is more likely. In the Baltic states hundreds of thousands of Russians had been settled and equally large numbers deported. Finland was neutral but not like Switzerland or Ireland. The USSR could veto the books published and had taken the southeast of their land.
Very few people tried to break into eastern Europe but the Berlin was built to stop the mass exodus the other way.
Russian troops had been involved in East Germany in 1953 and Hungary in 1956 killing many people.
There is a continuity here. Kim, the treaties proposed by Russia in 2021 would have effectively disarmed the eastern European states, the wishes of their people not withstanding. ‘Bullying’ rather war is the threat. And I include Trump . And I think the US could have prevented Gaza.
There is one other point which I hear a lot. In the Cold War the West had to be seen to offer more to the people in terms of shared prosperity and more equality. God forbid we return to another nuclear backed confrontation but we seem to have lost that desire to make life better for most people.
I do wonder, if 5 piercing of GDP was spent on national and international co-operation projects and events, from funded exchange programs at schools, colleges, universities and civic organisations, through to funded social projects at grass roots level, instead of on guns and tanks and missiles, how much more secure and pleasant the world would be.
I find it increasingly hard to cope with politicians anywhere who bleat about growing threats like this, making it seem as though there was nothing that they could do.
They are there – apparently – to protect us from stuff like this.
What have they been doing instead? More likely they have been gainfully employed/too busy looking after the needs of their party funders, enabling them to make money from their treasuries and taking a percentage from government activities they get involved in than dealing with really important stuff like this. Or blowing guff about identity politics.
It is very late in the hour on this particular issue. The horse bolted a long time ago. And another nail in democracy is being hammered in.
[…] By Richard Murphy, part-time Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School, director of the Corporate Accountability Network, member of Finance for the Future LLP, and director of Tax Research LLP. Originally published at Fund the Future […]
That book which seems to show the internationa oligarch mafia network is well established – and includes Putin Trump Musk and the rest – sounds like a conspiracy theory but frightening amount of truth in it
I remember a conversation with a former Fleet Air Arm pilot who said that it was obvious Soviet warships hadn’t been fully fitted out just by looking at the draft marks*
I had also spoken to someone from RAE Farnborough who had had the opportunity to inspect a MiG29 that had defected to Japan and he was impressed with the aircraft and its design.
The Ukraine however has clearly demonstrated the weakness’s of Russia’s armed forces.
I visited what was then the USSR in about 1987 and again just before the end of the one party state in March 1990. Visiting the Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in what was then Leningrad and seeing the markers on the road into Moscow that showed how close the Germans got to the city made you realise how the experience of War had shaped the Soviet mind.
My parents also visited in about 1989 and my father who had been part of the first wave of support troops at D-Day and then been supplying the Front Line up to the end of the war before being demobbed in 1946 said that he wept for the older people and what they had lived through. He also commented on the fact that there were very few old men compared with old women.
So…….
Whatever else you think of it I believe that the USSR, dominated as it was my people who had fought in or lived through WW2 wasnt irrational, they were fully aware of the consequences of war and you could probably say the West ditto.
Having said that however despite the very clear lessons from the history books, ie just dont go there both the USSR & NATO managed to get themselves caught in Afghanistan.
Now however that Russia is run by Putin and not The Politbureau it is very much at the whim of one man with no joint decision making to curb his weaknesses or excess’s.
I suggest that we are living in ‘unpredictably dangerous’ times where it will be difficult to maintain the peace.
What we are also faced with at the moment is a combination of ‘elite overproduction’ massive private wealth and ‘new technology’ just over the horizon dangerous times indeed.
*Draft Marks are on the bow and stern of a ship and tell you how deep it is in the water. The particular relevance in this case was that if a (say) Sverdlovosk Class Cruiser is only drawing x meters instead of Y then its missing a lot of kit – say two sets of boilers & turbines so cant do what it says in the book
Thanks
The USSR spent up to 15% of GDP on defence. Some of the kit was not that sophisticated but it worked.
But it provided jobs and the conscription took in the non-Russian men as well as ‘Great Russians’ and subjected them to a pretty brutal training ( I know a chap who was in the Intelligence Corps who contrasted it with the Polish methods.) and compulsory political training.
Of course, J F Kennedy made various speeches challenging the power of the military/industrial complex, also of those who controlled the Federal Reserve. Some can be found on youtube. We all know the outcome of this.
https://www.fff.org/2022/08/08/jfks-war-against-the-military-industrial-complex/
This sheds an interesting light on one aspect of the new global corporatocrats: https://america2.news/meet-the-bros-behind-trumps-greenland-bluster/?ref=america-2-0-newsletter
And Trump calls his social media platform, “Truth Social”.
Maria Resa the 2021 Nobel Peace Laureate, awarded for her courageous journalism in the Philippines and for standing up to Duterte once said:
“First they came for the journalists…. and we dont know what happened next. “
She was right
From National Preservation
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/research/spotlight-research/short-history-russias-long-standing-paranoia-about-west