It’s true Almost everywhere, but especially in the United States: Real power is about controlling the flow of resources: property, money, information. If you control the levers of production — who gets what, when and how — you dictate what the future holds and who has a say in it. Or, in this case, you decide the future of America. On the brink of another presidential election, no one knows this better than Silicon Valley CEOs and industry executives. investorssome of whom publicly announced their support for Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, this week.
Jared Clemons, a political science professor at Temple University, says that behind the calculated loyalties of Big Tech we can begin to understand what is happening in the moment ahead. “I try not to get hysterical about politics. I know it’s very difficult because you turn on the TV and it seems like the world is falling apart,” he tells me. “But none of this started happening overnight.”
Clemons identifies as a socialist, but “not in a crazy, conspiratorial way,” he jokes. He believes the best way forward is a collective future in which we shed the vestiges of a capitalist past, which Republicans and Democrats refuse to give up. He wants people to understand that old forms of bureaucratic government no longer serve us. (Clemons regularly discusses complex issues like this on his YouTube series, #Side-Eye-Cop.)
“I think the danger of looking back and saying, ‘Oh, there was a time when we had this, but now we don’t have it,’ is that you become reactionary, I think. It cuts off your imagination because you don’t think about what could be,” he says. “You focus on trying to get something back from the past. You’re never going to get it back.” A better future is possible, Clemons adds, but “we have to be willing to fail.”
JASON PARHAM: I want to start by following the money. This week at the Republican National Convention, Trump announced that his choice for vice president was J.D. Vance, the Ohio senator whose brief but rapid rise in politics was largely funded by Peter Theil. Elon Musk also came out in support of Trump, as did billionaire venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. Big Tech is backing the MAGA movement this election cycle. What do you make of that?
Jared Clemons: The best way to understand economics is through production: what we produce, what we circulate, how what we produce gets to people. Essentially, what we buy. If we look at politics from that perspective, I think it becomes much easier to understand politics, especially the incentives and motivations of the very rich.
What was one of the first things Trump did when he was elected in 2016? Actually, the only major policy platform he had was sweeping tax cuts, which was a huge giveaway to corporations and very wealthy individuals, particularly people who had a lot of their wealth in the stock market. Part of the reason we’re seeing so much support for him now is because those tax cuts are set to expire in 2025.