Eight personalities from the tech industry were named “Person of the Year”.Image: watson/keystone/imago
analysis
A coalition of tech oligarchs and right-wing populists is emerging.
December 15, 2025, 2:59 p.mDecember 15, 2025, 2:59 p.m
Paul Krugman is one of today’s leading economists. He was awarded the Nobel Prize, and for decades his column in the New York Times was a must for anyone who wanted to have a say in the economic discussion.
Krugman has been publishing his wisdom on Substack for a year now, and the thesis he presented on December 9th is making waves. He states that the USA has become a digital narco-state. His reasoning is summarized as follows:
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.Image: keystone
Just like heroin, social media is a drug and no less dangerous. This has now been sufficiently proven. Unlike heroin, they do not have to fear prosecution by the state. Tech oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg are using all their power and influence to ensure that it stays that way.
Successfully. While Australia has just enacted a law banning young people under the age of 16 from using Instagram, TikTok, etc., and while the EU has fined Elon Musk 120 million euros for violating the current laws, the tech oligarchs in the USA remain largely unmolested. Krugman therefore comes to the following conclusion:
“If it is true that unregulated social media is as dangerous as drugs, then we live in a nation where the drug lords have taken control. Social media billionaires have enough power to prevent our children from being protected from them. They have enough power to influence American foreign policy and punish our former allies who dare to limit their influence.”
In the Financial Times, Edward Luce takes up Krugman’s thread and spins it further. It is reminiscent of the absurd conspiracy theories circulating among tech oligarchs, such as Elon Musk’s madness about sending people to Mars or Peter Thiel’s obsession with the Antichrist.
Luce describes this as “dark enlightenment” and varies between whether he should be amused by it or scared to death, but then comes to the conclusion that the latter is true: “We shouldn’t be amused by the fact that Thiel supporters are at the controls of power, not just in the Pentagon.”
The cover of Time magazine.
Is it all exaggeration or what? While Krugman and Luce are both important thought leaders of our time, aren’t they exaggerating? Let’s look at the facts:
This year, Time magazine named not one individual personality, but eight tech oligarchs together as “Person of the Year”, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman and, above all, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia. The reason for this lies in the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) is the dominant topic of the moment. “It is technology that has the most influence on our time,” explains Huang, linking this to the following prophecy: “So far it has been assumed that the limit of global gross domestic product is around $100 trillion. AI will enable this limit to one day be $500 trillion.”
Huang is also the “Person of the Year” at the “Financial Times,” this time as a single mask. This choice is obvious. Nvidia is the first company in the world whose market capitalization was at times over five trillion dollars and whose high-performance chips dominate the AI world.
With an estimated fortune of around $160 billion, Huang has made it into the 10 richest people in the world, and his influence is so great that the US President now regularly calls him personally.
“Person of the Year” in the “Financial Times”: Jensen Huang.Image: keystone
Like the other tech oligarchs before him, Huang also threw himself into the dust before the president, especially when it came to the question of how far he could continue to supply China with his chips. He is allowed “because his strategy was based on trying to curry favor with Trump in every way,” as the Financial Times reported, citing a critic who did not want to be named.
Huang not only flatters Trump, he is also an avowed China fan. He doesn’t care that President Xi Jinping is ruling the country in an increasingly authoritarian way. «Chinese statesmen are master builders. “They are engineers,” says Huang, and when it comes to AI, “they move quickly and the regulation is very, very weak.”
Silicon Valley was once a liberal stronghold and a reliable source of donations for Democrats. Meanwhile, the tech oligarchs are raining their dollar blessings on the MAGA Republicans. What’s more, they offer an active hand in supporting Trump in gaining cultural sovereignty over the USA.
Father and son Ellison are examples of this. Father Larry once founded the software company Oracle. He has now become the richest man in the world for a time. As he became richer, his worldview also changed. The former patron of the Democrats became an ally of Trump.
Meanwhile, son David wants to become a media tycoon. He has already managed to use his father’s money to acquire the media company Paramount and thereby gain control of the TV station CBS. Now he’s locked in a bidding war with Netflix for Warner Bros. If he emerges victorious, he will not only have an important film archive at his disposal, but also the say at CNN.
Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle.Image: keystone
The Ellisons are also involved in the future of TikTok. In other words, another conservative media colossus is emerging that does not need to shy away from comparison with the Murdoch empire. Trump is well on his way to transforming the American media world into a right-wing populist propaganda machine following the example of Hungary.
Like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Trump also rewards his people royally. Open corruption is now commonplace in Washington. Cryptos play an important role in this. With the stablecoins, their role is to be expanded enormously.
Stablecoins are a type of private dollar. With the Genius Act, a law that requires these private dollars to be backed by liquid assets, there is regulation of the stablecoin, but it is very light. So easy that the Bank for International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, warns that stablecoins would not meet three important conditions of a currency, namely “uniqueness, elasticity and integrity”.
Stablecoins not only open up another field for Trump’s personal enrichment, he also wants to use them to rehabilitate American public finances. Because they have to be covered by liquid assets, the US President hopes that demand for American government bonds will skyrocket and that interest rates on these bonds will also plummet.
Martin Wolf (far right) at the Wef.Image: keystone
Traditional economists are suspicious of this financial mumbo jumbo. Martin Wolf states in the “Financial Times”: “The USA needs that. But a system. But a system that makes fraudulent promises of stability, facilitates irresponsible fiscal policy and opens the door to crime and corruption is not what the world needs. We should resist.”
Conclusion: Unfortunately, the warnings about an American digital narco-state are by no means exaggerated. Let’s dress warmly, because this country doesn’t like Europe at all.
You might also be interested in: