- 2 days ago
Citing US President Donald Trump's alliances with tech billionaires and the pressure on US media outlets, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr tells DW we are accelerating toward "a techno‑fascist future."
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00:00Last week, Donald Trump landed in Beijing, walking off the plane with a heavyweight delegation
00:06including Elon Musk, Tim Cook and other tech and finance bosses.
00:11It was an image that showed just how closely US power now sits alongside Silicon Valley.
00:17It echoed a question the journalist Carol Cadwalader has been asking, where does government
00:23end and big tech begin?
00:26Cadwalader uncovered the Facebook Cambridge Analytica scandal for The Guardian back in
00:322018 and later fought off a long legal case brought by a key figure linked to Brexit.
00:39She now runs The Nerve, an independent news outlet, and writes a substack called How to
00:45Survive the Broligarchy.
00:46And she makes a direct argument that the line between the state, the platforms and the press
00:52has been deliberately blurred.
00:54And the image from Beijing, the president and his billionaires side by side, is the system
01:01and not an anomaly.
01:03What it says to me is that we now have this merger between what is an increasingly authoritarian
01:11government in the US, Donald Trump, and this merger with the Silicon Valley tech platforms.
01:19And that is now totally explicit.
01:23And it means that the social media platforms that we spend our time on and share photos and
01:29communicate with our friends, we're now part of that authoritarian state apparatus.
01:34Those two things are now one and the same.
01:37And, you know, my view is, is that we've got to really start changing our, the framing of
01:43the way that we understand these technology platforms, because they are not our friends.
01:48They are, their entire business model is surveillance.
01:53They are trying to amass as much information, as much personal data on us as possible in order
02:00to sell us stuff.
02:01But now that, that same massive amounts of data is, as I say, part of this US state operation.
02:11And so the ways that our personal information could be used as part of Trump's MAGA plan or
02:20other authoritarians around the world is, I think, extremely, extremely alarming.
02:28And we're already seeing the results of that play out in the US.
02:31And in the US, we see that a lot of this revolves around this group of individuals, wealthy individuals.
02:38You've coined the term broligarchy.
02:41Can you, what is exactly is that?
02:43So the broligarchy is a word that I coined that's brought together the idea of tech bros
02:50being the new oligarchs, these rich businessmen who are, know that they have to keep on the
02:58right side of state power of the autocrat imposition.
03:03And that's what I mean by broligarchy.
03:05These tech dudes, they're enormously rich, they're enormously powerful, but they also
03:11see how by aligning themselves with Trump, that's the way that they're going to become
03:18even richer.
03:19And who are these key figures?
03:20So the key figures are people you saw at Donald Trump's inauguration.
03:26So Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Tim Cook.
03:32And there was one person who wasn't there, who is interesting, and that is Peter Thiel.
03:41Right.
03:41One of those broligogs, as you mentioned, Peter Thiel, you've described him as one of the most
03:46dangerous men in the world. Why is that?
03:50So Peter Thiel is a really singular character, even amongst the other tech bro overlords.
03:58He's very strategic, and he's very influential, and he really thinks long term, and he places these
04:05long term bets. So when Silicon Valley was still supposedly progressive and voting Democrat in 2016,
04:15he was the first tech dude to come out in favor of Trump.
04:20He owns this surveillance defense tech company, Palantir.
04:25It's embedded in the US military. It's being used in its operations, its military operations in Iran.
04:33But it's also become a really critical part of our national infrastructure in Britain.
04:39It has contracts across the entire UK government. It's handles, it runs the platform
04:46that handles all of our health data. Peter Thiel and the CEO, Alex Karp, they talk about how
04:52we are here to defend the West, and we will do whatever it takes for America to win.
04:58And at the same time, they're scooping up these other government contracts around the world,
05:04which there's a lot of questions about that.
05:07And people like Peter Thiel, you talk about the others as well. I'm just wondering what it is
05:13that they have found that appeals to them in Trump 2.0, in particular, that they weren't able
05:19to get under previous governments. I mean, it's just they're getting everything they want.
05:24So their worst nightmare is any kind of regulation over what they can do with their companies,
05:31the lengths that they can go to, that the, you know, any kind of restrictions on access to data,
05:39any restrictions on their monopoly power. And with Trump, he's a pay, he's a pay to play man.
05:48You know, his, his election campaign was funded by these guys, and particularly,
05:54actually by the crypto bros as well. They've got this guy in office who will let them do whatever
06:00they want in order to grow their companies. And that's why they love Trump. And that's why they
06:05hate the European Union. The European Union is their worst nightmare, because the European Union
06:11is trying to regulate these companies. And they hate it. And they're trying all sorts of ways to
06:16bully the EU and get their own way here too. It's clear there's been a problem with accountability,
06:23because it's not just in AI, it's even in a story you, you uncovered, which is the sort of Facebook
06:29Cambridge Analytica issue, which had to do with public data being taken without permission and
06:36and being used for their own benefit. I'm just wondering where that accountability should have
06:43or should be coming from? Well, there is no accountability. There's, we've had no accountability
06:48of the tech platforms. We see glimmers in the states through the courts, there has been a couple of
06:55important victories. And in the EU, we have seen legislation, but we haven't yet seen if it's
07:05actually going to work if they are going to be able to impose limits on these companies. The philosophy
07:11of Silicon Valley has been move fast, break things, get away with it for as long as you can. That's
07:16their business model. Their business model is to break the law. And everything that happened with
07:21social media, we now see repeating itself with AI. And because they got away with it once,
07:26they're getting away with it again. They've stolen this data, they've stolen this IP from journalists
07:32and writers and artists and musicians. And, you know, they're trying to create value off the back
07:38of that stolen work. And it's because, you know, nobody has managed to find a way to stop them.
07:43Would you say that is linked to why they are getting so involved in, for example,
07:49taking over media and buying up media companies and trying to reform them?
07:54Yeah, because they really hate scrutiny. They hate journalists poking into their affairs.
07:59They hate reporters. They hate it when the narrative doesn't go their way. So they are taking over
08:05media companies. You know, we've seen one of the most famous news organizations in the US,
08:11the Washington Post. It's been hollowed out by Jeff Bezos. It's the, you know, it's a tragedy what's
08:18happened to that newspaper. We see it as well. CBS is another incredibly important US network
08:25that's been taken over by another bro. So it's the family of Larry Ellison, who's less well known,
08:32but is extremely, I think he's the second richest man in the world. He owns this company called Oracle.
08:38He's taken over CBS and they've sacked a whole load of journalists. They've sort of imposed this
08:46very political kind of regimen there. And now they're looking to close the deal on Warner Brothers.
08:53And that means they're also going to get their hands on CNN and HBO. So, and this has all happened.
09:02It's less than a year. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a year, um, only just over a year
09:07since Trump
09:07has come to office. And yet he's already, you know, his allies have already scooped up and taken
09:14control of some of the most important news outlets in the country. Um, and you know, it's, it's,
09:23it's kind of frankly unbelievable that it's happened so fast. But also, I think it's like,
09:27people still don't understand what's at stake. They don't understand the scale of the problem.
09:33And they don't understand the speed at which I think this, these companies, these guys have really
09:41taken over the reins of power. And they really are still not getting anywhere near the kind of
09:48scrutiny they deserve. I wonder if that also has to do with what, um, uh, Steve Bannon sort of,
09:54uh, the Trump man spoke about, which is, uh, the flooding, the zone where you just have so much
09:59information, so many scandals, so much going on that actually the scrutiny cannot take place.
10:04It's so difficult at the moment. We're all so completely overwhelmed. Um, there is so much
10:10news happening. Trump is a one man chaos machine, and that's part of how he, it's, it's part of his
10:18means of kind of taking and holding onto power. You know, we're, we're freaked out about Greenland,
10:24and then, but, and then we're freaked out about the Epstein files, and then we're freaked out about
10:28Iran, and then we're freaked out about lab. It's just, everything's happening all at once. And
10:34the, the collapse, you know, part of this, again, it comes back to the technology, the collapse of our
10:40news and information systems, the, the collapse of trust in institutions, the, the lack of any kind
10:49of consensus. We're all seeing completely different realities. Um, this is all so fundamental into,
10:56um, you know, what is happening in our world and why these very dangerous populists, these
11:06anti Democrats have, you know, are being so successful. And increasingly, we are all,
11:16you know, heading, accelerating towards what feels like a, you know, I call a techno fascist future.
11:27And, um, so we're already, I think it's this thing which, which is that we, we're already living
11:33inside this architecture of surveillance. That data is already being centralized. It's already
11:40controlled by these companies who have stated their allegiance to Donald Trump. We can see how
11:46the far rights, if they came to power in Britain, have said that they would use that, that same data
11:54to go after, you know, what they call illegal immigrants, and what we would say are legitimate
12:02asylum seekers. Um, so it's, I think the thing is everybody, all these, all these guys, all these
12:10authoritarians, they just copy each other. So, you know, something's tried in one country and it spreads
12:15very quickly to another. And, and like I say, I find, you know, the sort of normalization that the,
12:22the lack of a sort of this real sense of jeopardy about what could be coming for us, um, alarming.
12:28I'm just wondering what people can do, especially considering how dependent we are on these platforms
12:35and on these, these giants of, of tech and business. I mean, I think there are, there's,
12:42A, nothing is inevitable. So we all have agency and we don't have to accept that there is this
12:52authoritarian takeover. You know, the people of Hungary have showed us a way to resist and fight
12:59back. And I think from the tech point of view, you know, I would suggest that people should become
13:06much more circumspect about the ways that they share information on these platforms. Um, I'm personally
13:16amazed that parents put photos of their children across these social media platforms. You know,
13:23these children don't have, haven't given their consent and their facial, you know, profiles are
13:31being harvested. Don't know how those could be used in the future. So I do think being sort of mindful
13:38about one's privacy is, um, a key protective, um, element that anybody can undertake.
13:46I suppose one of the, the, the, the issues you hear about is people saying, you know, what does it
13:52matter if my data is out there and all of that? I'm just sort of wondering whether the public is
13:58aware
13:59of the risk. No, I don't think so. I mean, it was interesting. We're sitting with, we're shooting
14:04this in Berlin and it's always felt to me that people in, in Germany, because they have more of
14:10a sense of history, they understand how collecting information on people and how that can be weaponized
14:18and used so incredibly dangerously. You know, we saw that the Nazis were using IBM computer cards,
14:24the Stasi, of course, collected information on as, you know, vast numbers of citizens across the,
14:31across the country. What any of these, these Silicon Valley companies are doing,
14:36it makes the Stasi pale in comparison. They have vastly more amounts of information and data on every
14:46single person, regardless of even if they use their platforms or not. So I think if you think about
14:52data in that context and the way that that data could be used, could be weaponized against people,
14:58and I do feel that perhaps here in Europe, in Germany, perhaps in particular, there is a little
15:04bit more awareness and understanding of where this could lead. And I suppose that's what's happened with
15:09AI and the building of these data sets, using information, using property, let's say intellectual
15:18property that they've been able to get around. How big a concern is that? How big an issue is that?
15:25Well, there's lots of smarter, cleverer people than me who believe that the entire AI phenomenon
15:33we're seeing is a huge and precarious bubble that risks collapsing the entire global economy. What they're
15:42doing is they're throwing everything at the idea that these large language models are somehow magically
15:50going to become intelligence, that we're going to achieve AGI through chucking huge amounts of stolen
15:59data, huge amounts of computing power, huge amounts of energy, huge amounts of water, and hope that somehow
16:09they're going to get better. Vast amounts of capital are going into this project that shows no sign that
16:17it's ever going to turn a profit and shows no sign that it is going to be this marvellous all
16:23-knowing
16:23in super intelligence that's going to either save the world or destroy it depending upon who you talk to.
16:30I mean, AI, I mean, the thing about generative AI is it looks really plausible, but it's actually, I mean,
16:37it makes so many mistakes. It hallucinates stuff. It reduces everything to this mush. You know,
16:46it takes away everything which is special and amazing about human creativity and expression.
16:51So, but people, you know, are leaning towards it because it feels like a shortcut. But there's all
17:01these studies that show, you know, students who are using AI to write their papers, they don't retain
17:08any of it afterwards. It's like, it's, you know, it's the opposite to learning. And I think, you know,
17:14just remember it's using vast amounts of electricity, vast amounts of water, and it's all based upon
17:23stolen work. If you're using one of these image generators, that's because that those images are
17:31based upon illegally harvested works of art and creativity with no recourse or recompense to the
17:42creators. And do you, do we want to live in that world where we're not going to have original music
17:47and original art and original writing? You know, is that the world that we want to live in? And
17:52personally, it's not the world that I want to live in. And I think that we will miss these things
17:57when
17:57they're gone.
17:58Have you seen anything that gives you hope that there can be mitigation and there can be
18:04a positive way forward?
18:06I have set up a new news outlet called The Nerve. It's called, we're at the nerve.news,
18:14and we're five journalists who left The Guardian, all women. And we decided we wanted to do it
18:20differently. And so we set up our own micro news organisation six months ago, with a total
18:29determination to be completely independent and to be funded by our readers and to do kick-ass
18:35investigations. And we've done that. So one of the things we've been doing is we've been really going
18:40after Palantir, for example. We've been exposing the huge number of contracts it has, 670 million
18:49pounds worth of contracts with the UK government. We've been exposing the revolving door between
18:55government and the company. We've been exposing how it's, we've had insiders, whistleblowers from the
19:03Ministry of Defence, saying that we essentially have no national security whilst that company is
19:09inside. Little by little, there's the crumbs of scrutiny that we can bring, that other journalists
19:16can bring, that politicians can bring. And actually, it's people themselves. I mean, there's hundreds of
19:21thousands of people in the UK have signed petitions, have protested. This is, it's becoming a movement.
19:26So I do think that there are ways and means that we can fight back.
19:30Kaira Akadwalda, thank you very much for speaking to DW.
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