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Speed read: Trump surrounded by Silicon Valley’s top executives: a powerful image, a clever media stunt… or a worrying sign? History, from Mussolini to Xi Jinping, shows that when politics and technology unite, societies are transformed, sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the better. |
Reading Le Temps’s article about Donald Trump’s dinner with America’s tech leaders gave me a strange sense of déjà vu. The image is striking: the future president sitting at the same table as Silicon Valley’s most influential figures, discussing artificial intelligence, regulation, deregulation, and the future. At first glance, it could be seen as just another strategic meeting. But step back, and the scene echoes countless moments in history where politics and technology became deeply intertwined, often with heavy consequences.
Trump makes no secret of his fascination with AI, crypto, and the power represented by these tech giants. In return, some in the industry see his presidency as a chance to gain favourable conditions: deregulation, a free hand in innovation, government contracts, or protection against Chinese competition. In other words, both sides are trying to use each other. This game of alliances is nothing new, it belongs to a long tradition of political–technological collusion.
China offers the most obvious example. Over the past decade, the state has placed digital technology at the heart of its model of social control. The social credit system, combining data from private platforms with government surveillance tools, is the clearest example of what happens when Big Tech merges with authoritarian politics. Under Xi Jinping, facial recognition, police big data, and artificial intelligence have become instruments of internal stability.
But this didn’t start in the 21st century. In the 1950s, Mao Zedong mobilized science and technology to reshape society. The Great Leap Forward relied on blind faith in engineering and planning to transform nature and the economy. Today we know it ended in disaster, but at the time, it was sold as the showcase of a modernizing state.
Stalin’s USSR followed the same logic: science and technology were harnessed to ideology. Megaprojects, the space race, even Lysenkoist biology weren’t just scientific pursuits, they were symbols of power designed to demonstrate the regime’s superiority.
Even Mussolini’s fascist Italy saw aviation, radio, cinema, and the automobile not only as tools of economic growth but as emblems of modernity and authority. Mussolini loved to pose among airplanes and factories, embodying the fusion of technology and power.
And this isn’t just about authoritarian regimes. In 1961, U.S. President Eisenhower warned against the “military-industrial complex”: the tight alliance between government, the military, and industry, a machine that could spin out of democratic control. His warning feels eerily relevant today, as AI and digital platforms move to the center of our societies.
Seen in this light, Trump’s dinner with Silicon Valley’s magnates is far more than a PR stunt. It highlights a deeper trend: the convergence of political power and technological power, two forces that, combined, can radically transform our societies.
Yet it would be simplistic to see this only as a threat. History also shows moments when innovation and politics worked together to expand possibilities. Roosevelt’s New Deal harnessed science and industry to lift the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The space race, despite its excesses, gave us major civilian breakthroughs, from medicine to computing. Why not hope that AI and the digital revolution, if wisely managed, could also become engines of progress?
History leaves us with a double lesson: vigilance is essential, but pessimism is not inevitable. It all depends on whether we can steer this political–technological alliance toward human goals, rather than logics of domination.