We are now just over one month into this new era of American oligarchy. President Donald Trump and his billionaire lackey Elon Musk are eviscerating the federal government while dehumanizing queer people, immigrants, and perceived enemies. Given the terrifying breadth of the regime’s campaign, it may appear that Trump and Musk are acting wantonly, but a clear end goal is beginning to emerge: a technodystopia that subdues us all in Orwellian compliance.
A critical step in pursuit this hellscape is to reinforce the culture of sociopolitical domination by cis/het, White, Christian men. This sort of hegemony has more-or-less always existed in Western capitalist states, but social movements (like Black Lives Mater and #MeToo) threaten this order. As such, Trump and Musk are moving to reassert dominance using a new tool at their disposal: AI.
AI is fundamentally anti-democratic. By design, AI eschews collective decision making in favor of a single, “true” solution (a basic characteristic of hegemonic white supremacy culture). The owners of the algorithm (in this case Trump and Musk) train the technology on the data of their choosing, ask for a solution to a problem, and then blindly follow the proposed solution because the AI is supposed to be smarter than us.1 Humanity and shared values are completely removed from the process save for the AI designers whose basic decision-making actively biases algorithms against certain outputs and whose identities do not reflect the full diversity of the country.
Of course, for Trump and Musk this is a feature of their approach, not a bug. With attacks on anything even nominally related to diversity, their vision is one where White male dominance is reified under the guise of “intelligence.” This goal is further aided by their strategy of “government by 404 error.” So far, their censorship has largely targeted trans people by altering government data sets and even literally erasing the contributions of trans people to historic movements for queer equality. Their justification for these actions is simply bogus science and outright hatred.2
Now, imagine a supreme government AI trained on half-true information (such as the chat bot that Musk is building to replace the nearly 12,000 worker General Services Administration which provides basic products and services to other federal agencies). The resulting bot will have no knowledge relevant to trans people. It won’t know best practices for trans community outreach for public health campaigns or the unique barriers trans people face in educational settings or how to prevent violence against the trans community. These are the consequences of erasure in our technodystopia.
ai as surveillance
AI can also be used as a surveil and destroy. Musk even used such language when he proclaimed his intention to “delete” federal agencies through DOGE. Already, he is unleashing automated bots to systematically identify and remove pronouns from federal employees’ email signatures. These bots are enforcing cis-centric hegemonic norms across the federal bureaucracy.
Over this last week, the federal workforce was outraged at Musk’s request for 5 bullet points from each employee describing what they accomplished in the last week. Is Musk or his DOGE goons going to read each email? No, but I’m sure an AI will in order to surveil workers lacking (ambiguously defined) productivity. It should be noted that the request comes with a threat of termination, but agency heads across the government are instructing their workers to not comply with the request.
AI surveillance be used against civilians as well. The Biden administration ushered in this era by incorporating AI funding into the budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Before Trump returned to power, DHS was already using AI-powered robodogs, drones, and watch towers to monitor the US-Mexico border through partnerships with Silicon Valley companies like Peter Thiel’s domestic surveillance firm Palantir (which Fortune has cruelly proclaimed "the stock pick for the DOGE era”). Now, the second Trump administration is poised to expand this usage to coordinate its mass deportation campaigns.
The administration’s obsession with the southern border is a dogwhistle targeting Latino/a/x people, and AI is already imbued with latinophobic bias according to LatinX professionals in AI. Further, multiple AI algorithms make racist determinations about people based on their dialect. Therefore, the usage of AI to enforce an already racist mass deportation program will result in large swathes of Americans being caught up in the technological dragnet — regardless of documentation status.
Now, imagine these AI surveillance tools turned against the general American population. Police departments using AI robodogs. AI drones flying over American cities. Fear becoming the tool of submission. The federal government would be alerted anytime someone steps out of the hegemonic norms set forth by the fathers of our oligarchy.
ai as imperialism
In line with this vision, Trump is already rolling back protections on private companies developing AI capabilities. The administration is leaning into AI as a tool to reinforce American imperial hegemony in the international arena. On February 11, Vice President JD Vance gave a bellicose speech proclaiming the United States as the world leader in AI.
The AI summit where Vance spoke was an opportunity for the international community to provide common guidelines on how the technology should be developed and implemented. This is of increasing importance with China’s release of DeepSeek - which is comparable to US-based OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT) but developed with far less costs.
At the summit, the international community agreed to adopt an “open", “inclusive,” and “ethical” approach to AI development. Yet, there were two noticeable holdouts on this agreement — the United States and the United Kingdom. For this part, Vance claimed such limits would “kill” the AI industry.
The emergent situation is somewhat akin to the Space Race - with two adversarial governments attempting to demonstrate soft power through developments in science and technology. However unlike the Space Race, the AI Race has no logical end. There isn’t an AI equivalent to putting a human on the moon. The only end I can see is the development a totalizing surveillance technology at scale. Once developed, it can be licensed to other countries as a way to prop up repressive regimes elsewhere.
However, Vance did get one thing right in his speech: “Weapons are dangerous in the wrong hands, but are incredible tools for liberty and prosperity in the right hands.” He seems confused about what liberty is.
Oligarchs are, of course, nothing new. The ultrawealthy often seek to leverage power to suit their ends. In early American history, the oligarchs were land owners who sought increasing acres of land stolen from indigenous peoples to be resold and tended to by enslaved Black people. By the early 1900’s, a new breed of oligarchs rose to power on the backs of financial assets. Those who had money could make even more by playing the stock market.
Trump himself is an admittedly interesting oligarch in that his initial wealth (including his hefty inheritance) came from real estate (read: land). As president, he continues to be in search of new land to claim as American including Greenland, the Panama Canal, and even Canada.
Yet in addition to his land preoccupations, Trump is obsessed with his public image and media technologies. He goes on unhinged rants in the echo chamber that is Truth Social (which he owns). Even before he ran for office, Trump cultivated a persona on Twitter, The Apprentice, and WWE spectacles. These experiences have taught him the power of consumed media and its role in establishing the basis of a hegemonic culture.
Trump is laying the groundwork in media and policy for the regressive culture he seeks. Meanwhile, Musk is establishing the technological foundations to surveil and then erase anyone outside of hegemonic norms.
In this way, we are witnessing another transition of American oligarchy to the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley. Already in firm control of the digital age, unelected tech bros (headlined by Musk) are staffing Trump’s second administration. As with previous oligarchs, this new group is seeking to use their resources to tilt the rules of society in their favor. Already armed with loads of citizens’ private data, they want to expand their reach with the newest technology they have funded, AI.
After Trump’s first administration, we collectively have a tendency to view his governance as haphazard and rudderless. This is a mistake. Unlike his first term’s agenda, the new administration has a unified vision to establish a repressive society through a political blitzkrieg on multiple policy fronts.
We must recognize how these issues (transphobia, mass deportations, deregulation, DOGE, and more) are tied up in one terrifying political vision driven by AI. We must find ways to work together and stand united against authoritarian creep on all fronts to ensure that no one gets left behind. Trump and Musk cannot succeed.