President Joe Biden devoted a great deal of his farewell address warning of the concentration of power and wealth, particularly when it comes to what he dubbed the “tech industrial complex.”
In a speech from the Oval Office, Biden did not name Elon Musk, who stands to take a central role in Donald Trump‘s administration, or Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, who have taken blatant steps to woo the former Celebrity Apprentice host.
But borrowing a phrase from Dwight D. Eisenhower, who warned of the rise of the military industrial complex in his final speech to the nation, Biden said that he was “equally concerned about the potential rise of the tech industrial complex.
“It can pose real dangers to our country as well. Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact checking. Truth is smothered by lies, told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable, to protect our children, our families in a very democracy from the abuse of power.”
Biden’s warning were part of a broader alarm about the abuse of power being unchecked.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America — extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said.
Musk’s role in the incoming administration has raised big concerns that he will wield excessive influence on the Trump administration, all the while reaping the windfall from government contracts. Musk poured tens of millions to help return Trump to the White House, and he has suggested that he will continue to bankroll challengers to lawmakers who are in his disfavor.
Meanwhile, a number of tech titans have lined up behind Trump. Last week, Zuckerberg announced that Meta would stop fact-checking on its platforms, a nod to an incoming president who has blasted the social media platforms’ content moderation practices.
Musk, meanwhile, suspended fact-checking on Twitter after he purchased it and later rebranded it as X, replacing it with a community notes system, one that Zuckerberg plans to adopt. Musk himself has spread lies and misinformation from his own account.
Biden’s warning underscored what had eluded his presidency for much of his term, as he and his advisers had trouble getting their message through in a diffused information environment where legacy media audiences were dwindling.
Through his four years in office, Biden’s administration often battled the spread of falsehoods on social media, particularly as it sought vaccine acceptance to address the Covid pandemic.
The president ran through his legislative and other accomplishments in the earlier part of the speech, including the passage of the infrastructure law, another aimed at boosting the semiconductor industry and another to bring down the cost of prescription drug prices. He touted the passage of significant climate change legislation while mentioning the creation of 17 million new jobs, surpassing his predecessors.
“It will take time to feel the full impact of all we have done together, but the seeds are planted,” Biden said.
Biden’s administration has tried to address the rise of artificial intelligence, including with largely voluntary initiatives by major firms like OpenAI to establish safeguards. But despite months of sessions devoted to the concerns over AI, Congress never passed any significant law.
“Unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our right, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation,” Biden said. “We must make sure AI and safe and trustworthy.”
Biden earlier this week gave a farewell speech devoted to foreign policy, but this evening he did make mention that Ukraine “is still free, and we pulled ahead of our competition with China.”
The president also started his speech by talking of the breakthrough ceasefire deal reached earlier today between Israel and Hamas.
Trump has tried to take credit for the deal, but Biden said, “This plan was developed and negotiated by my team and will be largely implemented by the next administration.”
