After Donald Trump won this months election, one of the first things he did was to name two unelected male plutocrats, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a new Department of Government Efficiency. The yet-to-be-created entitys acronym, DOGE, is something of a jokea reference to a cryptocurrency named for an internet meme involving a Shiba Inu. But its appointed task of reorganizing the federal bureaucracy and slashing its spending heralds a new political arrangement in Washington: a broligarchy, in which tremendous power is flowing to tech and finance magnates, some of whom appear indifferent or even overtly hostile to democratic tradition.
The broligarchs ranks also include the PayPal and Palantir co-founder Peter ThielVice PresidentElect J. D. Vances mentor, former employer, and primary financial backeras well as venture capitalists like Marc Andreessen and David Sacks, both of whom added millions of dollars to Trumps campaign. Musk, to be sure, is the archetype. The worlds richest man has reportedly been sitting in on the president-elects calls with at least three heads of foreign states: Ukraines Volodymyr Zelensky, Serbias Aleksandar Vu?i?, and Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdo?an. Musk joined Trump in welcoming Argentine President Javier Milei at Mar-a-Lago and, according to The New York Times, met privately in New York with Irans ambassador to the United Nations in a bid to defuse tensions between that country and the United States. Recently, after Musk publicly endorsed the financier Howard Lutnick for secretary of the Treasury, some in Trumps camp were concerned that Musk was acting as a co-president, The Washington Post reported.
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Musk doesnt always get what he wants; Trump picked Lutnick to be secretary of commerce instead. Even so, the broligarchs ascendancy on both the foreign- and domestic-policy fronts has taken many observers by surpriseincluding me, even though I wrote last August about the broligarchs deepening political alignment with Trump. Though some of them have previously opposed Trump because of his immigration or tariff policies, the broligarchs share his politics of impunity: the idea that some men should be above the law. This defiant rejection of all constraint by and obligation to the societies that made them wealthy is common among the worlds ultrarich, a group whose practices and norms I have studied for nearly two decades. Trump has exemplified this ethos, up to the present moment: He is currently in violation of a lawwhich he signed into effect during his first termrequiring incoming presidents to agree to an ethics pledge.
Trumpwho infamously said of sexual assault, When youre a star, they let you do itcites his celebrity as a basis for his elevation above the law. Many broligarchs also see themselves as exceptional beings, but arrived at that view through a different path: via science fiction, fantasy literature, and comic books. Ideas from these genres have long pervaded Silicon Valley culture; last year, Andreessen published a manifesto calling for Becoming Technological Supermen, defined by embarking on a Heros Journey and conquering dragons.
Superhero narratives also appear to inform many of Musks more eccentric political views, including his reported belief that the superintelligent have a duty to reproduce, and may help explain why in September he reposted a claim that a Republic of high status males would be superior to our current democracy. Last week, Musk likened Matt Gaetz, Trumps then-nominee for attorney general, to Judge Dredd, a dystopian comic-book character authorized to conduct summary executions. Musk seems to have meant this as a compliment. He described Gaetzwho, until his resignation from the House, was under a congressional investigation in connection with an alleged sex-trafficking schemeas our Hammer of Justice.
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Whatever its source, the broligarchs sense of their innate superiority has led many of them to positions on taxation quite similar to Trumps. In 2016, the Republican presidential nominee bragged about avoiding tax payments for yearsThat makes me smart, he crowed from the debate stage. The broligarchs have quietly liberated themselves from one of the only certainties in life. As ProPublica reported in 2021, Musk paid zero federal income taxes in 2018 and a de facto tax rate of 3.3 percent from 2014 to 2018, during which his wealth grew $13.9 billion. Thiel used a government program intended to expand retirement savings by middle-class Americans to amass $5 billion in capital-gains income, completely tax-free. The Trump-friendly broligarchs political ascendancy turns the rallying cry of the Boston Tea Party on its head, achieving representation with minimal taxation.
In their hostility to taxation and regulation, the men who rule Wall Street and Silicon Valley resemble earlier generations of wealthy capitalists who enjoyed outsize influence on American politics. Even some tech barons who supported Kamala Harris clamored for the firing of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who favors vigorous antitrust enforcement. But the broligarchs are distinct from old-school American oligarchs in one key respect: Their political vision seeks to undermine the nation-state system globally. Musk, among others, has set his sights on the privatization and colonization of space with little or no government involvement. Thiel and Andreessen have invested heavily in creating alternatives to the nation-state here on Earth, including libertarian colonies with minimal taxation. One such colony is up and running in Honduras; Thiel has also invested in efforts to create artificial islands and other autonomous communities to serve as new outposts for private governance. The nature of government is about to change at a very fundamental level, Thiel said of these initiatives in 2008.
Cryptocurrency is the financial engine of the broligarchs political project. For centuries, states have been defined by two monopolies: first, on the legitimate use of coercive force (as by the military and the police); and second, on control of the money supply. Todays broligarchs have long sought to weaken government control of global finance. Thiel notes in his 2014 book, Zero to One, that when he, Musk, and others started PayPal, it had a suitably grand mission We wanted to create a new internet currency to replace the U.S. dollar. If broligarchs succeed in making cryptocurrency a major competitor to or replacement for the dollar, the effects could be enormous. The American currency is also the worlds reserve currencya global medium of exchange. This has contributed to U.S. economic dominance in the world for 80 years and gives Washington greater latitude to use financial and economic pressure as an alternative to military action.
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Undercutting the dollar could enrich broligarchs who hold considerable amounts of wealth in cryptocurrencies, but would also weaken the United States and likely destabilize the world economy. Yet Trumpdespite his pledge to Make America great again and his previous claims that crypto was a scam against the dollarnow seems fully on board with the broligarchs agenda. Signaling this alignment during his campaign, Trump gave the keynote speech at a crypto conference last July; he later pledged to make crypto a centerpiece of American monetary policy via purchase of a strategic bitcoin reserve. The day after the election, one crypto advocate posted on X, We have a #Bitcoin president. The incoming administration is reportedly vetting candidates for the role of crypto czar.
If American economic and political dominance recedes, the countrys wealthiest men may be well positioned to fill and profit from the power vacuum that results. But is a weakened country, greater global instability, and rule by a wealthy few really what voters wanted when they chose Trump?
Musk spent millions of dollars to support Trumps campaign and promoted iton X. Hes now doing everything he can to capitalize on Trumps victory and maximize his own powerto the point of siccing his X followers on obscure individual government officials. Some evidence, including Axioss recent focus-group study of swing voters, suggests that Americans may already feel queasy about the influence of the broligarchs. I didnt vote for him, one participant said of Musk. I don’t know what his ultimate agenda would be for having that type of access. Another voter added, Theres nothing, in my opinion, in Elon Musks history that shows that hes got the best interest of the country or its citizens in mind. Even so, we can expect him and his fellow broligarchs to extend their influence as far as they can for as long as Trump lets them.