alt Hacker NewsThis misses what happened entirely.
What happened is that tech companies got so large that they are now essentially defense contractors. You can't both be a countercultural rebel, the kind who would evoke 1984 in a TV ad, and be a CEO and/or significant owner in a trillion dollar company.
At some point, the company's interests align with domestic and foreign policy and the company becomes a tool of the state, which is interesting because that's the accusation levelled at Chinese companies but it's exactly what Google, Meta, Microsoft, SpaceX, Tesla, Amazon, etc have become. They're deeply entwined with government contracts and defense that alignment is impossible to avoid.
You saw this as Tim Apple [sic], Sundai Pichai, Sergey Brin, Elon Musk and Sam Altman all bent the knee at the last inauguration. All of them paid 7 figures to be there.
Idealism, disruption, etc are fundamentally incompatible with being a multi-billionaire.
And that entwinement runs in both directions.
The tech giants have been spared regulation and oversight, in a way that has allowed them to cement their position at the top. Not only does this enable the sort of egregious abuses we've had to become used to, it also stifles innovation and competition - to the detriment of everyone, including their own shareholders.
The USA risks trapping itself in a spiral of oligarchy, reminiscent of Russia in the late 1990s.