The Broligarchy and the Future of Tech Power

The now-famous photo from the Trump inauguration — tech billionaires seated in the front row, ahead of the cabinet — tells a story about where power resides in America right now. It is not subtle.

What does it mean when the people who control our information systems, our communication platforms, and increasingly our economic infrastructure also have direct access to political power at this level? What does it mean for democracy, for regulation, and for the rest of the world?

In this episode of Machines Like Us, I talked to Carole Cadwalladr — the journalist who broke the Cambridge Analytica story — about what she calls the "Broligarchy": the consolidation of tech wealth, media power, and political influence into a very small number of hands.

Carole has been sounding the alarm about the intersection of tech and politics longer than almost anyone. This conversation is about what happens when the alarm is no longer hypothetical.