WASHINGTON — Outgoing President Biden used a resentful farewell deal with Wednesday night time to warn towards what he known as a “tech-industrial complex” — claiming that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America” in a transparent swipe at Elon Musk and different enterprise titans scrambling to court docket President-elect Donald Trump.
Biden, 82, sniped at a few of the similar tech moguls, resembling Fb’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who have been seen as serving to the Democrat defeat Trump in 2020 by way of censorship of unfavorable protection.
“In my farewell address tonight, I want to warn the country of some things that give me great concern. And that’s a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked,” Biden stated.
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America, of 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 didn’t title names, however made the targets of his wrath clear by way of pointed feedback elsewhere in his remarks.
“In his farewell address, President Eisenhower spoke of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He warned us then about, ‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power,’” Biden stated.
“Six decades later, I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well,” the president went on.
“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. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit. We must hold the social platforms accountable to protect our children, our families and our very democracy from the abuse of power.”
The “giving up on fact-checking” line was a transparent shot at Zuckerberg, who just lately introduced that his landmark social community was transitioning away from fact-checks by third events to an X-style “community notes” system in a perceived overture to Trump.
Biden railed towards “misinformation” regardless of recurrently telling false or unverifiable tales of his personal — together with twice up to now week offering what native Los Angeles utilities say was a false rationalization for dry water hydrants in an try and deflect blame from native Democratic officers.
Meta’s just lately deserted system allowed junior writers at partnering organizations to challenge opinionated “fact checks” that downgraded political speech on Fb and Instagram based mostly on disputed evaluation, generally censoring true data that mirrored poorly on Biden — resembling criticism of his contribution to the mass incarceration of black males by way of harsh crime legal guidelines within the Eighties and ’90s.
The brand new system permits for group voting on fact-checks which can be appended to disputed posts — a mechanism pioneered by Musk’s X platform, previously generally known as Twitter.
The South Africa-born billionaire bought X in October 2022 in protest of prior acts of censorship, together with Twitter and Fb’s pre-2020 election banning of The Put up’s reporting on correct data from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop computer that implicated his father in Chinese language and Ukrainian enterprise relationships.
Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest man, just lately met with Trump and has courted him aggressively forward of Monday’s inauguration — whereas Bezos, the second-richest man, deep-sixed a Washington Put up editorial endorsing Biden’s hand-picked successor.
Musk, the world’s richest individual, in the meantime, actively supported Trump’s marketing campaign and owns plenty of high-tech corporations, together with electrical carmaker Tesla and the aerospace contractor SpaceX.
Biden, who will go away workplace as one of many least-popular presidents in trendy historical past, stated America should enact tax insurance policies meant to make the wealthy “begin to pay their fair share” and that there needs to be new insurance policies towards the “dark money … behind too many campaigns contributions” — regardless that a lot of it has benefited his personal celebration.
The forty sixth president additionally warned about synthetic intelligence, saying “nothing offers more profound possibilities and risk for our economy and our security, our society, and very often, for humanity.”
“Artificial intelligence even has the potential to help us answer my call to end cancer as we know it,” Biden stated, noting one in all his unfulfilled coverage pledges.
“But unless safeguards are in place, AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life, to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation. We must make sure AI is safe and trustworthy and good for all humankind.”
Biden opened his speech touting the cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that was introduced earlier within the day — whereas once more failing to supply any credit score to Trump, whose strain on each side is extensively considered facilitating the breakthrough.
And in a transparent barb at his successor, Biden stated: “We need to amend the Constitution make clear that no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office.”
Regardless of the bitter tone, the president tried to solid himself as magnanimous forward of his departure from workplace Monday
“I wish the incoming administration success,” he stated, “because I want America to succeed.”
