President Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C. Photo: Mandel Ngan – Pool/Getty Images
President Biden in his farewell address to the nation on Wednesday took aim at Big Tech and warned of “dangerous consequences” if a “concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people” goes unchecked.
Why it matters: Biden’s warning that an “oligarchy” was “taking shape in America” come as the world’s richest person, Elon Musk prepares to co-lead the incoming Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as his companies including SpaceX hold government contracts.
What he’s saying: In his address, Biden pointed to President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address in which he warned of “military-industrial complex” and “‘the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power.”
- Six decades later, Biden said he’s “equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech industrial complex.”
- Americans “are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden said.
- “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking,” added Biden, in reference to Meta’s move to replace checking facts with X-style community notes.
- “The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”
Meanwhile, he called artificial intelligence the “most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”
- He added: “AI could spawn new threats to our rights, our way of life to our privacy, how we work and how we protect our nation.”
Go deeper: Biden jabs at Trump in farewell address, but pledges peaceful transition
