MIT Technology Review February 26, 2025
Data barons at President Trump’s inauguration show the importance of relationships in the modern world. The latest issue of MIT Technology Review explores all kinds of partnerships.
Greetings from a cold winter day.
As I write this letter, we are in the early stages of President Donald Trump’s second term. The inauguration was exactly one week ago, and already an image from that day has become an indelible symbol of presidential power: a photo of the tech industry’s great data barons seated front and center at the swearing-in ceremony.
Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg all sat shoulder to shoulder, almost as if on display, in front of some of the most important figures of the new...