© Strategic Culture Foundation
The Musk versus Trump fallout (at least for now) has a distinct 'made for television' quality to it.
But do not be deceived by the entertainment content. The spat illustrates a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the MAGA coalition. It is quite possible that this contradiction will erupt at some further point and
may end up triggering the slow decay of Project Trump.
A fulcral moment in the last U.S. election was the switch of Silicon Valley's ultra-rich Tech oligarchs from their support for the Democrats to Trump. It brought both money and the potential glittering prize that America could seize a monopoly over global data storage; AI; and what Yanis Varoufakis calls '
cloud capital' - the purported ability to extract rent (i.e. fees) for access to America's putative massive data hoard and to Big Tech's associated platforms. Such a data monopoly, it was believed, would then give the U.S. the ability to manipulate how the world thinks - and to define the products and planforms seen to be 'cool'.
The notion too was that a monopoly on data centres could potentially be as lucrative as the U.S. monopoly of the dollar used as the principal trade currency - which could provide major capital inflows to offset debt.
The explosive quality to a coalition of Tech Oligarchs with the MAGA Populists, however, is that both factions hold irreconcilable visions - both for dealing with America's structural debt crisis, as well as that of America's cultural future.
The 'Tech Bros' vision is wildly radical; it is 'authoritarian libertarianism'. Peter Thiel, for example, argues that a small posse of Oligarchs should rule the empire, unfettered by any democratic limitation; that the future should be based in 'disruptive technology'; be robotic and AI driven; and that the populace should be tightly 'managed' through AI control.The Trump Economic Team's vision is quite different: Trump's own primordial objective - to which geo-politics is subordinate - is to shore up the dollar as the world's main trading currency. This objective however can only be sustained through addressing America's unsustainable debt overhang.
The overhang reflects the imbalance that built up after 1970 when the U.S. trade account slipped into deficit: On the one hand, the U.S. has facilitated an exaggeratedly large sphere of global dollar indebtedness to splurge worldwide; but at the same time, this massive inverted pyramid of debt rests on a diminutive and
shrinking American production base.
In other words, whilst America benefited enormously from these capital inflows, it can no longer expect to grow itself out of its own, self-created debt-trap.
Comment: Unfortunately, 'the President' has very little say in such matters. They are decided in the bowel of the MIC/Deep State, and presented as a fait accompli. DNI chief Tulsi Gabbard, possible the only voice of sanity at the top level of Trump's administration, was purposefully kept away from the meeting where the strike was being pushed by the Israel Firsters.
Apparently her bold public expression of her assessment of Iran's nuclear status (likely in hopes of averting the mess we are in now) has put her on the outs with the warmongers. The contempt for her expressed by some WH officials is breathtaking. The Daily Mail reports: The poor woman is having to do damage control for her boss. Some think she should get out with her principles intact: