3 hours ago
1
WASHINGTON — Outgoing President Biden used a resentful farewell address Wednesday night to warn against what he called a “tech-industrial complex” — claiming that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America” in a clear swipe at Elon Musk and other business titans scrambling to court President-elect Donald Trump.
Biden, 82, sniped at some of the same tech moguls, such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who were seen as helping the Democrat defeat Trump in 2020 through censorship of unfavorable coverage.
“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 said.
“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 did not name names, but made the targets of his wrath clear through pointed comments 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 said.
“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 clear shot at Zuckerberg, who recently announced that his landmark social network was transitioning away from fact-checks by third parties to an X-style “community notes” system in a perceived overture to Trump.
Biden railed against “misinformation” despite regularly telling false or unverifiable stories of his own — including twice in the past week providing what local Los Angeles utilities say was a false explanation for dry water hydrants in an attempt to deflect blame from local Democratic officials.
Meta’s recently abandoned system allowed junior writers at partnering organizations to issue opinionated “fact checks” that downgraded political speech on Facebook and Instagram based on disputed analysis, sometimes censoring true information that reflected poorly on Biden — such as criticism of his contribution to the mass incarceration of black men through harsh crime laws in the 1980s and ’90s.
The new system allows for community voting on fact-checks that are appended to disputed posts — a mechanism pioneered by Musk’s X platform, formerly known as Twitter.
The South Africa-born billionaire purchased X in October 2022 in protest of prior acts of censorship, including Twitter and Facebook’s pre-2020 election banning of The Post’s reporting on accurate information from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop that implicated his father in Chinese and Ukrainian business relationships.
Zuckerberg, the world’s third-richest man, recently met with Trump and has courted him aggressively ahead of Monday’s inauguration — while Bezos, the second-richest man, deep-sixed a Washington Post editorial endorsing Biden’s hand-picked successor.
Musk, the world’s richest person, meanwhile, actively supported Trump’s campaign and owns a number of high-tech companies, including electric carmaker Tesla and the aerospace contractor SpaceX.
Biden, who will leave office as one of the least-popular presidents in modern history, said America must enact tax policies meant to make the rich “begin to pay their fair share” and that there should be new policies against the “dark money … behind too many campaigns contributions” — even though much of it has benefited his own party.
The 46th president also warned about artificial 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 said, noting one of his unfulfilled policy 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 announced earlier in the day — while again failing to offer any credit to Trump, whose pressure on both sides is widely regarded as facilitating the breakthrough.
And in a clear barb at his successor, Biden said: “We need to amend the Constitution make clear that no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office.”
Despite the sour tone, the president tried to cast himself as magnanimous ahead of his departure from office Monday
“I wish the incoming administration success,” he said, “because I want America to succeed.”
English (US)