from the it’s-the-only-real-story dept
While political reporters are still doing their view-from-nowhere “Democrats say this, Republicans say that” dance, tech and legal journalists have been watching an unfortunately recognizable plan unfold — a playbook we’re all too familiar with. We’ve seen how technology can be wielded to consolidate power, how institutional guardrails can be circumvented through technical and legal workarounds, and how smoke and mirrors claims about “innovation” can mask old-fashioned power grabs. It’s a playbook we watched Musk perfect at Twitter, and now we’re seeing it deployed on a national scale.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a few people reach out about our coverage these days. Most have been very supportive of what we’ve been covering (in fact, people have been strongly encouraging us to keep it up), but a few asked questions regarding what Techdirt is focused on these days, and how much we were leaning into covering “politics.”
When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist.
We’ve always covered the intersection of technology, innovation, and policy (27+ years and counting). Sometimes that meant writing about patents or copyright, sometimes about content moderation, sometimes about privacy. But what happens when the fundamental systems that make all of those conversations possible start breaking down? When the people dismantling those systems aren’t even pretending to replace them with something better?
But there’s more to it than that.
It’s difficult to explain how much it matters that we’ve seen this movie before. (Well, technically, we’ve seen the beta version — what’s happening now is way more troubling.) When you’ve spent years watching how some tech bros break the rules in pursuit of personal and economic power at the expense of safety and user protections, all while wrapping themselves in the flag of “innovation,” you get pretty good at spotting the pattern.
Take two recent stories that perfectly illustrate the difference in coverage. First, there’s the TikTok ban. Political reporters focused on which party would benefit from the ban, and who would get credit for being “tough on China” — the usual horse-race nonsense. Tech and law reporters, meanwhile, were highlighting how the legislation would actually weaken security protections and create dangerous precedents for government intervention in private companies. (Not to mention how it would undermine decades of US work promoting an open internet.)
Or take what’s happening at the FCC right now. The traditional media keeps repeating the claims that Brendan Carr is a “free speech warrior,” because that’s what Donald Trump called him. But if you’ve been covering tech policy for a while, you know full well that Carr isn’t actually a believer in free speech. Quite the opposite.
Carr made it clear he wants to be America’s top censor, but cleverly wrapped it in misleading language about free speech. Inexperienced political reporters just repeated those misleading claims. Then he started doing exactly what he promised: going after companies whose speech he seemed to feel was too supportive of Democrats. And now some of those same media companies who failed to cover Carr accurately are falling in line, caving to threats from the administration.
This is the kind of thing tech and law reporters spot immediately, because we’ve seen this all play out before. When someone talks about “free speech” while actively working to control speech, that’s not a contradiction or a mistake — it’s the point. It’s about consolidating power while wrapping it in the language of freedom as a shield to fool the gullible and the lazy.
This is why it’s been the tech and legal press that have been putting in the work, getting the scoops, and highlighting what’s actually going on, rather than just regurgitation administration propaganda without context or analysis (which hasn’t stopped the administration from punishing them).
Connecting these dots is basically what we do here at Techdirt.
One of the craziest bits about covering the systematic dismantling of democracy is this: the people doing the dismantling frequently tell you exactly what they’re going to do. They’re almost proud of it. They just wrap it in language that makes it sound like the opposite. (Remember when Musk said he was buying Twitter to protect free speech? And then banned journalists and sued researchers for calling out his nonsense? Same playbook.)
Good reporters can parse that. Bad reporters fail at it time and time again.
But what’s happening now is even more extreme and more terrifying. Something that even experts in democratic collapse didn’t see coming. Normally when democracies fall apart, there’s also a playbook. A series of predictable steps involving the military, or the courts, or sometimes both.
But what’s happening in the US right now is some sort of weird hybrid of the kind of power grabs we’ve seen in the tech industry, combined with a more traditional collapse of democratic institutions.
The destruction is far more systematic and dangerous than many seem to realize. Even Steven Levitsky, the author of How Democracies Die — who has literally written the book on how democracies collapse — admits the speed and scope of America’s institutional collapse has exceeded his worst predictions. And his analysis points to something we’ve been specifically warning about: the unprecedented concentration of political, economic, and technological power in the hands of Elon Musk and his circle of loyal hatchet men as they dismantle democratic guardrails.
We’re pretty screwed. A couple of things are a little worse than I anticipated. One is that while we knew the Republicans would not put up many obstacles, they have been even weaker than I thought. That the Congress is basically shutting itself down in the wake of the executive branch usurping its power is also really stunning. The Republican abdication has been worse than I expected, and I thought it would be bad.
The second thing I didn’t anticipate was the role of Musk. I don’t think anybody quite could have anticipated it. That article drew on 20 years of research on competitive authoritarian regimes elsewhere in the world. The kinds of stuff we predicted, a lot of which has come to pass, are strategies that have been carried out in literally dozens of other cases. But Musk is pretty new. This is something that I don’t really have a model to understand. There’s a sort of technological frontier element to this that’s a little frightening. We don’t know what he’s going to do with data. And frankly, at least in democracies, I’ve never seen a concentration of political, economic, and media power as vast as this.
This is why tech journalism’s perspective is so crucial right now. We’ve spent decades documenting how technology and entrepreneurship can either strengthen or undermine democratic institutions. We understand the dangers of concentrated power in the digital age. And we’ve watched in real-time as tech leaders who once championed innovation and openness now actively work to consolidate control and dismantle the very systems that enabled their success.
I know that some folks in the comments will whine that this is “political” or that it’s an overreaction. And it is true that there have been times in the past when people have overreacted to things happening in DC.
This is not one of those times.
If you do not recognize that mass destruction of fundamental concepts of democracy and the US Constitution happening right now, you are either willfully ignorant or just plain stupid. I can’t put it any clearer than that.
This isn’t about politics — it’s about the systematic dismantling of the very infrastructure that made American innovation possible. For those in the tech industry who supported this administration thinking it would mean less regulation or more “business friendly” policies: you’ve catastrophically misread the situation (which many people tried to warn you about). While overregulation (which, let’s face it, we didn’t really have) can be bad, it’s nothing compared to the destruction of the stable institutional framework that allowed American innovation to thrive in the first place.
There’s something important to understand about innovation. It doesn’t actually happen in a vacuum. The reason Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley wasn’t because a bunch of genius inventors happened to like California weather. It was because of a complex web of institutions that made innovation possible: courts that would enforce contracts (but not non-competes, allowing ideas to spread quickly and freely across industries), universities that shared research, a financial system that could fund new ideas, and laws that let people actually try those ideas out. And surrounding it all: a fairly stable economy, stability in global markets and (more recently) a strong belief in a global open internet.
And now we’re watching Musk, Trump, and their allies destroy these foundations. They operate under the dangerous delusion of the “great man” theory of innovation — the false belief that revolutionary changes come solely from lone geniuses, rather than from the complex interplay of open systems, diverse perspectives, and stable institutions that actually drives progress.
The reality has always been much messier. Innovation happens when lots of different people can try lots of different ideas. When information flows freely. When someone can start a company without worrying that the government will investigate them for criticizing an oligarch. When diverse perspectives can actually contribute to the conversation. You know — all the things that are currently under attack.
But you need a stable economy and stable infrastructure to make that work. And you need an openness to ideas and collaboration and (gasp) diversity to actually getting the most out of people.
There are, of course, other stories happening in the world. And it has been frustrating that we haven’t been able to cover some of the stories we’d normally cover. I have about 700 tabs currently open, many of which contain stories I’d like to write about, some of which might seem closer to traditional Techdirt subject matter.
But right now, the story that matters most is how the dismantling of American institutions threatens everything else we cover. When the fundamental structures that enable innovation, protect civil liberties, and foster open dialogue are under attack, every other tech policy story becomes secondary.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just another political cycle or policy debate — it’s an organized effort to destroy the very systems that have made American innovation possible. Whether this is by design, or by incompetence, doesn’t much matter (though it’s likely a combination of both). Unlike typical policy fights where we can disagree on the details while working within the system, this attack aims to demolish the system itself.
Remember all those tech CEOs who thought they could control Trump? All those VCs who figured they could profit from chaos? All those business leaders who decided that “woke institutions” were a bigger threat than authoritarian power grabs? They’re learning a very expensive lesson about the difference between creative destruction and just plain destruction.
We’re going to keep covering this story because, frankly, it’s the only story that matters right now, and one that not everyone manages to see clearly. The political press may not understand what’s happening (or may be too afraid to say it out loud), but those of us who’ve spent decades studying how technology and power interact? We see it and we can’t look away.
So, here’s the bottom line: when WaPo’s opinion pages are being gutted and tech CEOs are seeking pre-approval from authoritarians, the line between “tech coverage” and “saving democracy” has basically disappeared. It’s all the same thing.
We’re going to keep doing this work because someone has to. Because understanding how technology and power interact isn’t just an academic exercise anymore — it’s about whether we’ll have an innovation economy left when this is all over.
If you think this kind of coverage matters — if you believe we need voices willing to connect these dots and call out these threats — then help us keep doing it. You can become a Friend of Techdirt, support us on Patreon, grab some merch, or even back our card game (while it’s still available for pre-order…)
The future of American innovation isn’t just another story we cover. It’s the story. And we’re going to keep telling it, whether the powers that be like it or not.
Filed Under: authoritarianism, coup, coverage, donald trump, elon musk, innovation, institutions, journalism, politics, techdirt
