Joanne E. Gray Editor-in-Chief, Policy & Internet · Media and Communications, University of Sydney
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Tech billionaires at the White House. Surveillance on the streets. A $500 billion AI deal. The politics of technology have never been more visible — and the world’s leading digital society scholars have something urgent to say about it.
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Technology is always political. Behind every tool, machine, platform or system, there are real people making decisions informed by their personal interests, values and worldviews. In the field of internet and technology policy research, unearthing these hidden politics is the core of what we do.
Lately, though, the work of unearthing has become unnecessary. Since Donald Trump began his second term as President of the United States, the politics of technology have been laid bare for all to see.
Tech billionaires have taken front-row seats at the inauguration and inside the machinery of government. Surveillance technologies are being deployed in new and troubling ways. Hundred-billion-dollar AI deals are being struck, crypto has gone from “scam” to policy, and the state is restructuring the social media platform markets.
In my new editorial published in Policy & Internet, I reached out to technology scholars across four continents — from Bangladesh to Uruguay, Scotland to South Africa — for their reactions to this extraordinary political moment. I asked them what they think Trump’s second term means for our digital society, and where the most enduring consequences might lie.
Here’s a sample of what they had to say:
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, the United States is, unfortunately, contributing to the rise of digital authoritarianism worldwide.”
- Md. Sayeed Al-Zaman, Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Jahangirnagar University
“The United States government is largely unaccountable, with inscrutable machines making decisions that accountable humans used to make. This legacy will be difficult and expensive to undo.”
- Siva Vaidhyanathan, Director, Center for Media and Citizenship, University of Virginia
“Trump is neither the first, nor last world leader to cuddle up to Big Tech but the hollowness of tech-funded digital rights-speak is a fitting synecdoche for his administrations’ co-dependency on abusive, anti-democratic and misanthropic oligopolies.”
- Marianne Franklin, Professor and Chair of Media, Cultural Industries and Society, University of Groningen
“The tech CEOs of some of the world’s largest digital corporations lined up behind Trump, showing what critical theorists have always known, namely that behind authoritarianism stands capital and that, therefore, the representatives of digital capital cannot be trusted.”
- Christian Fuchs, Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation, Paderborn University
“In an increasingly destabilised geopolitical landscape, nations’ reliance on U.S.-owned communication technologies creates a structural point of vulnerability.”
- Olga Boichak, ARC Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, University of Sydney
“With serious money to be made from every geopolitical, cultural and economic event, we may be careening towards a future where history-altering decisions are consistently made so insider gamblers can get rich.”
- Finn Dawson, PhD Candidate, Media & Communications, University of Sydney
“Trump’s moral legacy will not be reversed as easily as his policies. By legitimizing previously unacceptable conduct, he breaks the barrier between civilian and defence technology development.”
- Morten Bay, Research Fellow, Center for the Digital Future, USC
“The survival of democracy is increasingly in question. Unregulated developments in AI increasingly play into the fractured politics of the post-public sphere.”
- Philip Schlesinger, Professor in Cultural Theory, University of Glasgow
“Trump has accelerated the decentering of the United States in the global digital order. ‘America First’ is fast becoming ‘America Only.’”
- Payal Arora, Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures, Utrecht University
“The post-Trump era presents an opportunity for the Global South to redefine its digital and data landscape. As the US retreats from global leadership, countries in the South can assert their own visions for a more inclusive and equitable digital world.”
- Admire Mare, Professor and Head of Communication and Media Studies, University of Johannesburg
“Trump’s second term may be the start of what’s previously been the realm of theory: a regionally sovereign Southeast Asia founded on the socialist democracy ideologies of the 1980s.”
- Jonathon Hutchinson, Associate Professor of Media and Communications, University of Sydney
“The loss of person-to-person intelligence sharing mechanisms in cybersecurity is a capability which will take years to rebuild. Rebuilding the trust that underpins that system will take much longer.”
- Callum Harvey, PhD Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute
“Will we ever develop the political will to demand that both generative AI and American political culture envision themselves as serving the systemically underserved?”
- Tarleton Gillespie, Affiliate Professor, Department of Communication & Information Science, Cornell University
“Your worst fears are already realised. ‘Digital society’ is a hallucination. Society is mutual enmity, exploitation, and AI systems. Social cohesion has retreated to patriarchal relations. Institutions are once and future ruins, abandoned. The only universals are corporate freedom and computational abstraction.”
- John Hartley AM, Honorary Associate, University of Sydney & John Curtin Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Curtin University