AI: 'Realpolitik' AI ahead. RTZ #599
...entering era of 'RealTekPolitik' for big tech
Big Tech and AI are fast entering a new era of political pragmatism ahead , aka ‘realpolitik’. And not just because of the US/China ‘threading the needle’ geopolitical tussles.
There are deeper forces at work, across industries, tech and politics. All accelerating into the coming Presidential inauguration on January 20, 2025. As Disney CEO Bob Iger pithily says it above.
Check a dictionary for the meaning of ‘realpolitik’ and one gets back:
“Political realism or practical politics, especially policy based on power rather than on ideals.”
Foreign Affairs fleshes it out:
“The term “realpolitik” is widely used today as a synonym for “power politics” and understood as the realist approach to foreign policy, a venerable tradition that stretches from Machiavelli and Bismarck to scholar-diplomats of the postwar era such as George Kennan and Henry Kissinger.”
The piece goes on to provide more historical context from a book “Realpolitik: A History” by John Bew:
“In this fascinating biography of the concept, Bew reveals its rather surprising intellectual provenance and explains its shifting role in grand debates over statecraft. Bew traces the term to the mid-nineteenth-century writings of a little-known German thinker, August Ludwig von Rochau.”
“For Rochau, “realpolitik” referred less to a philosophy than to a method for working through the contradictions emerging across Europe as the competing forces of liberalism and nationalism gave shape to modern states.”
“A few decades later, the term entered the Anglo-American world, where it became entangled with concepts such as machtpolitik (the politics of force) and weltpolitik (global power politics). In the early twentieth century, the liberal internationalist movement galvanized by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson explicitly cast its ideas in contrast to such concepts. But by recovering the origins of “realpolitik,” Bew suggests that its original meaning might prove useful for today’s internationalists, who, like Rochau before them, are struggling to reconcile liberal ideals with a rising tide of nationalism.”
All this is of course a preamble to the current sharp transition of the technology world, to a more ‘pragmatic’ approach by technology business leaders, in the sphere of politics, ahead of the upcoming change in administration and congress in a week. I highlighted these changes in my 2025 outlook a few days ago.
Almost every major tech CEO has made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-lago and contributed to the new President’s inauguration fund, either personally or out of corporate coffers. And the reasons of course for most are pragmatism with the coming change of the political environment.
As PC Gamer covers it in “Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says tech leaders are 'pretending to be Republicans' to gain favor with Trump, skirt antitrust laws, and ultimately 'rip off consumers and crush competitors', where the whole piece is worth reading:
“Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney had some biting words on Friday for tech executives who are fawning over US president-elect Donald Trump, accusing them of playing nice to push anti-competitive policy to the detriment of the rest of us.”
"After years of pretending to be Democrats, Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans, in hopes of currying favor with the new administration," Sweeney said in a post on X. "Beware of the scummy monopoly campaign to vilify competition law as they rip off consumers and crush competitors."
The most aggressive shift ahead of the new administration of course has been by Meta founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg, totally re-aligning the company on its social media moderation policies much closer to Elon Musk’s X/Twitter, as Musk takes on the dual role of heading up ‘government efficiency’ for the new administration. As the NYTimes explains, Meta is ending irs fact checking programs on social media posts across its globe-spanning platforms:
“The social networking giant will stop using third-party fact-checkers on Facebook, Threads and Instagram and instead rely on users to add notes to posts. It is likely to please President-elect Trump and his allies.”
“Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new chief global affairs officer, played a leading role in Tuesday’s content moderation announcement.”
“In an exclusive interview on “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Kaplan said the company’s previous fact-checking system became too biased and the company wanted to return to its roots of more unfettered speech. He pointed to Elon Musk’s X, which has few rules and allows users to moderate each other, as a good model.”
This despite potential reaction by advertisers across the billions of users of Meta’s major platforms (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger et al).
All this is of course ahead of any decisions on what happens next with the January 19th ban on TikTok in the US, owned by Bytedance of China.
Coming back to the discussion of ‘RealPolitik’ above, we’re entering an era of ‘RealTekPolitik’. over the next few years. Most big tech companies cumulatively worth over $10 trillion, are now putting their weight behind the shifting political winds. So we’re entering what could be described as ‘pragmatic capitalism’, or ‘realpolitik in business’.
Especially in these early days of this AI Tech Wave, which is very different than other major tech waves over the last few decades. It’s an environment where decisions are driven by practical, goal-oriented strategies rather than ideology or ethics.
It’s going to be epitomized by adaptability, compromise and material constraints, very much akin to the political concept of realpolitik. US tech companies have to navigate national political and geopolitical issues as adroitly as they execute and navigate on their core tech businesses. The upcoming Biden administration’s ‘AI Diffusion’ rules in its outgoing days, is a case in point for the waters that US tech companies have to navigate.
The US tech industry is rapidly adapting the historical principles behind ‘Realpolitik’, into its version of ‘RealTekPolitik’ in AI and beyond. To be determined are the intended and/or unintended consequences to the world at large. Stay tuned.
(NOTE: The discussions here are for information purposes only, and not meant as investment advice at any time. Thanks for joining us here)