Biden’s warning about powerful tech ‘barons’ recalls fears of the military industrial complex

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Biden added another chapter to his long-term legacy with what many progressives would consider a timely alert to the rising threat to American liberty from the uber-wealthy technology “barons” surrounding his successor. Eisenhower, the soldier’s soldier and a logistical mastermind who had spearheaded the invasion of Europe that brought an end to the Nazi terror, cautioned the nation to be on guard against what he called “the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” because it could portend “the disastrous rise of misplaced power.” The old soldier, who like Biden was speaking at the end of more than 50 years in his country’s service, told Americans that they “must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes” and pushed them to “take nothing for granted.” Only an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together,” he said. open image in gallery President Joe Biden issued a sharp warning about the rise of wealthy tech ‘barons’ The 46th president said the powerful rise of social media and the Trump-fueled end to fact-checking efforts by those platforms represent an existential threat to the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry” that Eisenhower spoke of as he prepared to leave office in January 1961. “Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation, enabling the abuse of power,” warned Biden, who called out Meta’s decision to stop working with third-party fact-checking organizations as letting the truth be “smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” In the more than six decades since Eisenhower’s warning, America’s defense industry has become more and more entrenched thanks to the raw power of money in politics.