As tech-billionaires increasingly gain political power, some observers have questioned their influence on democratic frameworks and societal structures — a phenomenon some researchers have referred to as “tech authoritarianism.”
According to Berkeley Geography graduate student Lee Crandall, whose research focuses on tech authoritarianism, tech authoritarians tend to view liberal democracies as inefficient and instead favor privatized technocratic governance, a form of government where private sectors make major decisions rather than politicians. An example they cited is tech billionaire Elon Musk’s work with the Department of Government Efficiency in trimming the federal workforce.
Crandall will be a panelist for an upcoming Social Science Matrix California Spotlight: Tech Authoritarianism on Sept. 24, which will explore the relationship between technology and power within cities, economic development and politics. Tech authoritarians often lobby for particular candidates in government and advocate for freedom from taxation and regulation and limiting the rights of others, which is raising concerns about technocratic governance, according to Crandall.
Crandall spoke to Berkeley Social Sciences about how they perceive tech authoritarianism’s impact on society.
Can you tell us about your research focus and how it connects to the relationship between technology and power?
Lee Crandall: I am currently researching new tech cities, technoeconomic development, and the reconfiguration of nature, land, and lives under crypto/tech imaginaries — a collectively held vision that blends technology and social order. This intersects with my earlier work on what is referred to as, “crypto-colonialism” in Puerto Rico. Crypto-colonialism is where coordinated groups of individuals leverage their wealth to settle in and exploit lands and laws favorable towards continued crypto interests and activities (see this article for more details).
Similar to real-estate developers, crypto-capitalists (those who invest in the cryptocurrency industry) view cities as investment products. But they also view cities as “startup sandboxes” for genetic engineering, nuclear energy experiments, data centers, drone weapons factories, and more — largely unconcerned with whom they displace and what ecologies are disturbed in the process.
What is your definition of tech authoritarianism?
Lee Crandall: Tech-authoritarianism refers to the concentration of political power of a small group of tech-investors, often former tech company founders turned venture capitalists, who have amassed significant wealth in Silicon Valley and in the early days of cryptocurrency. In the present moment, some tech-billionaires are lobbying to install favorable political candidates in government.
More broadly, tech-authoritarians see liberal democracy as an inefficient technology to be uninstalled and replaced with privatized technocratic governance. They are doing so by eliminating the positions of federal employees from prior administrations, gutting funding for public services, upending international relations, foreign aid, immigration policies, and more (e.g. Elon Musk with DOGE). These range from predictive policing, surveillance tools, to precision targeting with drone weapons. Opponents and calls to slow down are deemed backwards and misguided, standing in the way of technological progress.
What are some everyday examples of tech authoritarianism that we may overlook?
Lee Crandall: We encounter encoded exploitation daily but unevenly in forms of algorithmic bias, omnipresent surveillance, racialized predictive policing, databases (including Palantir’s ImmigrationOS platform) targeting marginalized people to strip away rights. Tech-investors also use deceptive strategies to fly under the radar. For example, purchasing large areas of land under limited liability corporations (LLCs), or launching campaigns with faked AI-generated images to make it seem like more people support their projects and positions. The targeting of central banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the rise of alt-news sites and the shift of Twitter/X to Musk, and the attacks on higher education are all part of tech authoritarianism.
