“Trump 2.0.” This coinage is often used to distinguish the current Trump administration from the first. The phrase is telling: it underscores that we’re in a new era and that behind the scenes, the people and forces driving this iteration of the Trump administration are different from those that came before. The second Trump administration is being driven to a greater degree by tech billionaires and their interests: self-dealing on public contracts; privatizing public services; expanding corporate power while crushing human rights; promoting crypto; removing guardrails against fraud, waste, and abuse; and pursuing personal vendettas.

The cadre of people driving today’s agenda is leveraging a set of interlocking ideologies related to technology to rhetorically justify and propel these changes. In this series, “Ideologies of Control: A Series on Tech Power and Democratic Crisis,” we asked expert contributors to name and dispel the myths and ideologies that animate their actions. A number of ideological projects prepared the ground for today’s assault on American institutions; we will focus on those that run through data, AI, and the tech sector.

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The ideological agenda behind the headlines positions technology and its architects as power brokers in an increasingly illiberal environment. Their changes are bolstered by the narrative that AI is a force that will inevitably reshape society. To make informed choices about how to respond to this aggressive reshaping of the US government, we must examine these animating ideas. We approached authors for this series who have deep knowledge about the unusual views of reactionaries in the tech industry: whether it be fantasies of libertarian paradises built on defunct sea-based oil rigs, the vision of company towns in Texas and eventually Mars, enthusiasm for debunked 19th Century ideas about race science and eugenics, or the goal of replacing the US dollar as the global reserve currency, these more esoteric backstories can be disorienting to non-specialists. But, seemingly overnight, understanding the ties that bind these projects together—however strange they may seem—has become essential information for all of us to understand and grapple with.

Imaginez un monde dans lequel, au moment même où une régulation du tabac était débattue au parlement européen, les plateaux télé, les radios et les journaux invitaient systématiquement le directeur de la recherche de Philip Morris, en le présentant comme un pionnier scientifique de la chimie des nouvelles générations de cigarettes. Omettant d’évoquer sa casquette industrielle et ses conflits d’intérêts, les journalistes le questionneraient sur l’avenir de la cigarette, les enjeux sur la compétitivité économique du pays et les régulations adéquates.