The era of "gangster tech regulation" is facing a turning point following a "historic disaster" for Republicans in the recent midterm elections. While Donald Trump remains in office, Democrats have won the House and Senate, flipping seats in states like Texas. These newly empowered Democrats will now have the leverage to launch investigations into tech executives and negotiate over budget and defense bills.

The tech industry has spent the last few months enjoying a "mostly hands-off regulatory approach" from the Trump administration. This included a decision not to enforce a divest-or-ban law against TikTok—an idea originally proposed by Trump—leading the company to thank him by name in its app. While the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission continued some existing lawsuits, the volume of high-profile investigations seen under the Biden administration slowed markedly.

Trump, once a vituperative critic of Big Tech, became "joined at the hip" with it. Tech CEOs attended his inauguration, and companies provided "ballroom donations and gold gewgaws." The White House hosted the reveal of OpenAI’s Stargate Project, and the US Army created a special detachment for executives from Meta, Palantir, OpenAI, and Thinking Machines Lab. Furthermore, Trump tapped tech leaders as advisers and ordered an entire technology renamed because he thought it would make the AI industry look better, and the industry duly fell in line.

Several specific areas of concern regarding these ties have emerged:

Meta overhauled its content policy to allow calling gay people mentally ill and women property.

Elon Musk is "allegedly" throwing Nazi salutes and posting about protecting the white race from extinction.

Trump may have enriched himself through cryptocurrency connections while backing off investigations into crypto fraud.

Musk may have benefited financially from ties to Trump, alongside "reckless, destructive, and allegedly illegal actions with DOGE" which the source claims devastated parts of the federal government and likely led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.