Two years ago, we devoted a full issue of Mother Jones to the rise of the American oligarchy—how the United States became the world’s premier destination for hoarded wealth, and gave rise to its own class of ultra-wealthy, ultra-powerful, well, oligarchs. The richest Americans, by one measure, controlled a greater share of the wealth than their Gilded Age peers. They were building bunkers and yachts to escape the world they were stripping for parts, and flexing their muscles in the political realm.
How quaint.
In Donald Trump’s second term, the American oligarchy has gone hyperscale. The world’s richest men are trying to remake the country and the world to bring about an artificial intelligence revolution, and they’ve made themselves key players in the president’s political project to do it. For the May+June issue of Mother Jones, I wanted to follow the AI revolution to its foundations, in the backyards, bean fields, and old industrial parks across America. I talked to people around the country who were organizing against data centers in their communities, watched hours of town hall meetings, and checked out three of the largest projects under construction to get a sense of their scale:
The AI boom has ushered oligarchy onto a new plane by uniting the monopolistic ambitions of the world’s richest men with the nationalist ambitions of their political champions. In the process, it has sparked a reckoning, in big towns and small and across the political spectrum, over the demand for resources and tax dollars and over what kind of future we might build—about who gets to decide to bet the house and whose chips are simply fodder for the pot. The data centers have, in a sense, transformed opaque structures of inequality and power into literal ones. Oligarchy is now more than an idea; it is a place.
It’s part of a big new package of stories from my colleagues on the rise of AI oligarchy: What they want—and what it’s doing to the rest of us. I hope you’ll check it out.
—Tim Murphy
