Disruptors-in-chief

 

“Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalisation of Silicon Valley. By Jacob Silverman. Bloomsbury Continuum; 336 pages; $30 and £20

 

The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech Billionaires Taking Over the World. By Giuliano da Empoli. Translated by Sam Taylor. Pushkin Press; 160 pages; $16.95 and £12.99

 

RECENTLY A GROUP of American tech billionaires stood in single file like eager schoolchildren to have their photos taken at the Resolute desk with Donald Trump. The president gave them a pen and a coin. He entertained them with classic rock from his iPad. Then he hosted them at a dinner at the White House, where they boasted of the giant sums their firms planned to invest in America.

 

If only Giuliano da Empoli had been a fly on the wall. The Italian-Swiss writer was an adviser to Matteo Renzi during his stint as Italy’s prime minister in 2014-16. He has spent years in the corridors of power observing what he sees as the emergence of a new cadre of strongmen, who feed off each other and share a love of disruption. He skewers them with sardonic humour.

 

In politics, they are led by rule-breakers such as Mr Trump, Saudi Arabia’s Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. In tech, they include the likes of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man; Mark Zuckerberg, boss of Meta; and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT.

 

As the author sees it, these men share a common aim: to smash the old order. Mr da Empoli says that the cohort’s first law of strategy is action, however reckless. He likens their attitude to the Borgias of medieval Italy, whose scheming and tolerance for bloodshed put two family members on the papal throne.

 

The target of today’s strongmen is technocratic administration—what the author calls the “Davos consensus”—which is supposedly blind to the way the winds of politics have moved against it. Their weapon is artificial intelligence (AI), which does not care about rules or procedures: the only thing that matters is the result. The political leaders are in thrall to the technologists: Mr Trump, for instance, is averse to AI regulation. The tech elite, meanwhile, believes in a future of AI-driven decision-making—even if governments cannot understand how AI reaches its conclusions.

 

This may sound like overwrought AI doomerism, albeit with an Old World literary flair. As well as Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, Mr da Empoli enlists Kafka’s “The Trial” and “The Castle” to underscore what he sees as the menace of “authoritarian intelligence”. If political life used to resemble “Veep”, Armando Iannucci’s comedy-of-errors TV series, the author reckons it is now reminiscent of the cruel worlds of “The Godfather” and “Squid Game”.

 

Yet there is plenty that is irresistible about “The Hour of the Predator”.

 

Mr da Empoli’s experiences at the United Nations in New York, the Ritz-Carlton in Riyadh and on stage with Mr Altman provide vignettes of the Borgian power grab that he relates with exquisite detachment.

 

MBS has a “disarmingly sweet” smile for someone who once turned the Ritz-Carlton into an interrogation chamber for rival princes and billionaires. Mr Bukele conducts mass incarcerations of gang members that are “part ‘Hunger Games’ and part gay-porn movie”. Mr Altman’s wide-open eyes give him “the startled look of a woodland creature”. That expression belies “the will to limitless power that seeps through every phrase he utters”.

 

In “Gilded Rage” Jacob Silverman, a journalist, dwells on a similar cast of characters. As well as Mr Musk, his book describes the ascent in America of Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech mogul who, at one point, was tipped for a role in Mr Trump’s administration; David Sacks, the White House’s AI czar; and other right-wing venture capitalists, such as Peter Thiel.

 

It has the same premise, too: since the election in 2024, the tech elite’s bias for “moving fast and breaking things” is echoed by Mr Trump’s utter disregard for norms (tearing down the White House’s East Wing is Zuckerbergian in chutzpah, as is having tech giants pay for the new ballroom). Both groups are animated by a bizarre strain of personal resentment: “These titans of industry might be fabulously wealthy, but they can come across as deeply unhappy,” the author writes.

 

Yet “Gilded Rage” describes its subjects with nothing like Mr da Empoli’s deft touch, nor does it match his ability to explain the “why” as well as the “who”. Instead, the book is as two-dimensional as its title. Its descriptions of its subjects’ sense of entitlement will be familiar to anyone who reads the newspapers. The book’s anger renders it impotent.

 

Unlike “The Hour of the Predator”, it fails to grapple with the ways in which the technocratic elite—with their lawyerly attention to detail and disregard for the political zeitgeist—may have sealed their own fate. It also overlooks how AI may play to the strengths of the rule-breakers. Read Mr da Empoli’s book, if only to understand how fundamentally the balance of power in the world may be changing.” [1]

 

1. Disruptors-in-chief. The Economist; London Vol. 457, Iss. 9472,  (Nov 1, 2025): 80, 81.