Tech CEOs, Trump and society's new AI age

The scene at Donald Trump's second inauguration was a diorama of political power at the dawn of a new era. Across much of the globe, authority has shifted away from Washington, Brussels and London, away from heads of state and traditional titans of media and industry. But even before Elon Musk became Donald Trump's right-hand man, 2025 was to be the year that a handful of American tech companies - Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta - achieved something unprecedented: concentrated control over virtually every aspect of how we communicate, consume information and understand reality. These companies determine what news we see, their algorithms shape our beliefs and their artificial intelligence systems increasingly generate the content that fills our screens. What is new in 2025 is the completeness of their dominance. As with similar epochal watersheds in 1789, 1848, 1917, 1946 and 1989, the implications will eventually touch every facet of life on the planet.