Staring Back at the Panopticon: Resisting Tech Cronyism Under Trump 2.0

This short paper was originally published in the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy 's Notes from the New Frontier of Power blog series. You can read the other papers here, written by Professors Shoshana Zuboff and Mathias Risse as well as other Technology & Human Rights Fellows: Burcu Kilic , Nai Lee Kalema , and Sebastián Smart .

President Donald Trump’s first day in office was a welcome party for a new age of tech cronyism. The day began with news that Elon “Awkward Gesture” Musk will be the sole head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after forcing out Vivek Ramaswamy. After?spearheading efforts to ban TikTok in 2020, Trump signed an executive order staying TikTok’s exile until April on the condition that its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, arrives at a deal?giving the U.S. government 50 percent ownership. Among the?flurry of executive orders and?dozens of repealed Biden-era orders, Trump?rescinded Executive Order 14110, President Biden’s order on?Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, which mandated stricter oversight of AI development.

A few days after repealing Executive Order 14110, Trump signed the?Executive Order on Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence. Parroting the text of the Republican platform, the brief order includes only a single blunt sentence that condenses the Trump administration’s approach to AI policy: “It is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.”

These first steps indicate the Trump administration’s priority to significantly deregulate a rapidly expanding and controversial technology that is in desperate need of oversight and guardrails. By unshackling the already loose regulatory chain on AI and the tech industry, these initial executive actions provide a preview of the types of risks this administration embraces: algorithmic bias, unfettered data collection, and disinformation.

Biden’s order required companies developing AI systems posing national security, economic, public health, and safety risks to share safety test results with the government. The order also called on the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop new safety standards and included provisions addressing discriminatory algorithms.

The fact that these requirements are less burdensome and enforceable than AI regulations in places like the European Union has not stopped tech companies from complaining that they impede innovation. With Trump in office, the tech billionaires have more free rein than ever to put profits ahead of ethics and safety. In practice, innovation at all costs results in costs incurred by a public that is unwillingly made to beta test technology that chills their speech and invades their privacy. This price is of course not the same for everyone.

Significantly, Trump has announced policies aimed at deporting millions of immigrants, militarizing domestic law enforcement activities against activists and already over-policed communities of color, and surveilling political opponents, journalists, women, and trans people alike. This administration’s deregulatory approach coupled with a policy agenda reliant on America’s vast AI-enabled surveillance machine further entrenches tech cronyism and incentivizes an all-too-familiar “move fast and break things” style of technology development.

This administration’s policy goals will necessarily be accompanied by increased investment and deployment of surveillance technology, greater reliance on data brokers compiling and selling our personal data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and predictive analytics to make decisions about us. The commodification of human behavior is not unique to the Trump administration. After all, Biden leaves Trump with a surveillance state that has expanded its scope and capabilities. Among other things, by signing the?Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act (RISAA), Biden reauthorized?Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), extending the federal warrantless surveillance program to 2026. However, to fulfill the spoken and unspoken threats made on the campaign trail, Trump’s use of the surveillance state will likely be more targeted, malicious, and harmful.

Congress has stalled for over two decades to enact meaningful laws to protect Americans’ privacy. While some legislative efforts at the federal level, such as the?American Privacy Rights Act, have garnered bipartisan support, shifting priorities under the new administration will likely leave privacy laws in limbo. We cannot count on our government, certainly not at the federal level, to protect our privacy or our interests.

Now, more than ever, we must take action to protect ourselves, our communities, and our data.?The WIRED Guide to Protecting Yourself from Government Surveillance provides advice and actionable steps to upgrade your personal privacy protections. The?Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense contains a treasure trove of tutorials, guides, and security scenarios, including resources for activists, journalists, researchers, LGBTQ youth, and abortion access activists, workers, and patients. For more specific information about digital security and abortion access, the?Digital Defense Fund has helpful guides and resources.

Privacy Guides is a one-stop shop for reviews of privacy-focused services like?web browsers,?encrypted communications, and?VPN services, including recommended privacy settings and configurations to minimize your digital footprint.?Freedom of the Press Foundation also has their own in-depth VPN guide.

Lastly, if you bring your phone with you to a protest, be sure to turn off location tracking, turn on airplane mode, and use a password or PIN for your screen lock instead of biometric locks like fingerprint and face recognition.?The Markup’s guide includes more tips for how to prepare your phone for a protest.