Representative Ro Khanna on Elon Musk and the Tech Oligarchy

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

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🗓️ 13 January 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Representative Ro Khanna of California is in the Democrats’ Congressional Progressive Caucus. And although his district is in the heart of Silicon Valley—and he once worked as a lawyer for tech companies—Khanna is focussed on how Democrats can regain the trust of working-class voters. He knows tech moguls, he talks with them regularly, and he thinks that they are forming a dangerous oligarchy, to the detriment of everyone else. “This is more dangerous than petty corruption. This is more dangerous than, ‘Hey, they just want to maximize their corporation's wealth,’ ”he tells David Remnick. “This is an ideology amongst some that rejects the role of the state.” Although he’s an ally of Bernie Sanders, such as advocating for Medicare for All and free public college, Khanna is not a democratic socialist. He calls himself a progressive capitalist. Real economic growth, he says, requires “a belief in entrepreneurship and technology and in business leaders being part of the solution.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the political scene. I'm David Remnick.
0:09.1	Early each week, we bring you a conversation from our episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:15.3	A new Congress was sworn in a week ago.
0:18.4	Despite the battle over the passing of a budget and a threatened revolt from
0:21.7	the fiscal hardliners, the usual chaos, Mike Johnson was quickly chosen as speaker. When Donald Trump
0:28.5	takes the oath of office, Washington will be under a conservative trifecta. Yet despite the
0:34.6	landslide that Trump describes, the GOP's margin in Congress is actually one of the smallest ever.
0:40.3	They can barely afford to lose a vote if they're going to pass any legislation.
0:45.5	Democrats, needless to say, are still licking their wounds over the election.
0:49.9	Progressives and liberals and centristists are engaged in a process you could call soul-searching
0:55.2	or less charitably a blame game over which faction turned voters toward Donald Trump.
1:01.4	Representative Roe Kana of California is firmly in the progressive camp, and he thinks that
1:07.1	the Democrats have got to regain the trust of economically struggling voters.
1:12.6	Kana's district is in the heart of Silicon Valley.
1:15.7	And he once worked as a lawyer for tech companies.
1:18.0	So he knows these tech billionaires.
1:20.5	He talks to them and he thinks they're forming a dangerous oligarchy from Elon Musk on down,
1:27.1	all to the detriment of everyone else.
1:29.8	I spoke with Rokana last week.
1:34.8	So we are talking on the day that the election of Donald Trump has been ratified without incident
1:42.3	in Congress.
1:49.1	And unlike the last time around, there's very little talk of opposition.
	...

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