Giuliano da Empoli’s slim volume The Hour of the Predator may be little, but it is fierce.
In the book’s 144 pages, the Swiss-Italian novelist (The Wizard of the Kremlin), political scientist and one-time adviser to former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi proves grimly insightful on the self-serving bromances between powerful political autocrats and tech billionaires. This calamitous symbiosis is roiling our old world order as a brutal “hour of the predator” comes round again.
Such manipulative dalliances are nothing new, he says. Now, as in other ages and manifestations, the “tech conquistadors” ally with easily duped politicians dazzled by technology they don’t understand but are blindly thrilled to enable.
A deliberate “chaos machine” results as societal and political norms are upended to facilitate the wealth and power of a tiny few. “All the guardrails of the old world – the respect for the independence of certain institutions, human and minority rights, a concern for international repercussions – have no value now that the hour of the predator is upon us,” writes da Empoli.
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If this sounds like a world that is too much with us, of course, it should. Building his case using finely-honed personal insights and illustrative past encounters with key figures, da Empoli exposes a dark and depressing new era that facilitates relationships between modern “Borgias” like Donald Trump and tech billionaires like Elon Musk.
No surprise to find that twosome here. Less expected perhaps are Barack Obama and Eric Schmidt, the quietly calculating “tech cardinal” who stepped into a flailing Google as chief executive, transforming it into a brutal corporate behemoth. “Before Musk, there was Eric Schmidt,” observes da Empoli, noting the US government’s antitrust committee dropped its case against Google two weeks after Obama was re-elected, aided by Schmidt’s data wizardry.
Blandly moderate as well as brutal, fat-ego political leaders are susceptible to Big Tech’s charms. At one end, think Nick Clegg at Facebook or tech-kowtowing Irish politicians. At the other sit “Borgia 2.0” Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, and the easily bamboozled Trump.
While others have written of tech’s slow boiling of democracy’s frog, da Empoli’s take is fresh, personal, and as bracing as it is bleak.
