Representative Ro Khanna on Elon Musk and the Tech Oligarchy
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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. A new Congress was sworn in a week ago. Despite the battle over the passing of a budget and a threatened revolt from the fiscal hardliners, the usual chaos, Mike Johnson was quickly chosen as Speaker of

When Donald Trump takes the oath of office, Washington will be under a conservative trifecta. Yet despite the landslide that Trump describes, the GOP's margin in Congress is actually one of the smallest ever. They can barely afford to lose a vote if they're going to pass any legislation. Democrats, needless to say, are still licking their wounds over the election. Progressives and liberals and centrists are engaged in a process

You could call soul-searching, or less charitably, a blame game over which faction turned voters toward Donald Trump. Representative Ro Khanna of California is firmly in the progressive camp, and he thinks that the Democrats have got to regain the trust of economically struggling voters. Khanna's district is in the heart of Silicon Valley, and he once worked as a lawyer for tech companies. So he knows these tech billionaires. He talks to them, and he thinks they're forming...

A dangerous oligarchy, from Elon Musk on down, all to the detriment of everyone else. I spoke with Ro Khanna last week. So we are talking on the day that the election of Donald Trump has been ratified without incident in Congress. And unlike the last time around, there's very little talk of opposition. We've seen from many people, media leaders included, opposition.

a kind of bending at the knee, some of them trying to anticipate where the advantage of cooperation and even collaboration will be. So it seems to be an entirely different mood at all levels of society preparing for a second Trump presidency. Trump's whole thing is intimidation. If he can instill fear that he may have retribution, it is in the back of people's minds. And I think certainly, I know it's in the back of people's minds of people

tech leaders in my district who are bending the knee because they don't want punitive tariffs or they don't want draconian action from an administration against their company. Without mentioning the company's name, there was one company where I was doing outreach with them for job creation, and they politely said, well, we can't do anything. They all said, give us some time. Let us get used to this new administration, right? So no one wants to get

on Trump's bad side in corporate America. And with politicians, I think there's a sense of, are we going to be taking the wrath of this MAGA base? Now, I'm not saying that that's the only motive, but it would be dishonest for people to not say that the intimidation has had some effect. When you meet in private with the congressional Democrats...

How is the mood different between 2017 and 2024? There's a positive, no more introspection. A real sense that we missed something over the last 50 years, that liberal democracy has missed something about people who've been left out of globalization, people who've been left out of automation. And that...

And introspection, not just among progressive Democrats, I would say amongst the entire Democratic caucus is something that I haven't seen in my eight years in Congress. So that is a good thing, a hopeful thing that we're forced to think about and deal with those issues. Republicans would say the Democrats are fundamentally out of touch. They're in enthrall to wokeism. They're a party of elites. How do you react to that critique?

I disagree with it. You know, people keep throwing around this word wokeism. And let's unpack it a bit. You know, I believe as a citizen that when you have a conversation with another citizen, you or another person in America, you treat them with basic respect.

You should not treat them as less than because of their gender or because of their race or because of their religion. And that was the country that we were becoming. And now we're

Are there times that that has gone to the excess? Sure. Just because you're having this conversation of respect doesn't mean that you shouldn't be able to vehemently disagree or to say that someone's done a bad job. And so I think that the Democratic Party should be proud of saying we are a party that is treating people with basic respect in how we communicate. But what then is the issue? The issue is that

that for so many people in this country, they lost their pride. They lost their means of making a living. They saw $12 trillion pile up in my district in Silicon Valley. They saw immigrants and recent immigrants do really, really well, whereas the people who've been here for generations, who fought the wars, who built the energy, who supplied the coal, supplied the steel, they say, what's happened to us?

And I don't think that the Democratic Party was in touch with their anger, with their pain, with their struggle, with their frustrations. On the day when our interview comes out, we will release an early copy of the cover of The New Yorker, inauguration copy. And it's going to be Donald Trump with his hand on the Bible right next to the hand of Elon Musk standing right next to him.

And it's meant to be a rather dark joke about not just Elon Musk, but a kind of tech-inflected oligarchy that's come into play, that's playing such an important role in American politics today. The super wealthy, largely from tech. And you come from a district that's all about Silicon Valley, and you've seen the

ideology of so many people in Silicon Valley evolve over time. Tell me about that evolution of ideology, what it was, what it is now, and the importance those people are going to play, some of them, in the new administration. Well, the tech community is going to be a bigger and bigger part of American political life, much like the railroad industry probably was in the late 19th century.

During the Gilded Age.

that these people, some of them think they're Nietzsche's Superman, right? They're born with greater willingness to flout the norms, flout society, and are doing the great civilizational advances. And the little people like Ro Khanna in Congress are stopping them from being great and advancing civilization.

And that the way to move humanity forward is to take off their shackles and to let them be free. Let Superman be Superman.

Yeah, this is more dangerous than petty corruption. This is more dangerous than, hey, they just want to maximize their corporation's wealth. This is an ideology amongst some that rejects the role of the state.

And the irony is it's the state, of course, that has enabled Silicon Valley with the investments. It's the state that enabled Tesla, as I've argued with Elon directly. I mean, it was Obama's grants that made Tesla possible. It's Obama administration's Ash Carter that makes SpaceX possible.

He's the one who says, let's have bidding so that Musk and SpaceX can bid against Boeing and Lockheed. But never do you hear them praising the state that made all of this possible. And they also aren't recognizing the extraordinary disparity of wealth that's taking place. And then this unholy alliance of wealth and power. And so the challenge for progressives, in my view, for Democrats is going to be how do we make the case that

for the role of the state and how we get to those folks to say we need government to deal with this inequality. And it's not just these brash billionaires that are going to deal with it is our challenge as a Democratic Party. So tell me how you view the privileged position of Elon Musk specifically in this administration.

Well, one, I didn't like the fact, not just him, but on both sides, that there were billionaires being able to spend money on these elections. I mean, I think that that's a perversion of American democracy. But that's thanks to the Supreme Court and thanks to United. Thanks to the Supreme Court. Larry Lessig and I have an op-ed uplifting what Maine did. They restricted at least the contributions that these billionaires can make to super PACs.

And that passed with 70 percent. And I hope we can do that around the country to have some check on this spending. Because I think when you talk about Musk – and I will point out where else I have – there's danger. But when you talk about –

the Republican retort is, well, come on, there are billionaires on your side too. And come on, you're going to put some of these people as ambassador to Great Britain and as commerce secretary. So let's not pretend that the Democratic Party is pure. So I think we have to have a philosophic and actual commitment to getting big money out of politics. But the danger with Musk is that he's

There is no disclosure requirements on financial conflicts. There is no actual – I have to disclose everything. My wife who's – I grew up middle class but my wife inherited some wealth from her immigrant father. We disclose that every month. Every month there's –

Endless disclosures. And there's no disclosure on people who are going to be making the decisions. And then the second thing, David, and Musk has both praised me and then yesterday he was criticizing me all over Twitter. What was he in your grill for?

He was because I had voted with 158 other Democrats against Nancy Mace's bill that Nancy Mace says would have deported sex offenders. Of course, it's already illegal to be a sex offender. You already have deportation. And Nancy Mace's bill was just a political gotcha, which would have actually expanded the definition of violence and misconduct.

according to 200 groups of domestic violence, made it harder for survivors because survivors could have been deported. But all the facts don't matter, right? I mean, Musk puts out, you know, kind of disappoints me. He's just like everyone. He voted to keep sex offenders in America with 158 Democrats. And maybe 10 million people see that. And then I reply with the facts and maybe –

20,000 people see that. So, you know, it's not exactly a symmetrical information warfare. I guess you need to buy a social media outlet of your own. Yeah. Maybe the Remnick podcast will get me the parody. It'll put you over the top. It'll put you over the top without a doubt. I would say this directly to his face. I said, Elon, you know, you may have a brilliance at marketing.

the design of Tesla cars. And he actually did help to design that. You may have a brilliance at disrupting DOD and Department of Defense and maybe focus on what we can do there. But to think that you suddenly now are a savant of congressional politics and American politics and global politics is the original cardinal sin that I talked about about Superman. It's sort of this sense that, and I'm around a lot of people with wealth and they're

They think they can do everything. I'm speaking with Representative Ro Khanna of California. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and we'll continue in a moment.

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. And I've been speaking today with Ro Khanna of the House of Representatives. Khanna was born in Philadelphia, the son of Indian immigrants, and he was a prominent lawyer for the tech industry before Barack Obama appointed him to the Department of Commerce. Khanna was elected to Congress in 2016 from a district in California's Bay Area, a district that encompasses much of Silicon Valley. He's had a long relationship with Elon Musk and other tech leaders.

Now, Congressman, do you think Elon Musk will be, in a sense, co-president? His proximity to power has been like few other examples I've ever seen. I think he is the second most influential person for sure. Here's why I think Trump is drawn to him, other than Trump's just obsession in measuring resources.

worth and wealth, right? So I remember an early meeting in the Oval Office with Donald Trump where Tim Cook was there. CEO of Apple. Yeah. And we both kind of look at each other sheepishly saying, are you going to tell people back home that we're at the Oval Office here? And Donald Trump goes on this long,

about how the most important person in the Oval Office is not him, but it's Tim Cook because Tim Cook just hit a trillion dollars as Apple, and that was the first company to be a trillion dollars. And it just was a glimpse into his worldview, right? He measures things as well. Or his ability to flatter.

Yeah, that's a more positive take. But here's what I think we're missing. Donald Trump is 80s wealth, right? I mean, it's kind of the reruns. He's got Hulk Hogan. You know, it's like 1980s. It takes you back. And I think Trump recognizes that, that, you know, that the people only watch reruns so long. I mean, The Apprentice only had 14 years. He needed a new act. Well,

Well, Elon gives them that, right? Elon is the future. Elon is not the 1980s. Elon is the 21st century, really the 21st century. And you meet young people. I've had arguments in my own family. And a lot of these young kids, they look up to him in part because of putting rockets up in space, which is what makes it interesting.

so challenging for Democrats because we have a better vision for the industries of the future. We have a better vision for how we bring prosperity to people left out. But Trump is, I think, appropriating Elon saying, look, I get the future. I've got this guy. And now they've got an agenda, which I think is going to just hurt people who are the most vulnerable the most.

Now, I may be wrong, and we'll have fact-checking look this over, but I'm pretty sure you're the only member of Congress who's written a book, and your book is called Dignity in a Digital Age, that has a blurb on it from the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. I'm pretty sure that's the case.

It's my proudest achievement, David. It's not nothing. It's not far from nothing. And yet I want to quote from another of these blurbs on the back of your really interesting book that you gave me last time we met. And it's from Kara Swisher. And she says, "...it seems more clear than ever, from misinformation to hate speech, from screen addiction to the immense wealth held by tech billionaires..."

That tech is working against us more than for us, as it was intended at the dawn of the Internet age. It's to Ro Khanna's credit that he is trying to change that narrative so that we can democratize the inventions that were paid for by the American people and let us share in all the wonders they're capable of delivering. How can a politician do that?

The question becomes, in my view, two things with technology. One is a more basic issue, which is how do we have people be producers in an age where the industry

Incredible wealth is being accumulated in a few places and technology is changing the nature of all kinds of industries. And so the one aspect is, in my view, what a politician can do is to convene people across the society and to work to create these economic opportunities.

opportunities and high paying jobs in communities across this country. And we can do that with advanced manufacturing. We can do that with tech credentialing. We can do that with vocational education. And we should be focused on how are they able to be prosperous in a modern economy and what is the role of government in doing that. And the second thing what we need to do is to figure out, which is a much harder project,

is to figure out how do we democratize these public domains like X, like where I'm getting outnumbered 10 million to 20,000. Well, you know, it's not nearly as bad as when the printing press came out, right, David? I mean, Musk hasn't yet sparked a war, and God help us hope he doesn't. I mean, after the printing press—

Erasmus comes in. The champion of the printing press says, I made a big mistake. They're putting muckraking pamphlets out there. And if you read some of them, it makes our social media look tame. And it's leading to war in Europe for 100 years.

But it is all of us, not us directly, but humanity, that spent 100 years to invent the institutions of liberal democracy so that today we say more knowledge on a printing press is good. Well, why can't we use that same imagination in the digital space?

create town hall-like conversations there, create living room conversations there. We have an opportunity to shape the digital sphere in a more democratic way. And some of the ideas in the book are how to do that. Tell me a little bit about your worst fears about a coming Trump administration. We've seen the appointments to the FBI, Department of Defense, and many other areas that are

at least in my view, alarming, really alarming. What ramifications do you see them having pretty quickly? I saw Jamie Raskin and Zoe Lofgren together in the elevator a week ago, and I said, it's a good day in America. You both are still free. I don't think they appreciate it. That's a humorful thing. But I say that only half jokingly. I mean,

Do I think Trump is going to put all of Congress and the Democratic side in jail? No. But could he pick 10 places? I mean, then he doesn't even have to do it. But people under him to start investigations, you can make someone's life miserable in America without them going to jail. The second thing that I fear, and this is a deeper problem, but one that I think is worth discussing,

talking about because it doesn't get explained enough is just the degradation of what he's done to political discourse in America and political expression.

I mean, he has this is where Democrats copy it. Like, have you noticed now every politician thinks instead of expressing a coherent, beautiful thought, they can just curse for effect or they could just say something like they would talk at a bar. And you wonder, well, what if Martin Luther King had done that or Barack Obama had done that or John F. Kennedy had done that? That's having a corrosive effect in who we are. The explanation for that is that it's authentic.

that a certain kind of authentic conversation, like Trump's three-hour-long conversation with Joe Rogan, is much more effective than the rhetoric of King, Kennedy, Obama, or Cicero. I think the best politicians are able to meet people where they are to relate, to understand, but then to uplift. Here's a dilemma.

The dilemma is that Bernie Sanders has an analysis of the case that is especially pertinent for what happened in 2024 about deindustrialization, about class differences, about income inequality. And yet Bernie Sanders has never won nationally. And there aren't a whole hell of a lot of Bernie Sanderses in Congress. Square that for me.

It came really close. If you come within a whisker of winning the nomination, it's not a bad showing. I do think, though, that

what can be added to Sanders' message. And I call myself a progressive capitalist, not a democratic socialist. And I think that the reason for that is that you can, to create economic jobs in this country, 85% are in the private sector. And many people want jobs in the private sector. And so in my view, you need to mobilize activists

growth with innovation and technology in these places combined with government saying, okay, we're going to tax billionaires more and invest in healthcare and education. But you have to have a production agenda. You have to have a growth agenda. You have to have an agenda saying we understand how you're going to build prosperity in

And at the same time, we want to make sure you have health care and education. And I think the combination of that can be a majoritarian coalition for the country. How would you differ from Bernie Sanders exactly, other than in the label of democratic socialist as opposed to progressive capitalist? Well, I would have business leaders and technologists as part of this effort of reindustrializing the country and creating jobs. And Sanders would find that anathema?

I think he would probably be suspicious, right? I mean, the CHIPS Act. But this is the CHIPS Act that you co-authored. That I co-authored. And invested more than $30 billion in semiconductor manufacturing. In semiconductors. I think he ended up voting against it. He certainly was very critical of it at the time, and for good reasons. He wanted more safeguards. He wanted to make sure the money didn't go to CEOs. One of the critiques of the Inflation Reduction Act, of the CHIPS Act, is that the implementation wasn't there.

There wasn't a focus on measurable results. There wasn't a focus on getting things done within a year. There wasn't a focus on performance, on delivery. And I do think the Democrats need that to be able to convince people that they're going to be able to create jobs. So I think a belief in entrepreneurship, in technology, in business leaders being part of the solution. But then where I agree with him is –

Higher taxes on billionaires and ultra-wealth, Medicare for all, free public college, a livable wage, support for unions. Combine that with an economic dynamism, and I believe that's the right answer for the country. We've just seen the so-called squad take a couple of losses at the polls. And

As somebody who at least sympathizes with the ideology of some of the people who just lost, are you concerned about the position of the left in Congress?

We're stronger than we've ever been in terms of just new progressives being elected. I think the Progressive Caucus is up to 90-something people. And I was disappointed by the losses of Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman, disappointed also because of the role that big money had in there. I don't think super PACs should be spending money on Democratic primaries. Right.

Well, I mean, obviously, APEC and crypto and others spent, but I don't think it's fair to say, OK, just APEC you can't spend, but all these others can. I mean, let's just have a blanket rule in the Democratic primaries, no super PAC money. Let's return to where we began. How should Democrats strategize for the midterm elections in 2026? We need to be very, very clear when Trump comes out with his tax returns.

for ultra wealthy Americans that we instead would be providing raises to Americans with increasing the minimum wage, that we instead would be providing health care and drive a very sharp contrast on Trump's broken economic promises to the majority of America.

Where do you think you're going to have to play defense the hardest against the Trump administration? What issues do you think that he values most that he's going to push the hardest that are, in your view, the most dangerous? Substantively or politically? We'll try both.

So substantively, honestly, I fear for people who are undocumented in this country. I mean, I've had people, undocumented families visited me before the election a couple of weeks, petrified. Let me tell you the story of one undocumented woman who came to see me. She's been in this country for 25 years.

She's a dental hygienist. Her daughter is studying to go to med school in Los Angeles. She lives in my district up in Northern California. Once a month, she drives down to Los Angeles and then drives back up the same day. It's about a five-hour drive because she can't afford a hotel in Los Angeles. And the reason she's never been able to make enough to support afford a hotel is because she's chronically underpaid being undocumented.

And so my question is, really, we're going to go after this person who's been in the country for 25 years? There are going to be many, many people like her who are either going to face deportation, face the fear of deportation. We can be for a secure border.

We can be for making sure that violent criminals are deported. But we need to not run away from our values. We need to tell the story of women like I just told and say that that is the American dream. And I believe that that is something which we can convince people of. And if we can't, then we need to fight for it because that's, in my view, fundamental to this country. And what are your political fears?

My political fears are...

on the deindustrialization and Trump's rhetoric, right? I mean, so he's good at the showmanship of I'm doing things and this doge, right? I'm going to cut government waste. I mean, that's a problem. Truman became president because he was for cutting the waste of FDR's mobilization of the arsenal of democracy. He had to go so fast. FDR, there was a lot of waste and there was a lot of corruption and Truman did that. And so Trump, I think we have to be

careful in saying, look, we're for cutting waste too, but not for Social Security, Medicare, but we're for doing that. And we have a real plan on the industrialization and jobs. And this is my fear with Elon is Trump has surrounded himself with these technologists who at first glance say, oh, they're the ones who are putting rockets up in space. And if he convinces

people, that he really understands how to build prosperity for them, even if he's not doing anything. That's a big challenge. I mean, we've got to be better at selling the substance of our economic vision. We can't, I guess, let me be succinct. We can't get outmaneuvered on the economy by Donald Trump. Tell me about your ambitions when it's discussed that here's the Democratic bench.

Your name always comes up in recent conversations as a presidential candidate, potentially.

Yeah, because the obvious thing the Democratic Party needs to do is to run an Indian American Hindu house member. We have a great track record of delivering victories. And the only reason that that's probably the best thing to do is because we have to think as far out of the box to not pick the conventional pundit's choice. But I'll tell you in a more serious note –

What I hope to do, and that is to be part of a Democratic Party that really focuses on how to rebuild trust with people in deindustrialized communities, in communities that have been left out of the modern economy. And coming from Silicon Valley, if I can say, look, I understand how to be effective. I really understand how we can build things effectively.

And this is how your families are going to build economic stability and modern wealth. And this is what we need to do with the role of government being part of it. Until there is economic independence and economic stability in communities left out, you're not going to get to that cohesive multiracial democracy anymore.

Would I like to be part of the national conversation going forward of the Democratic Party? Yes, absolutely. Can I say for a fact what that means in in 2028? No, because so much is contingent on how do we do it? First of all, it's when the 26th to win the House.

what is the mood at that time? But do I want more David Remnick to be mentioning me in the lists of people who could be future leaders to consider? Absolutely. So, you know, that just makes my voice more effective. Ro Khanna, thank you so much and Happy New Year. Appreciate it. Happy New Year, David. Ro Khanna represents California's 17th District in the Bay Area.

I'm David Remnick. That's our program for this week. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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