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Predictions 2025: Big Tech Takes the Reins
This isn’t going to be a normal year.
2025 will be strange, frenetic, and full of surprises, particularly for those of us who watch tech closely. We’re not accustomed to the tech industry having this much raw power. The finance industry? Sure. For decades, we watched leaders from Goldman rotate through every administration’s cabinet and economic team, and we got used to it. But this year, for the first time ever, Big Tech has leap-frogged finance in the pantheon of political influence. And while the finance bros have a reliable and predictable ideology — capital is king — the subset of Big Tech bros who’ve bought their way into the Oval are evangelists for an untested and downright strange brand of magical thinking best summed up as “techno optimism.” The sophomoric claptrap underpinning Andreessen and Musk’s approach to politics may not be representative of the tech industry overall, but for better or for worse, 2025 is going to be the year when the loudest voices in the room are all adherents of the Great Man Theory, and they all happen to have direct access to the Oval Office.
One year ago, while reviewing the performance of my less-than-stellar 2023 predictions, I said that I’d learned my lesson: Going forward, I’d avoid prognosticating about Trump or politics, and I’d steer clear of wildcards like Musk and crypto. But here we are, one year later, and each of those topics swirl around our once and future President. They’re unavoidable — and very much in the news, regardless of the traditional holiday lull.
Since jotting down my initial list of 2025 predictions two weeks ago, several have already started to come true. The very first notion I had — that TikTok will not be banned in the US — looked like a counterintuitive call just last week. Thanks to a fresh Trump filing, the odds have shifted considerably. I also planned on predicting that Trump would have a serious falling out with his new tech bro besties. Again, the odds of that increased with this past week’s imbroglio around H-1B visas. I don’t think immigration will be the issue that splits up our two favorite camps of narcissists, but it does offer a fine foreshadowing of fissures that could become chasms this coming year.
Regardless of politics, crypto, and Big Tech, there’s plenty of other topics worth…
