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Les ultra-riches à l'assaut du pouvoir | Géopolitis | Géopolitis | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Les ultra-riches à l'assaut du pouvoir | Géopolitis
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Hello. Welcome to "Géopolitis",
an episode on
those we call the new oligarchs.
INTRO
TECH EMPIRES
Their names are Elon Musk,
Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
They lead tech empires
and now orbit around the US president.
A century after Rockefeller and the oil barons,
a new generation of ultra-wealthy
influences the world's leading power.
BUBBLES AND BILLIONS
Oligarchs partying in Dubai,
the new hotspot for Russian super-rich,
some under international sanctions.
In a globalized world,
money and power know no borders.
KEEPING IN LINE
Oligarchs growing in power and influence.
Some got burned by getting too close to power,
like Jack Ma in China and Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia,
who dared to challenge the Kremlin.
They emerged from the ruins of the former USSR.
In the 1990s, as the Soviet empire collapsed,
a small group of men
seized the resources of a failing state.
These were the first oligarchs.
The word then entered our vocabulary.
The phenomenon continues to grow
and has gone global.
Today, a new generation of ultra-wealthy people
is reshaping power centers: financial, industrial,
and especially tech company leaders.
They buy media outlets, influence laws
and political decisions,
fund electoral campaigns.
A discreet but very real power,
in Russia, but also in Europe
and deep within American power circles.
In times of crisis and instability,
oligarchs thrive.
They're there, front and center,
when Donald Trump is sworn in as president:
French businessman Bernard Arnault,
Tim Cook,
Sundar Pichai,
and the three wealthiest CEOs in the world,
Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk,
billionaires meeting government officials.
ELON MUSK THE ADVISOR
Shortly after entering the White House,
Trump gave Elon Musk a custom-made role,
which he outlined in the Oval Office.
We have a $2 trillion deficit.
If we don't address it,
the country will go bankrupt.
In three months, he cut federal subsidies,
eliminated thousands of civil service jobs,
a chainsaw approach inspired by Argentina's president.
It's the bureaucracy chainsaw.
Elon Musk also cut
in departments that helped his success.
According to The Washington Post,
over 20 years, his companies SpaceX and Tesla
received $38 billion from the federal government,
including from NASA,
where SpaceX became essential
for sending American astronauts to space.
The pair was inseparable during the campaign.
Musk provides hundreds of millions in financial support
and the full influence of his social network X.
Though their alliance has seemed shaky lately,
just recently,
when Trump went to seal a record deal
with Saudi Arabia,
Elon Musk was part of the trip.
JEFF BEZOS FORMER RIVAL
Jeff Bezos is a whole different story.
During his first term,
Trump repeatedly threatened to break up Amazon
and accused it of tax evasion.
He targeted the Washington Post, owned by the billionaire,
which he considers too critical of him.
The atmosphere changed drastically during the campaign.
The newspaper refused to endorse the Democrats,
a first in decades.
Jeff Bezos donated $1 million
to Donald Trump's inauguration ceremony.
Since then, his aerospace company, Blue Origin,
has secured a satellite launch contract
with the Pentagon worth over $2 billion.
When Amazon considered indicating on its prices
the extra costs from Trump's government taxes,
Bezos changed his mind.
He was great.
He solved the problem quickly
and did what needed to be done.
He's a good guy.
ZUCKERBERG NEW CONVERT
At the start of this year, a new Mark Zuckerberg
appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast,
an open Trump supporter.
I think masculine energy is a good thing.
Society is full of it,
but corporate culture tries to avoid it.
Having a corporate culture
that celebrates aggressiveness more
has a positive effect.
Meta's founder is flexing his muscles.
He aligned with policies in favor of the new president,
whom his group had banned from Facebook and Instagram
after the Capitol riot.
Mark Zuckerberg donated $1 million
for his inauguration ceremony.
He appointed Trump allies to key positions,
ended fact-checking on his platforms,
and rolled back diversity programs.
Joe Biden issued this final warning
before leaving the White House.
An oligarchy is taking shape in America
with extreme wealth, power, and influence
threatening our entire democracy.
An unprecedented concentration of power
at the top of the world's leading power.
GEOPOLITICS
-Laura Bullon-Cassis, hello. -Hello.
You're a researcher at the Albert Hirschman Democracy Center
at the Graduate Institute of International Studies.
You study these sometimes complex relationships
between billionaires and democracy.
As we saw in this report,
do these tech bosses represent a new oligarchy
emerging in the United States?
My answer is both yes and no.
We know money has influenced politics
in the US for a long time,
whether in campaign funding
or through lobbying.
What's new,
as we can see in these striking images
you showed,
is that tech billionaires
are seizing political power.
This power manifests in two ways.
There's direct power.
Elon Musk is a prime example.
Yes, in the Oval Office.
Then there's a more indirect influence
through information control.
We see Bezos with the Washington Post,
Meta with social networks.
It's a very insidious power,
based on data collection
and knowledge of our behavior.
It's harder to understand and grasp.
It has a direct impact on public opinion.
Let's discuss this further.
These people are at the head
of tech and sometimes media empires.
What do they seek when approaching power?
It's difficult to generalize this
across the tech oligarchy.
They're very different from each other.
If you look at Peter Thiel, for instance,
who funded Trump's campaign, or Musk...
The PayPal co-founder,
who was very close to Trump early on.
They both have clearly libertarian views,
with an authoritarian side.
There's an ideological aspect
at play here.
For the others, it's less obvious.
There are shifts in allegiance.
You showed this well with Zuckerberg,
who switched from one side
to align with Trump.
No one understands why.
I think it's opportunism.
Would it be the same if Kamala Harris was president?
It's quite possible.
What they have in common
is promoting the idea
that technology drives society
and should not be regulated,
or barely regulated.
Public opinion,
especially among progressive Americans,
is perhaps less open to this idea
since Trump's first election
and the reflection we've had
on social media's role in that election.
There's some distrust towards AI.
For many tech industry leaders,
it's opportunistic to ally with someone
who will align
with letting tech develop freely,
whether out of utopianism
or economic necessity.
A word about Donald Trump,
the American president.
He sees international relations
as business deals.
It's no coincidence that he's surrounded by billionaires.
Absolutely.
These billionaires
represent this new era of entrepreneurship,
a very white, male-dominated business.
-They're all men. -Yes.
It's very powerful symbolically.
For Donald Trump,
it represents an effort to align
with this idea he's been pushing
since the beginning of his presidency,
of returning to America's golden age.
Rockefeller,
-J.P. Morgan... -Exactly.
He considers it was America's golden age,
the rise of the American economy.
It was a time when tariffs were in place.
Growth came from tariffs
and trade control.
It was also a time of extreme inequality.
Life wasn't good back then,
unless you were among the Rockefellers and Carnegies.
That's exactly what we see today.
He's aligning with this new elite
in this broader vision of returning to the golden age.
A return to the golden age,
with billionaires close to power.
When we say oligarchs,
we think of Russia. Since the war in Ukraine,
many have found refuge in the UAE,
particularly in Dubai,
as Elsa Anghinolfi explains.
A $600 million yacht blocked at dock.
Two weeks after Russia's attack on Ukraine,
Italian authorities seized this ultra-luxurious three-master,
owned by multibillionaire Andrei Melnichenko.
This man, who made his fortune in fertilizers and coal,
is considered close to those in power.
He was sanctioned by the EU, then by the US.
While living in the Swiss town of Saint-Moritz,
he moved to the United Arab Emirates.
"I didn't expect this.
"I've lived in Switzerland for 14 years.
"I don't make weapons.
"I produce food for people
"and energy for power plants worldwide.
"I'm not involved in politics.
"What's the point?"
FINANCIAL TIMES, SEPTEMBER 1, 2023
After 2022,
the UAE, especially Dubai, its largest city,
became a favorite destination for wealthy Russians.
A New York Times investigation
revealed an increase in private jet flights
from Russia to the UAE
after the Ukraine war began.
Meanwhile, in Dubai,
Russian real estate investments grew.
Many of our clients struggle
to do business abroad.
There is a lot of interest
in Dubai and its neutral jurisdiction
for Russian clients
who aren't sanctioned and do business.
Some wealthy Russians are starting to look elsewhere,
according to a Bloomberg investigation.
There are two reasons: the cost of living,
which they drove up by coming here,
but mainly, local banks are getting stricter
in enforcing US sanctions against Russians,
making it harder for them to operate here.
In February, Donald Trump opened the door to Russian oligarchs
when presenting a new residence permit.
We're going to sell golden cards.
We have the green card, this will be the golden card.
This card will cost around $5 million.
Will Russian oligarchs be eligible for this gold card?
Yes, they will.
I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice.
Oligarchs able to change safe havens
in response to geopolitical crises
and opportunities offered to them.
Laura Bullon-Cassis,
whether in Dubai, Moscow, or Washington,
this is a golden age for oligarchs.
Yes, but this is
part of a longer trend.
Inequalities have been growing
for 30 years.
We're seeing the highest level of inequality
in 100 years.
There's been a process
of global deregulation
since the 1980s
that allows certain individuals
to accumulate unlimited wealth.
They have many tools to do so,
including mobility
and tax havens.
This is an issue
with the oligarchs we discussed,
but it's also a broader problem
in today's economic globalization.
Some thinkers like Quinn Slobodian,
a historian,
has shown that over time,
neoliberalism emerged as a mechanism
to protect markets from democracy.
So it's not surprising
that we've reached this point.
It's a natural progression.
Crises
create opportunities.
Yes, crises lead to opportunities.
We've seen this many times.
The most recent and telling example is COVID,
a crisis
that brought down many small
and medium-sized companies.
Large companies like Amazon
made huge profits during this period.
There are several reasons.
First, there's this information asymmetry
that tech providers have to respond to crises.
-To adapt quickly. -Yes.
The other reason is how much
these services have become
practically essential in our daily lives.
During the COVID crisis,
we couldn't go out,
so we ordered things online.
This created consumption habits
that increased the wealth
of certain individuals.
It concentrated
around specific companies.
We talked about the US and Dubai.
In Europe too,
oligarchy challenges our democracies.
Absolutely.
The democratic crisis in the US
shouldn't be singled out
as if it only happens there and not here.
Is this revealing something?
It reveals something significant.
The wealthiest part of society
keeps getting richer.
There's also inflation
affecting average consumers
and citizens.
There's a strong feeling of disillusion
with democracy
in the US and Europe,
which can lead to voting
for parties
and individuals on the political fringe,
like Trump.
In Europe, we also have far-right people
who are problematic.
Similar processes exist in Europe,
with their own oligarchs.
We don't call them that,
but we should.
I'm thinking particularly of Vincent Bolloré
in France,
who comes from finance and industry
and who took control
of Canal Plus through the Vivendi Group,
establishing channels...
He runs radio stations,
TV channels, and newspapers.
Yes, through which he spread
very conservative, far-right messages,
for instance by giving
visibility to commentators
like Eric Zemmour,
who ran in the French elections.
There's clearly a link
between wealth and democracy through media.
We don't have the tech yet,
but we need to be careful
because we're in a tech race.
We're lagging behind
the Americans and Chinese.
We must be cautious
about how this world develops.
Democracies are being questioned,
perhaps even endangered.
These oligarchs challenge our institutions.
With Nathalie Bougeard, we'll look at recent examples
of oligarchs being brought into line.
An unexpected presence at the People's Assembly.
Jack Ma had virtually vanished since 2020.
Now he's back after a long time in the wilderness.
Unconventional, eccentric,
this self-taught man co-founded Alibaba,
which dominates Chinese e-commerce.
Over the years, he built an empire,
a network of digital companies
reaching hundreds of millions of consumers
and collecting their data.
Beijing let it happen.
Jack Ma became one of China's richest men,
a true rockstar until this controversy.
It's the lack of a system, no demand for financial regulation,
no risk in the financial system.
Chinese finance resembles that of developing countries
that are growing.
Jack Ma was summoned by authorities and vanished.
After suddenly changing regulations,
Beijing torpedoed
Alibaba's historic financial subsidiary IPO.
He threatens power,
the direct power of the Chinese Communist Party.
Neutralizing those who could oppose his plans or power.
In Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince
Mohammed bin Salman opted
for a five-star crackdown.
On the night of November 4-5, 2017,
over 200 members of the royal family,
businessmen and military officers,
were locked up in this luxury hotel.
All of them accused of corruption.
Interviewed on CBS's 60 Minutes,
the prince explained.
Where are the damn bullets?
He fatally clashed with the sheriff.
Close to the Russian president,
Yevgeny Prigozhin always operated in the power's shadows.
Known as Putin's chef,
he reportedly became a billionaire
through lucrative state contracts,
wealth he put at the Kremlin's service.
He created the Wagner private militia, operating in Africa,
and in Ukraine.
He developed troll farms,
spreading disinformation and propaganda on social media
until the breaking point.
In spring 2023,
Prigozhin challenged the military command
of the Russian army in Ukraine.
Russia is on the brink of disaster.
If its screws aren't tightened today,
the plane will crash.
After these criticisms, rebellion.
In June 2023,
25,000 of his mercenaries marched on Moscow.
Putin called him a traitor.
The uprising failed.
Less than two months later,
the oligarch died suddenly in a plane crash.
Laura Bullon-Cassis, as we've seen in this report,
in authoritarian regimes,
there are more direct ways
to remove or sideline oligarchs.
This isn't the case in democracies.
How do we deal with this?
Democracies do have tools
to address this oligarchy issue.
There are political tools.
Democracies have set up control systems.
They're being challenged now.
Yes,
but they manage to fight back.
Many of the Trump administration's decrees
are blocked
by judges in the US.
There are safeguards.
Citizens are mobilizing.
Though perhaps not as strongly as hoped,
we still see responses
and protests on both coasts,
highlighting this concept of oligarchy
and standing
against the Trump administration,
while connecting this administration
to inequality issues
by emphasizing class struggle.
In American streets,
people are holding signs
clearly showing the word "oligarchy."
This term keeps coming up. It's quite striking.
Yes,
especially since it's a term with strong connotations.
It's often been used to point out
countries seen as undemocratic,
like Russia.
The fact that it's now used
in the US
speaks volumes
about how we perceive what's happening there,
how citizens feel about it.
It really is an erosion of democracy,
a shift toward something else.
We felt that in today's interview too.
Technology
is linked to the rise of new oligarchies.
Does something need to be done about technology,
its regulation,
and its impact on public opinion?
Absolutely.
In Europe,
we're much better off than the US
in this regard.
The EU is implementing various tools
to regulate AI,
particularly in Europe.
We have an extra filter.
However, I would go beyond
the regulation issue.
At the Hirschman Center, we do a lot of work
on digital literacy.
We believe
that citizens must be able
to make informed choices
about which technology to use and how.
For this,
they need to understand how they work,
who controls them,
and their social, economic,
political, and environmental impact.
Often, we don't know.
We become passive
about these issues.
Can we take action as citizens?
We can take action as citizens.
However, I think
we need major literacy programs
at the national level,
in schools,
to make it a topic of discussion
and education.
No one is immune,
even experts working on this issue,
as everything moves so fast.
Much remains unclear.
We learn more every day.
We must stay up to date.
We all need to improve our digital literacy.
Digital literacy -
remember that term. Laura Bullon-Cassis, researcher
at the Albert Hirschman Democracy Center,
at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.
Thank you for joining us on Geopolitics.
Thank you.
GEOPOLITICS
He launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room.
Mark Zuckerberg dreamed of connecting the world.
Today, this dream is worth billions of dollars.
Let's look back at Facebook's first steps on Wall Street.
ON THAT DAY
A frantic atmosphere outside Facebook headquarters in California.
Mark Zuckerberg savors this special day.
It's the day that the social network went public.
The NASDAQ CEO was there in person
for a special gift.
It's the first time we've given out the NASDAQ hoodie.
With shares sold at $38 each,
Facebook aimed for a $16 billion operation,
the biggest ever for a digital company.
I'd like to say a few words,
then we'll ring the bell
and get back to work.
By 2012, Facebook already had nearly a billion users.
Mark Zuckerberg promised a better world.
Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.
Over the past eight years,
you have built the largest community
in world history
and achieved incredible things
I never dreamed of.
I can't wait to see what you'll do next.
The launch was a flop.
The stock lost half its value in three months.
This chaotic start
didn't stop the group's meteoric rise.
Mark Zuckerberg has since expanded his empire,
making him
one of the three richest men in the world.
ON THAT DAY
That's the end of "Géopolitis", a program
from Radio télévision suisse and TV5MONDE.
Our shows can be found on our YouTube channel,
organized and classified by the "Géopolitis" team.
Have a great week. See you soon.
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